include as well nature as a scene of human habitation (or its frustration),
natural objects as fit for the human eye (or repellent to it), and abstract
motives and contours that may hold or repel the eye or ear. The inner material
of art includes the emotions and attitudes–the rejected thoughts–that
anyone will have in relation to the outer material. Any culture will enable
some degree of satisfaction and fluency in cultural routines, with associated
pride, enjoyment, and self-respect, for some of its members some of the time.
To this extent, Hegel is right that an aspiration toward full satisfaction,
fluency, and self-respect is part of the inner life of any culture. But no culture
has yet enabled full satisfaction, fluency, and self-respect in cultural routines
for all of its members all of the time, and different cultures offer to some
extent complementary, but to some extent deeply opposed, routines for its
pursuit. There is always, in any culture, both room for and need for departure
and revision, for individual vision striking out on its own against the grain of
culture, and there is also both room for and need for the understanding and
appreciation of the fluencies and possibilities of pride, enjoyment, and self-
respect that are afforded in different cultures. To this extent, Danto is right
that a certain cosmopolitanism and appreciation of both cultural and individ-
ual varieties of expression is in order. It is even arguable that the deepest and
fullest artistic expressions of emotions and attitudes toward cultural routines
must include a sense of their own partiality and finitude, rather than bluster,
assertion, and self-important attitudinizing. Artists will typically not be fully
aware of the success or failure of their efforts at artistic expression until they
find that at least some others actually do actively come to clarifytheirown
emotions and attitudes toward life through engagement with the work. Artis-
tic expression in its uncertainties is the opposite of propaganda, and fragmen-
tariness, abstraction, the inclusion of multiple voices and points of view, and
awareness of culturally particular traditions of framing, presentation, treat-
ment, and subject matter are fixtures of modern art–as Hegel saw in describ-
ing what he called Romantic art.
Dewey captures well the continuing interplay between the particular
dimensions of artistic expression, cultural and personal, on the one hand,
and its more objective dimensions, in involving common emotions and
attitudes toward a common cultural repertoire, on the other.
A poem and picture present material passed through the alembic of personal
experience. They have no precedents in existence or in universal being. But,Expression 113