Religion and Art

Paul Weiss In Milwaukee

Beginning in 1937, the philosophy department of Marquette University has held an annual spring lecture in philosophy in the memory of Thomas Aquinas. Each year's lecture has been preserved and is available in small, gold-stamped uniform volumes. In 1963, Paul Weiss (1901 -- 2002), then the Sterling Professor of philosophy at Yale gave the 28th annual Aquinas Lecture, taking as his subject "Religion and Art". I have had a long interest in the Aquinas Lectures because I grew up in Milwaukee and studied philosophy at the University of Wisconsin -- Milwaukee. I have also had a long interest in the philosophy of Paul Weiss, since I heard him give a lecture to the UW-M philosophy department in 1966. Unfortunately, Weiss' many books are little studied today.

Weiss was a systematic metaphysician who tried to develop a broad, pluralistic interrelated account of the nature of reality, a study which in his time and today is out of fashion. At the time of the Aquinas Lecture, his chief metaphysical work was "Modes of Being" (1958); although Weiss would go on to develop his metaphysics further in his long life. He developed a philosophy of actualities, existing things and of finalities in different domains of reality. Weiss also wrote about what he saw as fundamental aspects of the human experience and tried to integrate these aspects into his metaphysics. Thus, in 1961 he wrote two books about art, "The World of Art" and "Nine Basic Arts" which form part of the basis for his Aquinas Lecture.

In his lecture, Weiss argues that religion and art are "basic enterprises" that have a variety of important relationships to one another. He finds that religion and art are "independent, each providing an answer to man's basic need to be perfected". He finds as well that both religion and art can have each other as a subdivision, producing among other things, "religious art, art religiously qualified." The nature and independence of religion and art, and the nature of "religious art, art religiously qualified", form the theme of Weiss' Aquinas Lecture.

As often with Weiss, the lecture is broad, sprawling, and overflows its themes. Weiss at first differentiates religion and art, with the former concerned with God and the later with portraying human existence. Religion and art each can only be fully pursed by one who gives him or herself wholeheartedly to it. Individuals need both and need other goods as well. Weiss is a pluralist in recognizing basic human goods as well as a metaphysical pluralist. In a key passage, Weiss writes:

"No man, by himself, can do all a man ought to do in order to live a full life. Some of the goods he needs can be obtained only by his devoting himself to one course and slighting others where equally important goods are to be obtained. All men necessarily lead partial lives. But no one need be content with only those goods that he individually can obtain. Each can benefit from the work others do. While engaged in the pursuit of one discipline he can make himself receptive to the goods that other disciplines provide. He can take men engage in other disciplines to represent him in somewhat the way we all take policemen and senators, priests and soldiers, diplomats and athletes to be acting on our behalf. Ideally, each man contributes to a common treasury of goods to be shared in equally be everyone. All men trod a narrow path, but together they can win for all the goods each requires."

In the middle section of the lecture, Weiss considers various metaphysical approaches to religion and art, including pragmatism and language philosophy that he finds wanting because, in his view, they do not adequately relate human existence to existence outside of man. An understanding of art sees it in terms of man and existence while an understanding or religion sees it in terms of man and God.

Most of the remainder of the lecture discusses various types of art and their relationship, sometimes uneasy and conflicting, with religion. Weiss had developed a list of nine basic arts: architecture, sculpture, painting, musical composition, story and poetry, musical performance, theater, and dance. He discusses each art's relationship to religion, and what he says is often insightful. Here is the conclusion of the lecture.

"If we wish to grasp the nature of pure Existence and see what this imports for man, we can do nothing better than practice a secular art. If we wish to reach God we can do nothing better than be religious. If we wish to grasp the nature of God as mediated by Existence, we must practice a religious art. If we wish to grasp the nature of Existence as mediated by God we must share in a religious ceremonial. There are still other things to do. Men are, after all, obligated to realize an Ideal Good and ought to make proper use of their minds. And since God and Existence mediate and are mediated by the Ideal and the categories of knowledge, the enterprises of ethics and knowledge should be intersected by religion and art to yield entirely new areas where men are and should also be vitally involved."

Weiss manages to be both obscure and provocative.

I was glad to revisit Milwaukee and philosophy through the 1963 Aquinas Lecture and through Paul Weiss. Although his thought has been almost forgotten, I am enjoying studying and trying to learn from it.

Robin Friedman