How can music be sad if it has no feelings?

On cognitivist accounts like Kivy's, music is sad because its movement resembles the contours of sad expression and behavior; the sadness is a heard property of the music, not a feeling the music has.

Does art make us feel real emotions?

Arousal theorists say yes, that art genuinely moves us and that these responses are central to understanding it, though some philosophers hold the emotions are modified or contemplative versions of everyday ones.

Art and Emotion

This topic examines how works of art express emotions and how they arouse emotions in audiences, and how these two relations are connected.

Definition

Art and emotion concerns two relations: the expressiveness of artworks, whereby a work possesses emotional qualities such as sadness or exuberance, and the arousal relation, whereby works evoke felt emotional responses in their audiences.

Scope

This topic covers the philosophy of artistic expressiveness and emotional response: what it is for music or a painting to be sad without anyone being sad, competing arousal, resemblance, and persona theories of expressiveness, and the nature of audiences' emotional engagement with art. It focuses on the expressive properties of works and our affective responses to them. It does not cover the paradox of fiction (why we are moved by what we know is not real), which is treated separately under interpretation and evaluation.

Core questions

What is it for a piece of music or a picture to be expressive of an emotion?
How can a work express sadness without anyone feeling sad?
Do artworks arouse genuine emotions, and are these the same as everyday emotions?
How are a work's expressiveness and its capacity to arouse emotion related?

Key theories

Contour and resemblance theory of expressiveness: Kivy argues that music is expressive of emotions in virtue of resembling the contours of emotional expression and behavior, so expressiveness is a perceptible property of the music rather than a felt state.
Arousal and the role of emotion in understanding: Robinson and Matravers hold that arousing emotion is central to art's expressiveness and to the audience's understanding, with felt responses guiding attention and shaping interpretation.

History

After mid-twentieth-century critiques of romantic expression theory, philosophers shifted from the artist's feelings to the expressive properties of works themselves. Kivy's cognitivist, resemblance-based account of musical expressiveness and Davies's related view contended with arousal theories defended by Matravers and Robinson, who argued that felt emotion is indispensable to expression and appreciation. The debate now connects to empirical psychology of emotion.

Debates

Cognitivism vs. arousalism about expressiveness: Whether a work's expressiveness consists in a perceivable property (cognitivism) or essentially involves arousing emotion in listeners (arousalism) is the central dispute over musical and artistic expression.
Are art-elicited emotions genuine?: Whether the emotions art arouses are full-blooded emotions or attenuated, contemplative states bears on the value and intelligibility of being moved by art.

Key figures

Peter Kivy
Jenefer Robinson
Derek Matravers
Stephen Davies

Seminal works

kivy1989
matravers1998
robinson2005

Frequently asked questions

How can music be sad if it has no feelings?: On cognitivist accounts like Kivy's, music is sad because its movement resembles the contours of sad expression and behavior; the sadness is a heard property of the music, not a feeling the music has.
Does art make us feel real emotions?: Arousal theorists say yes, that art genuinely moves us and that these responses are central to understanding it, though some philosophers hold the emotions are modified or contemplative versions of everyday ones.