alt Hacker NewsNice! I like this, not a connection I would have thought of!
> Therefore, if the artist did not truly experience the feelings, the piece of work they produce would not be sincere, and hence not art. This also covers malicious attempts to produce a piece of art without having experienced the feelings. As the art is a successful representation of the agreed upon feelings, and the art is a Tolstoyan piece of art, the artist must have truly experienced them.
Isn't that circular? If I "fake" a Jackson Pollock style painting without having any feeling whatsoever AND it manages to evoke feelings in the viewer, who's to say which feelings are the agreed upon ones?
Tolstoy is generally not thought of as a great critic or philosopher.
I don't think it is circular however, if you did not have any feelings and others got feelings from looking at what you did then you did not produce art. If they then went and produced some art based on the feelings they had received from the non-art you produced what they produced would be art.
It's not very well thought out, but not per se circular.