An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

speaking. It has also something to do with consciousness: the emotion

expressed is an emotion of whose nature the person who feels it is no longer

unconscious. It has also something to do with the way in which he feels the

emotion. As unexpressed, he feels it in what we have called a helpless and

oppressed way; as expressed, he feels it in a way from which this sense of

oppression has vanished. His mind is somehow lightened and eased.^63

The character and importance of the expressive lightening and easing of

emotion become somewhat clearer in Collingwood’s account of a bad work

of art.

A bad work of art is an activity in which the agent tries to express a given

emotion, but fails...A bad work of art is the unsuccessful attempt to become

conscious of a given emotion: it is what Spinoza calls an inadequate idea of

an affection.^64

For Spinoza, an action arises out of an adequate idea that embodies a clear

and distinct understanding of its object. A passion–a felt determination to

do something–arises out of an inadequate idea, one that does not embody

clear and distinct understanding. To have an inadequate idea of an affection

is then to misunderstand what it is worthwhile to care about and feel about

in which ways. An inadequate idea of an affection gives rise to passions

wherein we become passive victims of our own feelings, buffeted into action

this way and that by failing to care about and respond in feeling to the right

things in the right ways. Hence it is no surprise that Collingwood adds that

“Bad art...is the same thing as...corrupt consciousness...Bad art, the

corrupt consciousness, is the trueradix malorum.”^65 If we try, but fail, to

express our emotions, and so deceive ourselves about what we have done, we

remain in the grip of inadequate and mistaken ideas of what is worth caring

about in what ways. All too readily we become victims of hucksters, whether

political or commercial or therapeutic, who will fill the gap in conviction by

telling us what we should care about or what others care about, distracting

us from achieving our own full agency, informed by genuinely felt, appropri-

ate concern. Artistic expression of emotion, leading to adequate ideas of

affection, is the only remedy.

Collingwood’s distinctions and his account of the value of artistic expres-

sion have considerable plausibility. Dewey similarly distinguishes the artistic

(^63) Ibid., pp. 109–10. (^64) Ibid., p. 282. (^65) Ibid., p. 285.
96 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art