Excellent post. Rigorous, thoughtful, exploratory in all the right ways. Bravo.

Mark, I agree with what Dr. Campbell said about your post, but he always says things much more succintly and with more efficacy than me. So, I’ll just leave it at that. I have yet to read Hume but just wanted to add a few thoughts. It almost seems as if being a critic of any kind becomes an art in and of itself. I have opinions, likes and dislikes, but that by no means makes me a competent critic. It doesn’t even make me a critic. Who decides who hands out judgment? Does one have to able to reproduce the art that they’re critiquing? This bothers me because I am traveling in a circular direction instead of progressing in a linear direction like I intended. I have always struggled with the concept of art because when it speaks deeply to my soul, it seems as if it’s a divine gift. If you believe in a Supreme Being (as I do) then, the path seems to be from the Supreme Being to artist, from artist to consumer (me and/or the masses), from consumer to back to Supreme Being, from Supreme Being back to artist again. And so in this way the cycle perpetuates itself. I’m sorry if this sounds a little hokey or touchy-feeling. However, for me, art is a divine gift. When I respond to something so powerfully, as I did with “The Faerie Queene,” I feel like it’s been created just for my enjoyment. So now I want to ask, “Do critics then have the right to critique a divine inspiration/directive?” This has always been very problematic for me. I’m no closer to figuring this out now than I was at the beginning of my reply. Anyway, I just want to reiterate again that you have a good post.

Carmen, I find your comment very interesting on two points. First, if I follow your argument logically accurately I think you may have answered the question “Do critics have the right to critique divine inspiration/directive?” You say being a critic is also me in itself an art form. Therefore would it be the same divine inspiration found in the art critic as in the artist him/herself?

Second, you say the are, for you, is a divine gift. This interesting because if I;m correct in my assumption your saying more or less, that art is a gift for you and all humankind from a Supreme Being. There is another perspective to this. I’m drawing most of this from Spinoza’s defintion of God, or Supreme Being, that perhaps everythign God does is done necessarily and not for the benefit of mankind. This is obviously a fundamental disagreement in your post, and not something that I am 100% endorsing neither, but merely something to think about. That according to Spinoza, if God acts out of necessity, then man must act out of necessity, therefore the creation of art is purely out of necessity and not out of compassion. Again, this may cause all kinds of new problems, but it is a different perspective to consider the origins of art.

Hey Mark, please tell me where I can read Spinoza’s text. Your reply is interesting as it relates to Spinoza. I’m interested in the concept that Art is a neccessity. Obviously mankind does not need art to survive in the literal sense, compare to Maslow’s Hierarchy of Needs, i.e. food, shelter, clothing. However, maybe Art is neccessary for the survival of the soul.