Jacques Maritain
All the well-know definitions. The definition which I have proposed contains three parts: the provision of satisfaction through the imagination, social significance, and harmony I am claiming that nothing except works of art possesses all three of these marks. By imagination is meant the whole realm of given experience, inclusive of sensations and meanings as well as of images, so far as it is under the control of desire, and capable of being viewed in independence of action and reality. By the social significance of art I have meant the fact that the satisfaction which art provides does not depend upon factors peculiar to the individual, but upon patterns of sensation and meanings which may become parts of the experience of many mind, and the further fact that an important element of aesthetic satisfaction comes from knowledge that other mind are having or may have a like satisfaction. ‘we saw, in addition, that the possibility of the social significance of art depends upon the fashioning of relatively permanent physical object, called by us aesthetic instruments, which function as stimuli of the aesthetic experience for many minds and vehicles for its transmission to future generations. It is a peculiarity of the imagination of the artist that, despite its freedom, it seeks a local habitation, and a deathless name, in these-instrument, and in creating them, the artist acts as both dreamer and artisan what we call a work of art is on the hand a thing; on the other hand, an experience. If we are asked to express the nature of this experience in a single sentence, we may venture to say of it is satisfaction of desire through a harmonious socially significant imaginative object which, because it is superlatively harmonious and of more than personal significance, becomes the symbol of all order and all goodness.
Jacques Maritain
ART AS A VIRTUE OF THE PRACTICAL INTELLECT
THE PRACTICAL INTELLECT
1. Before sewing one must cut. A philosopher who is in search of the nature of thing is obliged to begin with sharp distinctions. These distinc-
From Jacques Maritain’s creative intuition in art and poetry, ch. II. Copyright,1953, by the Bollingen foundation, inc. reprinted by permission of the Bollingen Foundation.
Jacques Maritain (1882 - ), one of the leading Thomist thinker in contemporary though, has written on many philosophical topics, including aes