Introduction

Abstract

People sometimes ask what point there is in art, or whether it has a point. Often, of course, these are not genuine questions but rather expressions of an extreme scepticism about the value of poetry, of sculpture or of drama. The questioner has never understood these things, or perhaps can no longer imagine what he once saw in them. And he explains his blindness by maintaining that there is nothing to see, and that those who claim to see something are themselves blind. For others, however, the questions are not simply rhetorical, but stem from perplexity about the nature of art, or about what it is for some activity to be worth while. They are questions which philosophers try to answer.

For if it be, as I affirm, that no learning is so good as that which teacheth and moveth to virtue, and that none can both teach and move thereto so much as Poetry, then is the conclusion manifest that ink and paper cannot be to a more profitable purpose employed.¹

Sir Philip Sidney

No artist has ethical sympathies.All art is quite useless.²

Oscar Wilde