Ernst Cassirer, in Chapter IX, "Art," from his book An Essay on Man, focuses on what he sees as the area of human endeavor which requires the most autonomy on the part of the individual. Other fields require great reliance on tradition, on repetition of historical precedents and methods (including religion, language, science, and philosophy). Art, however, requires autonomous action and perception. Writing in his concluding chapter on the conflict between tradition and originality in various fields, Cassirer writes,
Here [in art], . . . the second factor--the factor of originality, individuality, creativeness--seems definitely to prevail over the first. In art we are not content with the repetition of traditional forms. . . . Every artist in a certain sense makes a new epoch. . . The poet give not only a new turn [to traditional forms] but also a new life (Cassirer 226).
In other words, Cassirer is not merely suggesting that the artist consider autonomy of vision and execution to be a useful concept or practice, he is saying that without such autonomy the artist is not an artist at all but is rather a mere copyist who is wasting his and his audience's time. For art to be art, autonomy is essential.
The "proof" of the autonomy of art requires, says Cassirer, that "the logic of the imagination . . . be distinguished from the logic of rational and scientific thought" (Cassirer 137), and that the "moral truth" and "theoretical interpretation" of art also be shown to be distinct from the moral truth and theoretical interpretation of other fields.
The question, then, becomes what makes art different that the other fields. What is it about art which marks its moral truth, its theoretical interpretation, its product and its production and its producer, as distinct. In Cassirer's view, and he is convincing in setting it forth, the autonomy of art is to be found in its originality.
From the beginning, there was a conflict be...