Ayn Rand's Romantic Manifesto: Art and Cognition

ART AND COGNITION

When I first scan the chapter piece, I came across the terms like ‘perceive’, conceptual’, ‘integration’, and ‘consciousness’ for how many times. Even though I've encountered them from the previous chapters, their meaning remains unclear to me for I do not know what they exactly mean in the field of art. Bearing in mind that this chapter has the largest volume among the other readings, I am enliven that this time, those terms – if not all, most – will be understandable.

Cognitive faculty is the first thing that should be aware of to fully understand what the chapter is all about. The context implies that cognition is the way we perceive art and cognitive faculty is the means/tool of perceiving it. And for me, it is important that a person know how he uses perceptions and what are the processes involved therein.

What is art? According to the author, “Art is a selective re-creation of reality according to an artist’s metaphysical value-judgments” or simply saying, from my comprehension, it is the concretizing of one’s own sense of life. From this I learned what re-creation is and what is not. From my childhood days, I always thought that every work that is cute, beautiful and spectacular is an art – from anime drawings to colorful paintings and stunning structures – but it is not.

I just got confused when two statements of Rand seemed contradict. Art and Sense of Life p.32 tells us that “A sense of life is the source of art… and it is not a criterion of aesthetic judgment” while, Art and Cognition p.43 tells “…one perceives the music, one grasps the suggestions of certain emotional state and, with one’s sense of life serving as the criterion.” Until I realized that the latter pertains to music which has different cognitive process compared to other major arts because it has no definite criterion. When perceived, it reached emotion. Maybe, the main reason why music becomes one of the “undying” arts is that it communicates to man’s emotion...