An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

do thus identify with others, in both art and life, to some extent through acts

of imagination and imaginative attention. Following J. L. Austin, Cohen notes

that we do sometimes understand the emotions and thoughts of others, and

we do so not via introspecting them, but via an“act of imagination”in which

we“entertain...a metaphorical identity.”^51 It is, Cohen claims,

thesameachievement when we (i) appreciate a fictional narrative by

identifying with its characters, (ii) appreciate a work, narrative or not,

fictional or not, by identifying with its artist, where this requires imagining

oneself to be making those marks, or writing those words, or sounding that

music, and (iii) engage in genuine moral exchange, where this requires getting

a sense of things as felt by one’s opponent.^52

Cohen argues that“the ability [to think of oneself as another, whether a

fictional character, an author developing and attending to fictional charac-

ters, an implied or actual performer or composer of music, a painter develop-

ing a point of view, a historian, or an actual person in ordinary life] is a

fundamental human capacity without which our moral and aesthetic lives

would scarcely be possible.”^53 It is simply“a fact about human beings that

they respond” emotionally to presented situations, including ones that

develop over time, no matter whether real or actual,“perhaps a fact that is

in need of no special explanation, nor susceptible of any explanation.”^54

Cohen notes that one way to understand how I may both genuinely feel

something and yet fail to act or even to be disposed to act to change a

situation is that there is, given that I am reading a fiction,“nothing I could

do,”^55 just as I might genuinely feel something but be unmoved to act when

either reading about actual events in the past or watching actual current

events through a telescope or presented on television. In all these cases our

emotional responses seem both real and complexly sustained and developed

in our continuing attentions. Cohen adds that the interest of spectators in

bullfighting and of mountain climbers in ascending difficult peaks often

involves and even requires the thought that death is possible and sometimes

actual.^56 We do not seek only what is pleasant as an object of enjoyment, but

(^51) Ibid., p. 408A. (^52) Ibid.
(^53) Cohen,Thinking of Others: On the Talent for Metaphor(Princeton University Press, 2008), p. 13.
(^54) Ibid., p. 38.
(^55) Ibid., p. 36. Berys Gaut also makes this point (Art, Emotion and Ethics, p. 213).
(^56) Ibid., pp. 47–48.
216 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art