ESPhil Course Aesthetics, Final Exam essay

Ronald de Jong (542450)

July 7, 2023

THE BIBLE AS REPRODUCED AND PRODUCTIVE ART.

1. Introduction

When in 2016 the Nobel Prize for Literature was awarded to songwriter Bob Dylan, a
precedent was set: never before was this award given to a musician. 1 Understandably,
traditional writers felt bypassed: greater writers, even from Dylan’s own generation,
deserved this more than he. This award, to say the least, “stretched the definition of lit-
erature”.2
What happened then is paradigmatic for art of the past one and a half century. Clear-
cut definitions have been questioned and deconstructed, up to the point that nowa-
days, even duct taped edible objects can be art. 3 Boundaries of art have faded, new
precedents are being set, with nothing being exempt from later possibly being called
‘art’.
And yet, though the times are a-changin’, there remain works of art, for example
books, that withstood the test of time. The Bible is such a work. 4 As a book, it is full of
complex narratives with multiple layers, evocative and poetical passages, but also a
source of inspiration for other works of art.5
While the Bible is profoundly a theological book, theologians themselves pay more at-
tention to art in the Bible than the Bible itself as a work of art. The aim of this paper is
1
Ben Sisario, Alexandra Alter, and Sewell Chan, “Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of
Literature,” The New York Times, October 13, 2016, https://www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/music/
bob-dylan-nobel-prize-literature.html.
2
Sisario, Alter, and Chan, “Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefining Boundaries of Literature.”
3
Fan Wang, “Maurizio Cattelan: Banana Artwork Eaten by Seoul Museum Visitor,” BBC News, May 1,
2023, sec. Asia, https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65446331.
4
Capitalization is for demarcating the Bible as a religious book from a physical copy (bible).
5
Brenda Deen Schildgen, “The Bible as Literature, History, and Art,” Religion & Literature 47, no. 1
(2015): 189–95.

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to investigate the Bible as a work of art and the effect reproduction has on it, viewed
from four angles: that of cultural criticism, Hegel, Benjamin, and Latour and Lowe. It is
argued that from these four, Latour and Lowe’s idea of the original and facsimiles,
drawing on Benjamin’s concept of ‘aura’, provides the best framework to account both
for the Bible as productive and reproduced art.

2. Cultural Critical

Artworks and their commissioners have been separated for some time now, due to the
simultaneous rise of the autonomy of art and the free market. The work of art became
more and more important, but behind it also the desire to acquire wealth. Art was
viewed in terms of money and status: commodified and monetized. This went hand in
hand with the commodification and monetization of social relations. Karl Marx was
critical of this and thought the resulted social would lead to a revolution. Mass art cul-
ture prevented this from happening, as people were rendered docile by it. Art’s role in
this was twofold: it mirrored the commodification of social life itself, but at the same
time was capable of criticizing and emancipating this through emancipating art.

This function and role of art is only partly the case with the Bible. As for the first: there
were no financial reasons underlying the genesis of the Bible: as its oral form was not
expressible in terms of money, its written form was made with religious motives, by
and for religious communities. Translation and reproduction of the Bible, more than
any other publishing activity, has been missionally based: believing that the gospel is
for everyone, translation and mass distribution of the Bible was necessary.
It is well-fit, however, to say the Bible has played its role as a catalyst for social
change. Best-known is the Reformation in the 16 th century, but many revolutions be-
fore and after were inspired by the Bible. The Bible itself criticizes practices and beliefs
that dominate the contemporary culture. Despite this, however, the Bible has also been
instrumentally used to justify the status quo. Well-known examples are the Crusades
and slavery. It shows that even the most read book of all is not protected against unjus-
tifiable instrumentalization.

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 3. Hegel

For Hegel, the task of art is “presenting the Idea to immediate perception in a sensuous
shape”.6 As such, it is “presentation of the Absolute itself” 7 and excellent when Idea and
shape appear fused into one. 8 In the history of art, with its three stages (symbolic, clas-
sical, and romantic), it is the classical period which succeeds best in this objective. The
last period contains three types of individual art: painting, music, and poetry.9 With
the Romantic and post-Romantic period, however, the corporeality of art is no longer
needed: the Spirit can manifest itself within.

Two of Hegel’s ideas rhyme well with the Bible. First is the parallel between the pro -
gressive unfolding of Spirit and the progressive revelation of God to his people is obvi-
ous. Second being the fact that Bible is a ‘sensuous shape’ in which God is presented as
the Absolute and Spirit.
Hegel’s prescription, however, of art’s task and division into different periods is at odds
with the Bible as a work of art. The Bible contains poetry (Psalms and the prophets Isa-
iah, Jeremiah, and other), but also narrative (the gospels and epistles for example),
which does not seem to qualify as art. Part of the Bible would qualify as the highest
form of art, while a substantial part would fall out of Hegel’s art categories.

The Bible is not only art, but also productive art in the sense that it has inspired art of
all three stages. The building of temples and churches (for Hegel the first of the partic-
ular arts)10, sculpting of statues,11 painting of Biblical persons and stories 12, composing13
and writing of poetry 14 are a few examples of this. Here, however, is where Hegel’s idea
of progressive development of art from symbolic to romantic is at odds with Christian
6
G. W. F. Hegel, “Extracts from Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art,” in The Continental Aesthetics Reader,
ed. Clive Cazeaux, trans. T. M. Knox, Second edition (London ; New York: Routledge, 2011), 48.
7
Hegel, “Extracts from Aesthetics,” 47.
8
Hegel, “Extracts from Aesthetics,” 48.
9
Hegel, “Extracts from Aesthetics,” 56–57.
10
Hegel, “Extracts from Aesthetics,” 55.
11
For example the ‘Pietà’ of Michelangelo.
12
See, e.g., Da Vinci’s ‘Last Supper’.
13
See, e.g., Bach’s ‘St. Matthew Passion’.
14
See, e.g., Dante’s ‘Divine Comedy’.

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theology about the Bible. The Bible as written word of God is not in need of further
spiritualization for the Absolute to progress.

4. Benjamin

For Walter Benjamin the emergence of mass reproduction poses a problem for art. The
uniqueness of a work of art, previously inseparable from its “being imbedded in the
fabric of tradition”15, loses its (as Benjamin calls this) ‘aura’ by being mechanically re-
produced. For example, the arrival of photography and film made “introduces us to un-
conscious optics”16: it captured things unnoticed by the human eye. Filming and pho-
tographing objects or people, however, separates them from their unique place, their
aura: “man has to operate with his whole living person, yet forgoing its aura—since
aura is tied to his presence; there can be no replica of it.” 17 Even the unique time and
place of a work of art or a person can be manipulated by changing the chronological
order or by extracting it from its original place.

This process is parallel to the centuries of translation and copying of the Bible. With
the autograph absent, the Ancient Near Eastern and (later) Judeo-Roman culture in
which it was first written is no longer present in existing copies: the aura of the words
themselves is changed by translating them. Original wording sounds different and
sometimes even conveys a different meaning.18
The possibility of using art differently in a different setting has also occurred fre-
quently. Meanings that were up till now “hidden” are suddenly “discovered”—owing
sometimes more to underlying hermeneutical motives than the context of the text it-
self.19 Different than Benjamin, however, is the ease with which Christians have ac-
cepted the loss of the original ‘aura’. Whereas for Benjamin the loss of aura is not posi-
tive,20 retaining the aura was for Christians long ago already a lost cause—and not even
important, as it seems. Translating the Bible in a different language has been done pur-

15
Clive Cazeaux, ed., “Walter Benjamin,” in The Continental Aesthetics Reader, trans. Harry Zohn, Sec-
ond edition (London ; New York: Routledge, 2011), 434.
16
Cazeaux, “Walter Benjamin,” 441.
17
Cazeaux, “Walter Benjamin,” 438.
18
In the case of double entendres.
19
One example being the curse of Cham as justification for the Trans-Atlantic slave trade.
20
Although he does see its positive potential to emancipate people.

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posively for missional purposes. After all, only in their own language can people under-
stand the Bible and come to believe it. This means art had to be reproduced, both
through translating and through copying.21

5. Latour and Lowe

This leads naturally to Latour and Lowe’s more positive valuation of facsimiles. 22 In
their article ‘The migration of the aura or how to explore the original through its fac
similes’, Latour and Lowe argue that a work of art has a “trajectory”, a certain career. 23
Performing arts like theater are performed multiple times and develop. It is through
repetition that a play can either become famous and well-known or forgotten: “When
so many bad repetitions have so decreased the level of fecundity of the work that the
original itself might be abandoned, it will stop being the starting point of any succes -
sion. Such a work of art dies out like a family line without any lineage.” 24 Crucial is thus
not whether something is an original or a facsimile, but whether it is “well or badly re-
produced”.25 Calling copies of paintings or writings ‘repetitions’ is odd, but the same
point goes for this. The idea that the aura is only attached to the autograph (in the case
of the Bible) and not to the subsequent facsimiles falls short, as the “distance between
“version n” called “the original” and “version n+1” called “a mere copy” depends just as
much on the differential of efforts, of costs, of techniques as on any substantial distinc -
tion between the successive versions of the same painting”. 26 Sometimes, the difference
is minute, such that “the aura begins to hesitate and is uncertain where it should
land.”27 Since reproduction of the original is inevitable for its survival, the focus shifts
towards discrimination between good and bad reproductions.

21
One could argue that this reproduction was not mechanical—which, as the title suggests, is the focus
of Benjamin. The point about aura and copying remains nonetheless, even if this is not done mechani -
cally.
22
Facsimile, reproduction, and copy is used interchangeably here.
23
B. Latour and A. Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura Exploring the Original Through Its Fac Similes,”
2011, 4, https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Migration-of-the-Aura-Exploring-the-Original-La-
tour-Lowe/01be27345a8b765755e09c32740dbd3a6cd81d9f.
24
Latour and Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura,” 7.
25
Latour and Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura,” 4.
26
Latour and Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura,” 8.
27
Latour and Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura,” 9.

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Latour and Lowe’s idea fits well with the question of originality and aura concerning
the Bible. Reproduction of the original text was and is inevitable for it to survive. Mak-
ing good copies is more important than hoping to preserve the original as long as pos -
sible. Artistic focus has to be on the quality of reproduction. 28 This means that art does
not have to lose its intrinsic value when copied or (in the case of texts) translated, but
is made possible by it.

6. Conclusion

These four views on the Bible as productive and reproduced art all have their strengths
and weaknesses.. The cultural critical view rightly shows that art can be instrumental-
ized, but not, however, always for financial gain. Hegel’s view shows the Absolute is in
need of a sensuous shape, but he fails to account for narrative as a form of art. Ben -
jamin rightly addresses the loss of aura when copying a work, but then fails to address
the inevitability of copies in order to survive. Latour and Lowe incorporate this in -
evitability by focusing on art as performed art, which must not be original, but well
performed. They nonetheless lack attention for the performer’s responsibility.
The quality of performance is dependent on the performer. This means a necessary re-
turn to the subject in art’s preservation and performance, appealing to and addressing
the ethical side of art. Not everything goes, as the distinction of good and bad perfor -
mances shows: artists carry responsibility for art’s quality.

Bibliography

28
Latour and Lowe, “The Migration of the Aura,” 14.

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Cazeaux, Clive, ed. “Walter Benjamin.” In The Continental Aesthetics Reader, Second
edition., 429–50. London ; New York: Routledge, 2011.
Hegel, G. W. F. “Extracts from Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art.” In The Continental
Aesthetics Reader, edited by Clive Cazeaux, translated by T. M. Knox, Second
edition., 44–61. London ; New York: Routledge, 2011.
Latour, B., and A. Lowe. “The Migration of the Aura Exploring the Original Through Its
Fac Similes,” 2011. https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/The-Migration-of-
the-Aura-Exploring-the-Original-Latour-Lowe/
01be27345a8b765755e09c32740dbd3a6cd81d9f.
Schildgen, Brenda Deen. “The Bible as Literature, History, and Art.” Religion & Litera-
ture 47, no. 1 (2015): 189–95.
Sisario, Ben, Alexandra Alter, and Sewell Chan. “Bob Dylan Wins Nobel Prize, Redefi-
ning Boundaries of Literature.” The New York Times, October 13, 2016. https://
www.nytimes.com/2016/10/14/arts/music/bob-dylan-nobel-prize-litera-
ture.html.
Van Kley, Dale K. The Religious Origins of the French Revolution: From Calvin to the Ci-
vil Constitution, 1560-1791. Yale University Press, 1996. https://www.jstor.org/
stable/j.ctt32bx3d.
Wang, Fan. “Maurizio Cattelan: Banana Artwork Eaten by Seoul Museum Visitor.” BBC
News, May 1, 2023, sec. Asia. https://www.bbc.com/news/world-asia-65446331.

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Reading exercises answers
Kant

1. The faculties employed in aesthetic judgement are those of feeling (Gefühl) and imagination
(Einbildungskraft).
2. His aim is to “set forth and justify the subjective principle of taste as an a priori principle of
the power of judgement” (§34). Seeing that objective principles are impossible to get, his
aim has become to look at the subjective principles, not by way of giving examples, but by
looking on a transcendental level: to look at the possibility of judgement of taste from the
nature of cognitive powers as such. Kant is also trying to grasp what the conditions are for
an a priori judgement of taste to be made (§36). People make a judgement of taste and de-
termine necessary validity for it, i.e., universality. This is synthetic, as it adds the predicate
‘this is (dis)pleasurable’ to it. How is this synthetic statement a priori possible? This links
into his overall question of how synthetic a priori knowledge is possible (CPR)
3. The judgement is not one of taste, as judgements of taste cannot be universally valid. Saying
that all tulips are beautiful asserts universal validity and is not a judgement of taste, but of
logic. Instead of using the faculty of judgement, one would use that of reason, which is used
for universal principles, rules and abstract things.
4. Taste stands most in need of examples, as it runs the risk of becoming “uncouth again”, re-
lapsing into the crudeness of first attempts. (Making beginner mistakes each generation
again is unnecessary if examples survive generations). Taste needs these as its judgement
cannot be determined by concepts and precepts. It cannot be determined on the basis of
proof (§33). Even if others would like something that is shown to us as an example, this
alone cannot suffice as a basis for an aesthetic judgement. There is no empirical proof that
compels us of a judgement of taste. “still less can a judgment about beauty be determined
by an a priori proof, in accordance with determinate rules.” Rules do not make something
beautiful, as it is not a judgement of reason or understanding, but of taste.This is paradoxi-
cal, as a judgement of taste is subjective and cannot be linked to concepts or precepts. The
fact that somebody else finds this or that beautiful does not give a basis for me to make a
subjective judgement of taste.
5. Kant connects this singular judgement with universal power of judgement by positing that
we use the faculty of judgement for our judgement of taste. This faculty subsumes the par-
ticular under the universal. This faculty is shared by all rational beings and hence makes it
possible that when we judge, we use a universal faculty to make a universal appeal.

Derrida

6. A parergon is a non-essential part of a piece of art which only belongs to it in an extrinsic

way. (Continental Reader, p. 554) This concept originates from Kant’s Critique of Judge-
ment and originates from the greek παρα and εργον, meaning ‘beside’ and ‘work’: a parergon
is something that is besides the work and hence not an integral part of it.
7. Derrida focuses on this particular issue, as it the ambiguity of Kant’s examples shows for
Derrida the instability of Kant’s theory. For Derrida, the very concept of παρεργον and the
delimitation of centre and periphery are already unclear. When is something a parergon
and when not? (Is a transparent veil a parergon? A G-string? Kant’s examples of clothes on a

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 naked statue, ornamented columns and the frame of a painting are all dubious examples.
Kant’s point about the centre and frame of things is even unclear in his Critique of Judge-
ment itself! Derrida cannot figure out what is the centre and frame of this work. In other
words: what is intrinsic and what is parergonal to Kant’s work? This method of Derrida is
deconstructive and typical for how he interprets philosophers. He peels off the examples
and thoughts of philosophers like Kant, showing their inconsistency and hence decon-
structing their though. Derrida distinguishes various forms of παρεργα. ‘Parerga’ can be
added to natural things that represent something (such as the veil on a naked body), but
can also be added to things which are themselves already an addition to nature (such as an
ornament on a column of a temple which is added to the landscape). Then, there is also the
παρεργον not to the inside, but also to the outside: the frame delimits the painting from the
frame, but also from the exterior of the painting. It stands out both from the εργον, as well
as from the the milieu, the surroundings of the artwork.
8. The ‘lack’ of which Derrida speaks is what is usually understood as the παρεργον: an addi-
tion to the object ‘added on by virtue of an internal lack in the system to which it is added’
(Continental Reader, p. 554). The παρεργον is thus only needed for the lack of the internal
structure. If the ‘ergon’ were not lacking, it would not need a ‘parergon’. This lack differs,
however, from context. The context of an artwork limits itself to the work of art itself,
whereas the παρεργον encompasses more than that. It encompasses the setting of the art-
work, the discourses that surround it and the reception that exists around it. These are all
elements that make up the παρεργον, while exceeding the mere context of an artwork.

Lyotard

9.The sublime is “perhaps the only mode of artistic sensibility to characterize the modern” (p.
588) The concept of the sublime, which borrows from the infinite and vastness of things,
has been the ground on which modern contemporary art seeks to evoke these emotions of
vastness, infiniteness and paradoxes. The sublime happens when our imagination cannot
get a proper image for what we see (e.g. when we see infinity) and arrives at a feeling of dis -
pleasure, of dissonance. Contemporary art tries to depict precisely this: the fact that the
sublime cannot be depicted. The transcending sublime can only be depicted through imma-
nent representations.
10. Lyotard draws on Kant’s notion of the sublime and the avant-garde movements. He dis-
tances himself from Kant’s notion of the sublime, who sees the sublime as a universal expe-
rience. The Avantgarde art, by painting disruptive art that oversteps ‘rational’ limits, can
lead to sublime experiences.
11. The Sublime is an interruption of time because it disrupts our inherent sense of temporality
(past, present, future) and displaces us of our conceptual frameworks, including that of
time.
12. Cézanne’s statement that one paints for very few people is the result of combining art with
the sublime. The art one paints is not meant for a broad public, to be grasped by ordinary
perception. It disrupts and transcends the conventional categories we use. A painter paints
for those people that are receptive of this transcendence—usually not that many. From the
perspective of Lyotard this statement can be seen as affirming the disruptive nature of art.

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 Art disrupts frameworks shared by the masses and evokes sublimity by those who are open
to experiencing it.

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