An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

by objects in relation to human or other sensory faculties: being red or blue,

sour or sweet, loud or soft. They are real enough, but they are defined in

relation to normal sensory responses of some class of sensate discriminators.

Tertiary qualities are interrelations or arrangements of primary and second-

ary qualities. For example, tones are heard as elements of an interrelation,

arrangement, or order of pitches. Tones–one leading to or away from

another–and the arrangement or order of which they are essentially a part

are, like secondary qualities, real enough. But unlike secondary qualities,

they are defined not in relation to normal sensory responses alone but rather

in relation also to the responses of beings with capacities of understanding or

following a developing order or arrangement. As Scruton sums up his view,

We might say that a work of music is atertiaryobject, as are the tones that

compose it. Only a being with certain intellectual and imaginative capacities

can hear music, and these are precisely the capacities required for the

perception of tertiary qualities.^67

Here Scruton is essentially elaborating Kant’s claim that the experience of

beauty (in both nature and art) requires the involvement in a special way of

both imagination and understanding. We must focus on an object, but do so

freely and exploratively. Though we bring conceptual capacities (and not only

sensory responses) to bear in exploring a work, we do so in an unusual way.

We are especially alert to the developingarrangementororderof the work: to

how its parts lead to or“fit”one another to compose a whole, embracing

complexities, that sustains attention. That is, in Scruton’s terminology, we

attend to the work of art as a tertiary object: something that essentially exists

in relation to this kind of exploration.

When things go well in this exploration, then the work is distinctively

successful. Developing a Schopenhauerian stance, Scruton suggests that in

successful music, at least, we can concretely experience through this explor-

ation something that is otherwise mysterious and unavailable to us: autonomy

or freedom according to law, over and above natural, causal processes. As

Scruton puts it, in following the development of a successful musical work,

the causality of nature has been set aside, discounted, hidden behind the

acousmatic [pitchesas tones] veil. In music we are given an unparalleled

(^67) Roger Scruton,The Aesthetics of Music(Oxford University Press, 1997), p. 161.
136 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art