[feeling].) The major theorists of representation, form, and expression–
Aristotle, Kant, and Collingwood, and their contemporary inheritors and
revisers, such as Walton, Beardsley, and Goodman–each highlight for us a
particular dimension of the artistic engagement of our sense of appropriate-
ness, and, as we shall see, in doing so they further begin to acknowledge the
interrelations of these dimensions of artistic success. Without representation
and expression, in some sense, there is no artistic form, but only decoration;
without artistic form, there is no artistic representation or artistic expres-
sion, but only declamation and psychic discharge. By following closely and
critically major theories of artistic representation, artistic form, and artistic
expression, and then by considering artistic originality, critical understand-
ing, evaluation, emotional response, art and morality, and art and society in
the light of these theories, we may hope to make some progress in becoming
more articulate about the nature of art and its distinctive roles in human life.
To recall Murdoch’s picture of metaphysics, we might hope from within the
morass of existence in which we find ourselves immersed to set up a picture
of the nature and function of art as a kind of appeal–to ourselves above all,
and without any assured termination–to see if we can find justthisin our
deepest experiences of art and of ourselves.24 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art