Iris Murdoch begins her discussion of metaphysics and morals by beginning with art, which begins with Plato, middles with Freud, and ends with sex. It’s generally accepted that art is art because it is the apperception of an object or performance as a work of art; that is, a painting is art because we see it as art—ie, a fully unified, self-contained whole, a transcendental sort of perfection that exists separately and for itself. The Good, personified. This conception is, of course, cottonheaded and, more importantly, immoral.
Art is not the imaginative creation of unified public objects or limited wholes for edifying contemplation, with mystical analogies; it is the egotistically motivated production of maimed pseudo-objects which are licenses for the private concluding processes of personal fantasy.
Art is not the popularly conceived of transcendental object, the fully unified whole, or even the provisionally limited whole that is completed by the performance of client or audience. Rather, due in part to the inherent absence of the sign, art actually presents itself as an ironically shared narcissistic relationship between artist and audience. The art object is, in Freud’s words, a “disguised bribe” from the artist to the audience so that the latter may share in the former’s personal fantasy, his egoistic pseudo-objectification of the Good. The pure aesthetic appreciation that the object of art summons is kind of like the artist’s way of boozing up the audience so that they might be rendered insouciant enough to share in his fantasy.
The object of art cannot by virtue of Murdoch’s metaphysics be anything but a “maimed pseudo-object,” because it makes a pretense of being present; it fails in being present. It merely makes a representation. And its failure at being present is deeper than a mere failure to intuit a thing in itself. Rather, the art object renders of falsehoods. It
falsifies in so far as it professes to be a permanent record of an understanding which can only occur in ephemeral contexts of real person-to-person communication when one honest mind speaks to another.
The art object’s falsification is a moral failure of the artist. The artist purports to create an enduring, univocal description of the human condition, a “spiritual achievement.” Even good art is morally bad because it seems to offer a fast-track to the good. The personal fantasy of the artist that he foists on the audience is an egoistic untruth; the only sure path to the good, however, is “morally disciplined attention.” And, of course, for Plato the most divine form that we may attention to (or most accessible of the divine forms) is the Beautiful, which is pursued by Eros. In order to pay “morally disciplined attention” to the Beautiful, Plato and Murdoch would never have us pursue the bad, mediocre, and merely great pieces of art in our lives. Rather,
The moral life in the Platonic understanding of it is a slow shift of attachments wherein looking (concentrating, attending, attentive discipline) is a source of divine (purified) energy. This is a progressive redemption of desire: and sexual attachment in the ordinary sense can be one possible starting point for the overcoming of egoism.
That is, the pursuit of the lover is the most ultimate form of transcendence. The well-thought-out wooing, the matriculation of infatuation. The continual pursuit of sexual frisson. It is often thought of as the most egoistic pursuit, but rather Eros’ pursuit is the most self-effacing and transcendental. In the immortal words of Queen,
And love dares you to care for
The people on the edge of the night
And love dares you to change our way of
Caring about ourselves
