The question of whether works of art educate our perception is a question of debate, which this former baccalaureate question was intended to address. Some people believe that works of art can help us understand our environment and develop our aesthetic sensibility, while others think that works of art only express the artist’s ideas and do not teach us anything more about our own perception. In this article, we give you a correction of this question by looking at the different perspectives on how works of art can educate our perception. This correction is a proposal, other analyses are possible to deal with the topic.
Definition of terms
Works: That which is realized, created, accomplished by work, activity, and which, generally, remains, subsists (French Academy Dictionary)
To educate: To develop a faculty, a quality, a sense, by appropriate learning. (Dictionary of the Académie française)
Perception: Act by which the question forms the representation of an object apprehended by the senses (Dictionary of the Académie française)
Issue
The question that pinpoints the problem question is the moment in the assignment where the problem posed by the question surfaces, explicitly. The question here is the influence of the work on perception. Is it the work, i.e. the question, which makes the human being’s perception develop in a certain direction? On the contrary, is not the human being independent of the work, and delivered from the effect that he could have the works in his perception? How the perception of the man can be educated by the work while this one conceives the work according to his own perception?
Plan and Development
In A.I., study the influence of the work on the perception of the man.
In an II., to show the link of dependence between the work and its creator, the human being, according to the perception of the human being.
In an III, to show that the work survives the human being who created it, and resists time: the perception of the man influences, by the means of the work, his own perception in a historical perspective.
Resources and documentation on the work of art are to be found in this article which deals with the work of art.
In addition to philosophers who have marked history, such as Immanuel Kant, you could also draw on the thinking of more contemporary authors such as Arthur Danto, Jean-François Lyotard, Jacques Derrida and Martin Heidegger.