address[es] [itself] to the desire for ideal conceptions grander and more
beautiful than life provides.”^16 Yet, in a society that prizes the promise of
progress offered by more practical transformations of reality, the ques-
tion of whether we really need art comes up again and again, and this
sort of questioning of art’s value becomes part of its “permanent crisis.”
What use do the ideal conceptions that are “grander and more beautiful”
than the ones life provides, really have? Is it not more important to mas-
ter and control reality than to appreciate it and be inspired by it? To pose
this question is to be guilty of a most pernicious false dichotomy: either
we attempt to measure, quantify, and master the world around us or
we simply sit by filled with delight, appreciating the world. There is
no good reason to accept such a simple dichotomy. One can, of course,
do both.
Humboldt found himself on the seas gazing upon the night sky, not
to recover some connection with Dante’s poetry, or to be delighted when
gazing upon the night sky, but rather to measure the sky, to advance our
scientific knowledge of the world. Measurements of the sky have helped
us to predict weather patterns, draw maps, and engage in other practical
tasks, and come to more truths about the world. Certainly, the aesthetic
effects offered by art add color to our lives, but what value does the work
of artists such as Shakespeare, Dante, Mozart, have? What use do their
grand and beautiful conceptions of an ideal realm have for us? Life
would be grayer without the work of such artists, and there would be a
loss of inspiration and elevation of certain feelings, precisely those feel-
ings which might very well lead other individuals to make discoveries
about the workings of the universe. As Clifford Geertz observes, with-
out art: “some things that were felt could not be said—and perhaps, after
a while, might no longer even be felt—and life would be the grayer for
it.”^17 As Primo Levi’s words attest, when human society has indeed
fallen apart, sunk in the bleakest abyss of dark cruelty, art can help to
put meaning and color back into certain aspects of human life. The color
lent to life by a memory of Dante’s poetry helped to save Levi, insofar
as it took him back to his sense of himself as a member of the group of
humanity. So, we should not quickly dismiss the value of art or under-
estimate how devastating a colorless life without art would be to human
existence. The color and feeling that art, with its unique power of ele-
vating transformation, lends to life are just as important as the mastery
that empirical observations add to our understanding of the world;
indeed the color lent to human existence by art might very well play a
role in developments that lead to new discoveries about the physical
world. Within the context of human history the humanizing function of
The Humanizing Function of Art 81