Dr. Daniel McInerny Explores Relation Between Art and Imitation

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Acclaimed author, Thomist, and Christendom College professor Dr. Daniel McInerny recently visited Thomas Aquinas College, New England, to present a lively lecture: “Art as Imitation: An Aristotelian Re-Activation.” His talk marked the latest installment in the College’s St. Vincent de Paul Lecture and Concert Series.

Dr. McInerny set the tone for his lecture with a poignant scene of children playing from Dostoevsky’s The Brothers Karamazov, explaining the author’s portrayal of pretend-play as “a form of nascent art: an emerging need for art in the young soul.” Instead of going to observe actors in the theater or encounter beauty through art or literature, children themselves become the actors and take upon themselves the beauty that adults seek, understanding it by becoming it. Dr. McInerny claimed that Dostoevsky’s imagery of youth’s natural pursuit of art is akin to Aristotle’s claim that “imitation is natural to human beings, and also highly pleasurable. No one has to be taught how to imitate; children do it spontaneously, with pleasure and great relish.” 

This example was the first of many in which Dr. McInerny clarified and grounded his thesis: that the innate imitative impulse is the beginning of art. As he argued for the value of imitation, he detailed the struggles of our current society as it battles against imitation and slyly replaces it with representations, which allow man to observe and perhaps marvel at these likenesses, but not truly understand or know them. “You learn by doing; you learn by becoming and experiencing, by entering not representationally but experientially into what you want to know.”

Aristotle claims that there is imitative pleasure in art because there is rudimentary learning in simple exemplar recognition. Dr. McInerny, however, interpreted this phenomenon as mankind’s divining a deeper meaning in the thing that is being imitated through re-presentation and contemplation, therein coming to know that which is imitated in a more intimate way. While it does involve a likeness, imitation goes beyond and becomes “a real re-presencing of a reality,” whereby we come to know the subject on a sensible level, through both visual imagery and intelligible form. 

Dr. McInerny concluded with modernity’s general objections to imitation and his thesis, engaging with and refuting arguments that imitation be confined to naturalism or copying, and does not allow for the personal expression of the artist. “Artistic imitation is a re-presentation of one or more formal aspects of its origin or exemplar,” he said, “for the purpose of an audience’s cognitive delight, of both the sensible and intelligible delights.”

After Dr. McInerny’s disquisition, students and faculty applauded enthusiastically, then moved to the adjoining room for a lively question-and-answer session. “The speaker turned every idea into something clear and alive,” observed John Hryniewicz (’29). Lucia Johnson (’29) agreed: “It made me wonder about the reasons why people make art and why we have such an appreciation for it.”

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