Pessoa on the Objectivity and Universality of the Heart: An essay in epistemology of creativity

Abstract

What is art? is a common question. Its answer, however, often is not because of several reasons. For it is not clear if the task of addressing such question is to be accomplished by the artist, the art theorist, the historian, the philosopher or rather by the ordinary or non-technical opinion. But this is not all. Since there are different art edges, asymmetric schools, odd centuries, distinct philosophical movements, and innumerable Weltanschauungen, that considered by a certain generation hardly ever is commensurable with the considered by another. Thus, for instance, Plato’s aesthetics and Greek art’s ontological approach is rejected by Baumgarten’s, Kant’s, his follower’s and modern art’s epistemologization, and both the former and the second position constitute the angle of attack of a great part of contemporary aesthetics and art. This paper has three sections. The first is systematic; the second, rather historical; the third, only critical. In the first of them, I explain in some detail Pessoa’s viewpoint on art; in the second, and in the light of the positions of some of his contemporaries, the significance of his account; in the latter, I give my own point of view on the topic.