III. THE THEORY LAPSES
One searches the literature of later antiquity in vain
for the development
of these ideas. It is not merely
that the epigoni of the post-Aristotelian
schools lacked
originality, rather the topic seems to lapse into
neglect.
There are, to be sure, scattered references to children's
play, to gaiety of spirit and the like, e.g., in Lucian,
Horace, Pliny,
Plutarch, and even in Cicero; and the
history of aesthetics continued to be
served, but the
connection between them is broken. Play as such is
not
neglected but passes into the fierce competition
of the agon to make a Roman holiday. The magic child
of many pagan
traditions is absorbed, especially by
Augustine, into Christianity, and
combines great sim-
plicity and wisdom as
before (cf. Boas, 1966), but there
is no connection with art.
Perhaps too much joy had escaped the life of reason
in the sequence of Greek
collapse, stern Ciceronian
injunctions to duty, Roman decline, and
Christian
asceticism. Even Roman comedy displays little of the
lightness of touch that might suggest that a practical
connection continued
even though the theory might
be lacking. The Church Fathers frowned on anything
that might
distract the Christian from the grim search
for salvation: Chrysostom, for
example, in the Sixth
Homily of his
Commentary on
Matthew, tells us “It
is not God who gives us the
chance to play, but the
devil” (PG 57, 70D). These strictures of
course had
a target, for while the dominant theories to govern
human
nature had changed, that nature no doubt
remained the same.
A contribution to our theme is to be found, therefore,
only by default, for
the same antipathy to play is also
directed against art. The latter was
only to be re-
deemed by the subordination of
its subject matter to
doctrinally sound topics expressed in a rigid
formal
perfection taken to be the microcosm of the universe.
Not until
we reach Aquinas do we find a revival of
the generous Aristotelian view: in
his commentary on
the Nicomachean Ethics Saint
Thomas favorably
explicates the concept of eutrapelia, a lightness of spirit
midway between boorishness and
frivolity (cf. Rahner
[1967], p. 99). The emphasis here, as in the Summa
theologica (II-II, q. 168 a. 2), is however
on play as
relaxation from labor and tension, without reference
to
art.
For a long time there seems to have been little
patience with play as a
feature of imagination, crea-
tivity, and
art, whether we search among British
empiricists or continental
rationalists, or among think-
ers not so easily
labeled. For one thing all these shared
in common a view that is in essence
hostile to the
innocence of art (or simply hostile to innocence) and
so we find three aspects, variously emphasized, all of
which illustrate the
decline of interest in play. The
first is rarely explicit, since it treats
some forms of art
as scarcely worthy of notice: the sort of art that
might
be associated with play is taken as childish, vulgar
(popular),
primarily time-killing entertainment, and
thus not a fit subject for
intellectual inquiry (Schleier-
macher).
The second and third views involve even loftier
pretensions in which art is
justified predominantly with
reference to cognition and morality. The
position of
Leibniz usefully exemplifies the second view: such
validity as art possesses lies in its anticipation of posi-
tive knowledge. Aesthetic vision yields petites percep-
tions as the first of four grades of perceiving reality
in
the world. As the mind advances toward fully ra-
tional knowledge the lower grades are superseded.
Moses
Mendelssohn pointed out in criticism of this
view that art is thus assumed
to have no intrinsic value
of its own; and that therefore as positive
knowledge
increases, the significance of art will decline. The third
aspect is found more frequently where the concept of
taste and its
educability comes to the fore, e.g., in
Hume, Burke, Vico, Lessing, and Herder, among
others. Here
taste becomes a function of sophistication
and wide experience, and so
cannot be assimilated to
the play theory. Where formal perfection is a
major
objective of art (e.g., in the theory and practice of
Dryden or
Pope) this further militates against an
analogy with play. For that formal
perfection is not
infrequently seen as the aesthetic counterpart of a
wholly rational world (conceived not only scientifically,
but as part of a
theodicy) such that art is not an explo-
ration beyond what is currently known, so much as
a confirmation of
the philosophically demonstrable.
Such views may be mathematically static (as in
Leibniz) or historically
dynamic (as in Vico). One could
quote indefinitely, but Vico may speak for
all:
The studies of metaphysics and poetry are in natural oppo-
sition one to the other; for the
former purges the mind of
childish prejudice and the latter
immerses and drowns it
in the same: the former offers resistance to
the judgment
of the senses, while the latter makes this its chief
rule...
the former strives that the learned may know the truth
of
things stripped of all passion: the latter that the vulgar
may
act only by means of intense excitement of the senses,
without which stimulant they assuredly would not act at
all
(Scienza Nuova I, iii, 26; in Croce,
Aesthetic, pp. 221-22).
A whole family of related views subordinates the
culture role of play:
historically oriented figures like
Vico, Herder, Hegel, Croce, to name only
a few, all
treat art as something to be superseded—a
fortiori
imagination and play will be left behind for if ontogeny
recapitulates phylogeny, they belong to infancy:
“Whoever turns
to writing poetry in an age of reflec-
tion
is returning to childhood and putting his mind
in fetters”
(Vico: letter to De Angelis of Dec. 25, 1725).
Perhaps, after all, the
theory of an analogy between
play and art did not lapse, but was merely
pursued to
the detriment of both! But, happily, more affirmative
positions are near.