ST.

ANTHONY’S COLLEGE
San Jose de Buenavista, 5700 Antique
Tel. No. (036) 5409238; 5409237 Fax No. (036) 5409971; 5409196
Website: www.sac.edu.ph In SAC, we care!

CHAPTER

Functions and philosophical

CHAPTER OVERVIEW
This chapter provide an overview to the function as well as philosophical perspective of art. Highlights of
the chapter include

• Personal Function
• Social Function
• Personal Function
• Art as an Imitation
• Art as a Representation
• Art as a Disinterested Judgement
• Art as a Communication of Emotion

Function of Art

When one speaks of function, one is practically talking about the use of the object whose function is
in question. An inquiry on the function of art is an inquiry on what art is for or its practical usefulness.
Alternatively, the answer to the question “what it is for” is the function of whatever “it” in the question
refers to.
When it comes to function, different art forms come with distinctive functions. There is no one-to-
one correspondence between an art and its function. Some art forms are more functional than others.
From one point of view, we may consider art as having the general function of satisfying (1) our
individual needs for expression, (2) our social needs for display, celebration and communication, (3) our
physical needs for utilitarian object and structure

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 ST. ANTHONY’S COLLEGE
San Jose de Buenavista, 5700 Antique
Tel. No. (036) 5409238; 5409237 Fax No. (036) 5409971; 5409196
Website: www.sac.edu.ph In SAC, we care!

Personal function

The personal functions of art are varied and highly subjective. This means that the function depends
on the person, the artist who created the art. An artist may create an art out of his need for self-expression.
This is the case for an artist who need to communicate an idea to his audience. It can also be mere
entertainment for his intended audience. Often, the artist may not even intend to mean anything with his
work.
An art may also be therapeutic. In some orphanages and home for abandoned elders, art is used to
help residents process their emotions or while away their time.

Social function

Art performs social function when (1) it seeks to or tends to influence the collective behavior of a
people, (2) it is created or seen or used primarily in public situation, and (3) it expresses or describes social
or collective aspects of existence as opposed to individual and personal kinds of experience. Political art is
a common example of an art with social function. Art may convey message of protest, contestation, or
whatever message the artist intends his work to carry.

Physical function

The physical functions of art are the easiest to spot and understand. The physical functions of art
can be found in artworks that are crafted in order to serve some physical purpose, it could either a tool or
container. A Japanese raku bowl that serve a physical function in a tea ceremony is an example.

Philosophical Perspective on Art

Art as an Imitation

Plat in his master piece, The Republic, particularly paints a picture of artists as imitators and art as
mere imitation. Plato advices against the inclusion of art as a subject in the curriculum and the banning of
artist in the Republic. In Plato’s metaphysics or view of reality, the things in the world are only copies of
the original, the eternal, and the true entities that can only be found in the World of Forms. Human beings

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San Jose de Buenavista, 5700 Antique
Tel. No. (036) 5409238; 5409237 Fax No. (036) 5409971; 5409196
Website: www.sac.edu.ph In SAC, we care!

endeavor to reach the Form all throughout this life, starting with formal education in school. From looking
at the shadows in the cave, men slowly crawl outside to behold he real entities in the world. For example,
the chair that one sits on is not a real chair. It is an imperfect copy of the perfect chair in the World of Forms.
When one ascribes beauty to another person, he refers to an imperfect beauty that participates only in the
form of beauty in the World of Forms. Plato was convinced that artists merely reinforce the belief in copies
and discourage men to reach for the real entities in the World of Forms.
Plato was deeply suspicious of arts and artists for two reasons: they appeal to the emotion rather than
the rational faculty of men and they imitate than lead one to reality. Plato is critical of the effect of art,
specifically, poetry to the people of ideal state. Poetry rouses emotions and feeling and thus, clouds the
rationality people. Poetry has a capacity to sway minds without taking into consideration the sue of proper
reason. As such, it leads one further away from the cultivation of the intellect that Plato campaigned for.
Likewise, art objects represent only the things in this world, copies themselves of reality. Art is just an
imitation of imitation. For Plato, art is dangerous because it provides a petty replacement for the real entities
that can only be attained through reason.

Art as a Representation

Aristotle agreed with his teacher that art is a form of imitation. However, in contrast to the disgust
that his master holds for art, Aristotle considered art as an aid to philosophy in revealing truth. The kind of
imitation that art does is not antithetical to the reaching of fundamental truths in the world. Talking about
tragedies, for example, Aristotle in the Poetics claimed that poetry is a literary representation in general.
Akin to the other form, poetry only admits of an attempt to represent what things might be. For Aristotle,
all kinds of art, including poetry, music, dance, painting and sculpture, doesn’t aim to represent reality as it
is. What art endeavors to do is to provide a vision of what might be or the myriad possibilities of reality.
Aristotle conceived of art as representing possible version of reality.
In the Aristotelian worldview, art serves two particular purposes. First, art allows for the experience
of pleasure. Experience that are otherwise repugnant can become entertaining in art. Secondly, art also has
the ability to be instructive and teach its audience things about life; thus, it is cognitive as well.

Art as a Disinterested Judgment

In the third critique that Immanuel Kant wrote, The Critique of Judgment, Kant considered the
judgment of beauty, the cornerstone of art, as something that can be universal despite its subjectivity. Kant
mentioned that judgment of beauty, and therefore, art, is innately autonomous form specific interest. It is
form of art that is adjudged by one who perceives art to be beautiful or more so, sublime. Therefore even,
aesthetic judgment for Kant is cognitive activity.

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San Jose de Buenavista, 5700 Antique
Tel. No. (036) 5409238; 5409237 Fax No. (036) 5409971; 5409196
Website: www.sac.edu.ph In SAC, we care!

Kant recognized that judgment of beauty is subjective. However, Kant advanced the proposition that
even subjective judgments are based on some universal criterion for the said judgment. In the process, Kant
responded to the age-old question how and in what sense can a judgment of beauty, which ordinarily is
considered to be subjective feeling, be considered objective or universal. How is this so? For Kant, when
one judges a particular painting as beautiful, one in effect is saying that the said painting has induced a
particular feeling of satisfaction from him and that he expects the painting to rouse the same feeling from
anyone. There is something in the work of art that makes it capable of inciting the same feeling of pleasure
and satisfaction from any perceiver, regardless of his condition. For Kant, every human being, after
perception and the free play of his faculties, should recognize the beauty that is inherent in a work of art.
This is the kind of universality that a judgment of beauty is assumed by Kant to have. So, when the same
person says that something is beautiful, he does not just believe that the thing is beautiful for him, but in a
sense, expects that the same thing should put everyone in awe.

Art as a Communication of Emotion

For Leo Tolstoy art plays a huge in communication to its audience’s emotions that the artist
previously experienced. Art then serves as a language, a communication device that articulates feelings and
emotions that are otherwise unavailable to the audience. In the same way that language communicate
information to other people, art communicates emotions. In listening to music, in watching opera, and in
reading poems, the audience is at the receiving end of the artist communicating his feelings and emotions.
Tolstoy is fighting for the social dimension of art. As a purveyor of man’s innermost feelings and
thoughts, art is given a unique opportunity to serve as a mechanism for social unity. Art is central to man’s
existence because it makes accessible feelings and emotions of people from the past and present, from one
continent to another. In making these possibly latent of feelings and emotions accessible to anyone in varied
time and location, art serves as a mechanism of cohesion for everyone.

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