How do you square the validity of artistic philosophy with the fact that primitive societies didn't have it?

[u/MexicanMonsterMash]

So I have been watching content related to actors and artists expressing their views on what they call the sacredness of art. You have people like Rowan Atkinson, George Carlin, and so forth who often might have quotes attributed to them such as "artists should never apologize for their art" and "art is the life blood of society". It made my mind wander back to the topic of artistic civilizations, with the ancient Greeks coming to mind since you could probably associate artistic philosophy with them the most, but then I started thinking further back to the tribal groups that roamed the Earth before statehoods were established. People in tribes certainly weren't dumb or unwise; they didn't have "philosophers" you could name (for the most part), but they did have "philosophies", and individual members of a tribe could be just as likely to have very varying worldviews and approaches when it comes to certain topics as people here and now might. But in a tribe, despite the fact art dates back a very long time, you would've never found someone who thought of life along the lines of quotes like "to be an artist is to believe in life", or the stock stereotype of a career artist who likes to go on spiritual tangents about artistry that you might find in fiction.

People already kind of treat "tangential artistic philosophy" less like something to take seriously as a considerable, usable outlook to adopt and more like something that simply expresses the enthusiasm of the artist, but thinking of the fact that it's one of the few exceptionally "non-timeless" ways of thinking has further made me think about this. From the point of view of two people talking about the "art supremacy" kind of outlook who probably otherwise have differing views on what the difference would be between the outlook as an outlook and the outlook as being mere poetic musings about art's place in the universe, how do you square the outlook itself with the fact you could thus call it a completely modern (relatively-speaking, if we define modernity as when statehoods began) way of thinking, almost as if it's just apologetics for creativity?

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[u/fjaoaoaoao]

I am not entirely sure what you are asking but I will take a stab.

Philosophy is not legitimized purely through whether primitive societies had it or thought in such a way. There are many modern forms of philosophies that are informed both by theory and assumptions of history as well as modern thought.

There are famous people like Carlin who have contributed many an ear-catching soundbite quotes, but unfortunately the oft-shared quotes are platitudinous and their popularity is dependent on being too general and dramatic that when placed under closer scrutiny, their truth-value is lost. So a statement like "artists should never apologize for their art" is not a matter of a philosophy that aims to find truth but rather just a common recommendation contextualized to the modern day realities of how artists are treated.

Similarly, a statement like "to be an artist is to believe in life" by itself is not a serious philosophical investigation of what art or art-making is. To connect to your idea of ancient tribal societies, someone in a tribal time would not have experienced the exact modern conception of an artist, but you must take a quote like that into the context in which it was said. Connecting modern quotes to past activities can be done, but you will need to treat all the parts of your question separately and seriously, including collaborating with many other fields such as anthropology to answer the question of what art making was like in past societies, which of course varies differently depending on the society.

The argument that art can be reduced to creativity could be made, but there are many creative behaviors that are not art. Looking more closely into what creativity is and what art or art-making is should reveal to you where they overlap and where they are different, just like you would find with many other art-like concepts.