Book Review PORTER the Origin of the Aesthetic Thought in Anc. Greece

7/28/2019 Book Review PORTER the Origin of the Aesthetic Thought in Anc. Greece

1/5

1

Bryn Mawr Classical Review 2012.01.11

James I. Porter, The Origins of Aesthetic Thought in Ancient

Greece: Matter, Sensation, and Experience. Cambridge, UK:

Cambridge University Press, 2010. Pp. xvii, 607. ISBN

9780521841801. $145.00.

Reviewed by Anastasia-Erasmia Peponi, Stanford University

([email protected])

For too long a time beauty was out of favor within Classical scholarship. Porters

book heralds beautys return and newer ways of engaging with it. As the manner in

which cultures perceive and discuss the beautiful (and allied concepts) is central to

our understanding of their sensibilities, a renaissance of the aesthetic in Classics can

lead to rich and vigorous debates. One, then, cannot but welcome this voluminous and

thought-provoking piece of work, the importance of which lies both in the

sustainability and the merits of its key-ideas and in its occasional rifts and fissures thatprovide room for further deliberation.

Porters main argument revolves around the ways in which pre- and post-Platonic and

Aristotelian Greek aesthetic thought apprehended the sensuous and the material, the

two major fourth-century BCE philosophers being the ones who established a

formalist and idealist aesthetics that eventually silenced alternative aesthetic

approaches. By formalism Porter means any attention to the purity or ideality of

form, structure, or design (principles which are thought to organize matter or

material); and a kind of Platonism, which for present purposes may be defined as a

repudiation of the senses. (p. 2; see also pp. 70-71). Matter, on the other hand,

largely refers to the concrete materials that artifacts consist of, such as pigments inpainting or phonemes in verbal production. Reviving the neglected aspects of a Greek

aesthetics of matter founded on sensuous apprehension is the major goal of the book.

The Introduction is followed by four parts, the first three of which are multi-sectional,

while the last one consists of a brief epilogue. Part One is foundational as it discusses

the authors key theoretical assumptions. This includes his ideas about the

controversial applicability to Greek antiquity of the concept of art as well as to the

two opposed (according to him) aesthetic forces that permeate Greek aesthetic

thought, formalism and materialism. Part Two expands on most of the above issues. It

contains detailed discussions of fragments and testimonies referring mainly (but not

exclusively) to fifth-century discourses about language and the arts, mostly verbal arts

in their vocal and broadly musical aspects. Presocratic and, especially, Sophistic
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.html


2/5

2

approaches have a central position here, while among the poets Pindar and especially

Aristophanes are discussed in greater detail. The last section in this part, dedicated to

visual experience, examines critical issues involving painted and sculpted artifacts

with regard to tensions between aesthetic idealization and materiality. Part Three,briefer than the other two, focuses on explicit and implicit links connecting an

aesthetic of matter, monumentalization, and the sublime, as these appear in poetic

discourses, inscriptional practices, and in the critical heritage of Hellenistic debates.

Modern approaches to literature, the arts, and the aesthetic as a whole punctuate

Porters inquiry from the beginning to the end of the book.

Porters venture, his focus on matter and sensation as decisive constituents of Greek

aesthetic thought, is insightful and impressively wide-ranging and far-reaching. It

sheds light on some of the issues that much-needed new theories and histories of

Greek aesthetics should seriously take into account. Several of his views stand out--

for instance, his general statements regarding the existence and importance of earlier(largely pre-philosophical) Greek aesthetic thought, which I cannot applaud loudly

enough; his overall engagement with AristotlesPoetics; and many of his approaches

to visual artifacts, a particularly sensitive one being his reading of a Nolan amphora

attributed to the Berlin painter, depicting a young cithara player, with its embedded

tensions between tactility and visuality.

While the validity and the importance of Porters main argument are unquestionable,

certain side effects of the fervor with which he defends it kept me skeptical several

times. The question pending while reading the book is not whether materialist

sensibilities put their mark on Greek aesthetics but whether they have been as

predominant as the author emphatically claims (p. 15). This reluctance may increase

in cases where one is faced with almost imperceptible transitions from the archaic and

classical period to Hellenistic and later times. Attaching itself to this experience here,

beauty (or aesthetic value under some other name) becomes a concrete thing, non-

transferable, non-generalizable, non-universal: it is truly idiosyncratic (an idion) (p.

246). This is a very attractive formulation. Soon, though, this idiosyncratic aesthetic

experience is explained as the kind of attentiveness to material detail that ought to

have lain behind the Democritean title On Euphonious and Harsh- Sounding Letters.

This is further identified as the principle that later compelled Dionysius of

Halicarnassus to write about the aesthetic value of phonemes and to focus on the

material density of the elements (p. 247). An introductory statement about the effectof such aesthetic conceptions refers to both pre- and post-Platonic aesthetics.

Two interrelated concerns may arise in such cases. First, I cannot recall many

instances in Greek texts (from Homer to Philostratus, for instance) that represent at

some length a non-parodic experience of art exhausting itself in or even highlighting

the sensuous appreciation of matter while not also implicating a larger interpretive

agenda. Such agendas, although sensitive to matter, are usually attached to broader

notional and emotional parameters beyond matter itself and often present affinities

with what Porter understands as formalism. Second, even if such attitudes became

central to certain Alexandrian and post-Alexandrian sensibilities, one may be skeptical

about their prevalence in earlier times, however valuable such tendencies might have


3/5

3

been even then.

On the contrary, significant early evidence points either in the direction of flexible

models of thought whereby materialist and other-than-materialist aesthetics, instead ofopposing one another, morphed into one another; or it gestures toward the direction of

vivid aesthetic concerns outside the realm of matter and sensation. For instance, the

semantics ofkosmos, a key term in early Greek aesthetics, were flexible enough to

encompass both material objects, such as a wide variety of ornaments, and more

abstract notions of order and structure, such as that of poetic narrative. And regardless

of ones interpretation of the much-contested lines in theHomeric Hymn to Apollo,

where the chorus of the Deliades is praised for their exquisite performance, the praise

touches not on the sensuous but on the mental (both emotional and intellectual)

apparatus by way of which performers and audience bond. Although such an

achievement would have been the result of diligent labor involving the material of a

chorus voices and bodies, this passage attests to aesthetic preoccupations outside therealm of matter, such as the relationships that connect structural coherence, mimesis,

and the conceptualization of selfhood.

For a history of Greek aesthetic thought, then, with an emphasis on Greece in its

earlier phases (p. 1), it is important to discuss the broader significance of such

occurrences, which because of their considerable weight deserve more than just brief

listing (p. 181). In fact, such instances may affect the way one explains the derailing

(p. 10) moment of Plato in particular. For although Platos unfriendliness to the

senses (e.g. p. 87) is a widely accepted fact, it is likely that his battle against other

aesthetic discourses was hard precisely because it had to undo not just proclivities to

matter and sensation but all-encompassing aesthetic modes of feeling, thinking and

interpreting.

To move on to later literary critics, to whom Porter refers throughout his book, sonic

matter was indeed analyzed by them as a thoroughly sensuous quality. Yet scrupulous

analyses of this type may sometimes lead to generalizations that can damage a

listeners idiosyncratic delights. More importantly, whenever we do have full evidence

from such traditions, it becomes clear that the critics sensuous indulgence is rarely

pure, for it is usually embedded in a profoundly conceptual frame. Dionysius of

Halicarnassus enviable close reading of Sisyphus labor in the Odyssey (Comp. 20),

for instance, is founded on the principle that successful verbal art is primarilymimetic. This is apparent not only in his views on the relationship between mimesis

and language, which are explicit in this case though latent elsewhere, but also in the

philosophical genotype his vocabulary.

An eclectic aesthetic sensibility, appreciative of structures not only as sensuous but

also as notional wholes, is verifiable in the work of another master of literary

criticism, whose empirical stance Porter considers typical of materialist

aesthetics: Longinus (p. 247). The Longinian sublime, Porter submits, is never a

matter of the whole. Unlike the Aristotelian idea of a (well)-composed plot, the

materialist constructs synthetic unities that are themselves just further material

wholesa sound or a (collective) impact on the senses (p. 248). Yet Longinusinterpretation of Sapphos masterpiece (31V) indicates that sensuousness may yield to


4/5

4

notional apprehension (Subl.10). Even if one refuses to acknowledge an Aristotelian

twist in Longinus emphasis on the combination of constituent elements (moria) in an

organically unified whole (hen ti sma --cf. Poet. 1459a20:zon hen holon), one has

to admit that the critics praise of Sappho for the way she picks the extreme symptomsof desire from real life (ek ts altheias) and binds them together (sundsai) is

founded not on his sensuous apparatus but on his mental conception.

This is not to deny the importance of Longinus interest in matter but to counter the

impression that a reader of Porters book sometimes gets of an almost monolithic

aesthetic materialism in antiquity. Enlightened critical approaches to visual or verbal

artifacts in antiquity, both before and after Plato and Aristotle, seemed to possess a

flexible aesthetic attitude hard to label as either materialist or formalist and not

dissimilar to that of a perceptive theoretician of art nowadays. The latter would know

that taking delight in Vermeers adept brushwork, when contemplating the miniscule

surface of the famous pearl earring, can co-exist with ones reflection upon the Dutchmasters almost mathematical struggle with the representation of the ideal.

Overall, there is no question that Porters emphasis on the material and the sensuous

can bring excellent creative energies to the area of Greek aesthetics. But it will be to

the benefit of both aesthetics and cultural studies if such energies push even further,

toward untrodden paths. For if the aesthetic resides primarily in matter and sensation,

as Porter insists, perhaps a student of ancient aesthetics should engage principally

with representations of, and meditations upon, the materialist senses par excellence

smell, touch, and taste in Greek culture. This thorny issue, of course, brings out the

theoretical circularity of modern preconceptions: if the domain of the aesthetic is art

(within the perpetually questionable boundaries of which Porter largely confines

himself, despite clear attempts to push beyond) then indeed smell, taste, and touch can

only be the secondary synaesthetic components of the aural and visual, as the author

who is sensitive to this issueknows. To allow for a substantial materialist aesthetics

founded on these senses one has to conceive of the aesthetic as expanding beyond the

realm of art. Such an understanding requires more than just annexing additional fields

of aesthetic inquiry, for it is a driving principle that affects ones whole system of

thought. Nevertheless, even such an expansion would not be enough in this case.

Kant, for instance, who himself touched very lightly upon art, would push out of the

beautiful and toward the direction of the agreeable any condition that could

challenge disinterested apprehension--which is precisely what these senses do.

In other words, if some of the newer approaches to Greek aesthetics are willing to

shatter aesthetic norms for materialitys sake, why not break the norms once and for

all and allow the senses that have always been chased away from the aesthetic to come

forth and revolutionize the field? This may entail a fuller reassessment of several

theoretical assumptions or perhaps lead to a refreshing tumult.

Comment on

this review in

the BMCRblog
http://www.bmcreview.org/2012/01/20120111.htmlhttp://www.bmcreview.org/2012/01/20120111.htmlhttp://www.bmcreview.org/2012/01/20120111.htmlhttp://www.bmcreview.org/2012/01/20120111.html


5/5

5

Read Latest

Index

for

2012

Change

Greek

Display

Archives

Books

Available

for Review

BMCR

Home

Bryn Mawr

Classical

Commentaries

BMCR, Bryn Mawr College, 101 N. Merion Ave., Bryn Mawr, PA 19010

HTML generated at 22:35:24, Sunday, 08 January 2012

x
http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/recent.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/change_Greek.pl?url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-01-11.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/change_Greek.pl?url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-01-11.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/change_Greek.pl?url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-01-11.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/archive.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/commentaries.htmlhttp://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/commentaries.htmlhttp://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/commentaries.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/recent.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/index.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/change_Greek.pl?url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-01-11.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/change_Greek.pl?url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-01-11.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/cgi-bin/change_Greek.pl?url=http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/2012/2012-01-11.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/archive.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/booksavailable.htmlhttp://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/http://bmcr.brynmawr.edu/http://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/commentaries.htmlhttp://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/commentaries.htmlhttp://www.brynmawr.edu/classics/commentaries.html

Book Review PORTER the Origin of the Aesthetic Thought in Anc. Greece

Documents

Transcript of Book Review PORTER the Origin of the Aesthetic Thought in Anc. Greece