David B. Milne: an artist's epistemology

Abstract

David Milne's extensive writings about visual art - focused largely on his subjects and practice - present. when translated into philosophical language, a coherent epistemology. The major themes in Milne's thought include the character of, and relationships between, abstract form and content, and an overwhelming desire for wholeness, unity, and sincerity in art. An exegesis of his two central ideas, intransitive love and aesthetic emotion, suggests that Milne is describing a particular state of nonjudgmental attention as a route to apprehension of truth, placing it within a continuous and growing body of philosophy that challenges Western society's epistemological orthodoxy. I accept that the mode of thought George Grant calls "Technology" - a term inherited from Heidegger - is the default mode for Western thought, and contrast it with Milne's epistemology to indicate ethical and environmental ramifications an epistemology of art could bring to bear on Grant's analysis of the ontology of Technology.