“What is art, daddy?”
When philosophers reply to metaphysical questions, we usually reveal a certain insecurity about being too simple and revealing a more honest truth: that we don’t know the answers, that we don’t know anything really. (For instance, I am bothered by the phrase “being too simple” in the previous sentence because the term ‘being’ is a technical philosophical term that I am using—I just did it again!—in an ordinary way. This is the sickness I often suffer from. My children are a a healthy antidote to my philosophical disease.)
My oldest son recently asked me what art is. I can’t really recall if he asked what art means or what art is. For him, it is not important to parse things out that way. I get what he was asking. (“This thing called ‘art’—assuming of course that there is such a thing—is new to me and I trust you to tell me what it is, daddy.”)
The posture I found myself in while trying to answer his question was beautifully freeing. It was more faithful to philosophia (love of wisdom) than anything I have said at an academic conference.
I was not hiding the fact that I do not know what art is in any comprehensive way. I was not trying to impress him with all the things I could say on that topic. I was simply trying to communicate to him in a way that would lead him to some truth of the mystery of what art is. I was trying to offer him something worthwhile.
My first reaction was empirical. So, we went to an art festival.
What he came away from that investigation with was this: Art is paintings. Close, but no cigar.
My next reaction was days later. (Today actually, on our way to watch a movie—The Tale of Despereaux.) I asked him if he knew what art is now, which was when he told me that, to him, art is paintings, like the ones he saw at the art festival. I replied carefully, “Yes, paintings are a form of art. Kind of like strawberries are a kind of food, but art is bigger than just paintings.”
Then, like a thunderbolt, I heard myself say this: “Art is when something beautiful happens.“
He laughed with joyful curiosity and exclaimed, “Beautiful! What is beautiful?”
He became an artist, again.
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Kids are amazing. When my daughter was five, she looked me in the eye and asked, “What is grace?” I thought I knew, and I thought it was fairly simple, but I made hash of it, like trying to explain quantum non-locality.
This post brought to mind the wise words of William Desmond, (probably the greatest living philosopher): “The more mature a singular metaphysician becomes, the more there is in him a refinement of childlike astonishment” (Being and the Between, 13).
I think Kant – for whom I have a deep respect – would have been a far better philosopher if he had gotten married and had some children…