more elaborated, more suggestive, until from moment to moment it seems
about to burst into a wholly different conception of art. But it is
still Baumgartenism, from whose intellectualistic bonds it never
escapes. Nor was escape possible. A profound concept of imagination was
entirely lacking to Kant's system and his philosophy of the spirit.
Glancing over the table of faculties of the spirit which precedes
his _Critique of Judgment,_ we see that Kant co-ordinates with it
the cognitive faculty, the feeling of pleasure and pain, and the
appetitive faculty; to the first corresponds intellect, to the second,
judgement (teleological and æsthetic), to the third, reason;[12] he
finds no place for imagination amongst powers of the spirit but places
it among the facts of sensation. He knows a reproductive imagination
and an associative, but he knows nothing of a genuinely productive
imagination, imagination in the proper sense.[13] We have seen that, in
his doctrine, genius is the co-operation of several faculties.
[Sidenote: _The forms of intuition and the Transcendental Æsthetic._]
Yet sometimes Kant had an inkling that intellectual activity is
preceded by something which is not mere sensational material, but
is an independent non-intellectual theoretical form. He obtained a
glimpse of this latter form not when he was reflecting on art in the
strict sense but when he was examining the process of knowledge: he
does not treat of it in his _Critique of Judgment,_ but in the first
section of his _Critique of Pure Reason,_ in the first part of the
_Transcendental Doctrine of Elements._ He says here that sensations
only enter the spirit when the latter itself gives them form; a form
not identical with that which intellect gives to sensations, but
much simpler, namely pure intuition, the totality of the _a priori_
principles of sensibility. There must therefore be "a science which
forms the first part of the transcendental doctrine of elements,
distinct from that which contains the principles of pure thought and is
named transcendental Logic." Now, what name does Kant confer upon this
science whose existence he has deduced? None other than Transcendental
Æsthetic (_die transcendentale Ästhetik_). In a note he even insists
that this is the right name for the new science of which he treats, and
censures the Germans for their habit of applying it to the Critique of
Taste, which, as he thought at that time, could never become a science.
Thus, he concludes, we approach more closely to the usage of the
ancients, among whom the distinction between _αἰσθητὰ καὶ νοητά_[14]
was well known.
Nevertheless, after having so rightly postulated the necessity
for a science of the forms of sensation or pure intuition, purely
intuitive knowledge, Kant went on, simply because he had no exact idea
of the nature of the æsthetic faculty and of art, to fall into an
intellectualistic error by reducing the form of sensibility or pure
intuition into the two categories or functions of space and time,
and by asserting that the spirit emerges from the chaos of sensation
by organizing its sensations in space and time.[15] But space and
time as such are very far from being primitive categories; they are
relatively late and complex formations.[16] As examples of the matter
of sensation Kant quoted hardness, impenetrability, colour and so
forth. But the mind only recognizes colour and hardness in so far as it
has already given form to its sensations; considered as brute matter,
sensations fall outside the cognitive spirit, they are a limit; colour,
hardness, impenetrability and so on, when recognized, are already
intuitions, spiritual elaborations, the æsthetic activity in its
rudimentary manifestation. The characterizing or qualifying imagination
which is æsthetic activity ought to have occupied in the _Critique of
Pure Reason_ the pages devoted to the discussion of space and time,
and would thus have constituted a real Transcendental Æsthetic, a real
prologue to the transcendental Logic. In this manner Kant would have
achieved the truth aimed at by Leibniz and Baumgarten and would have
joined hands with Vico.
[Sidenote: _Theory of Beauty distinguished by Kant from that of Art._]
His repeatedly announced opposition to the school of Wolff concerns not
the concept of art but that of Beauty; two concepts for Kant entirely
distinct. First of all, he did not admit that sensation could be
called "confused knowledge," a confused form, that is, of intellectual
cognition; rightly judging this to be a false account of sensibility,
since a concept, however confused, is always a concept or a rough
sketch of a concept, never an intuition.[17] But he further denied that
pure beauty contained a concept, and therefore denied that it was a
perfection sensibly apprehended. These reflexions have no doubt some
connexion with those concerning the nature of art in the _Critique of
Judgment;_ but the connexion is far from close, still less are they
actually fused into a single whole. That Kant was minutely familiar
with eighteenth-century writers who had discussed beauty and taste is
shown by his Lectures, wherein they are all quoted and used.[18] Of
these the greater part, especially the English, were sensationalists,
others intellectualists; some few, as we have noted, were inclined
towards mysticism. Kant began by tending towards sensationalism
in æsthetic problems, then became the adversary of sensationalists
and intellectualists alike. This development can be traced in his
_Observations on the Beautiful and Sublime,_ as well as in his
Lectures; its final expression is reached in the _Critique of Judgment._
Of the four moments, as he calls them, _i.e._ the four determinations,
he accords to Beauty, the two negative are directed, one against the
sensationalists, the other against the intellectualists. "That is
beautiful which pleases _without interest_": "That is beautiful which
pleases _without concepts_."[19] Here he asserts the existence of a
spiritual region, distinct on one side from the pleasurable, the useful
and the good, and on the other from truth. But this region, as we know
very well, is not that of art, which Kant attaches to the concept: it
is the region of a special activity of feeling which he calls judgement
or, more exactly, æsthetic judgement.
[Sidenote: _Mystical features in Kant's theory of Beauty._]
The other two moments give some kind of a definition of this region:
"That is beautiful which has the form of finality without the
representation of an end": "That is beautiful which is the object of
universal pleasure."[20] What is this mysterious sphere? What this
disinterested pleasure we experience in pure colours and tones, in
flowers, and even in adherent beauty when we make abstraction from the
concept to which it adheres?
Our answer is: there is no such sphere; it does not exist; the
examples given are instances either of pleasure in general or of
facts of artistic expression. Kant, who so emphatically criticizes
the sensationalists and the intellectualists, does not show the same
severity towards the neo-Platonic line of thought whose revival we
remarked in the eighteenth century. Winckelmann in particular exercised
strong influence over his mind. In one course of his Lectures we find
him making a curious distinction between form and matter: in music
melody is matter and harmony form: in a flower the scent is material
and the shape (_Gestalt)_ is form (_Form_).[21] This reappears
slightly modified in the _Critique of Judgment._ "In painting,
statuary and all the figurative arts in architecture and gardening,
so far as they are fine arts, the drawing is the essential; in which
the foundation of taste lies not in what gratifies (_vergnügt_) in
sensation, but in that which pleases (_gefällt_) by its form. The
colours which illuminate the drawing belong to sensuous stimulus
(_Reiz_) and may bring the object more vividly before the senses, but
do not render it worthy of contemplation as a thing of beauty; they
are, moreover, often limited by the exigencies of the beautiful form,
and even where their sensuous stimulus is legitimate, they are ennobled
only by the beautiful form."[22] Continuing in pursuit of this phantasm
of beauty which is not the beauty of art nor yet the pleasing, and is
equally detached from expressiveness and pleasure, Kant loses himself
in insoluble contradictions. Little inclined to submit himself to the
charm of imagination, abhorring "poetic philosophers" like Herder,[23]
he makes statements and refuses to commit himself to them, affirms
and immediately criticizes his affirmations, and wraps up Beauty in
a mystery which, at bottom, was nothing more than his own individual
incertitude and inability to see clearly the existence of an activity
of feeling which, in the spirit of his sane philosophy, represented a
logical contradiction. "Necessary and universal pleasure" and "finality
without the idea of an end" are the organized expression in words of
this contradiction.
By way of clearing up the contradiction he arrives at the following
thought: "The judgement of taste is founded on a concept (the concept
of a general foundation of the subjective teleology of nature through
judgement); but it is a concept by which it is impossible to know or
demonstrate anything of the object, because the object in itself is
indeterminable and unsuited to cognition; on the other hand, it has
validity for every one (for every one, I say, in so far as it is an
individual judgement, immediately accompanying intuition), since its
determining reason reposes, perhaps, in the concept of that which may
be regarded as the supersensible substrate of mankind." Beauty, then,
is a symbol of morality. "The subjective principle alone, that is the
indeterminate idea of the supersensible in us, can be considered the
only key able to unlock this faculty springing from a source we cannot
fathom: excepting by its aid, no comprehension of it can possibly
be reached."[24] These cautious words, and all others here used by
Kant to conceal his thoughts, do not hide his tendency to mysticism.
A mysticism without conviction or enthusiasm, almost in spite of
himself, but very evident nevertheless. His inadequate grasp of the
æsthetic activity led him to see double, even triple, and caused the
unnecessary multiplication of his explanatory principles. Although he
was always ignorant of the genuine nature of the æsthetic activity, he
was indebted to it for suggesting to him the pure categories of space
and time as the Transcendental Æsthetic; it caused him to develop the
theory of imaginative embellishment of intellectual concepts by the
work of genius; finally it forced him to acknowledge a mysterious
faculty of feeling, midway between theoretical and practical activity,
cognitive and yet not cognitive, moral and indifferent to morality,
pleasing yet wholly detached from the pleasure of the senses. Great
use of this power was made by Kant's immediate successors in Germany
who were delighted to find their daring speculations supported by that
severe critic of experience, the philosopher of Königsberg.
[1] B. Spaventa, _Prolus. ed introd. alle lezioni di filosofia,_
Naples, 1862 pp. 83-102; _Scritti filosofici,_ ed. Gentile, pp.
139-145, 303-307.
[2] _Kritik d. rein. Vernunft_ (ed. Kirchmann), i. 1, § 1, note.
[3] See above, p. 244.
[4] Extract from Kant's lectures of 1764 and later, in O. Schlapp,
_Kant's Lehre vom Genie, passim,_ esp. pp. 17, 58, 59, 79, 93, 96,
131-134, 136-137, 222, 225, 231-232, etc.
[5] _Kritik d. Urtheilskraft_ (ed. Kirchmann), § 16.
[6] _Kritik d. Urth._ § 49.
[7] _Op. cit._ § 50.
[8] _Op. cit._ § 48.
[9] _Krit. d. Urth._ § 48.
[10] _Op. cit._ § 17.
[11] _Op. cit._ § 16.
[12] For the historical genesis of this tripartition, cf. remarks in
Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp. 150-153.
[13] See also _Anthropol._ (ed. Kirchmann), §§ 26-31; cf. Schlapp, _op.
cit._ p. 296.
[14] _Kritik d. rein. Vernunft,_ i. I, § 1 and note.
[15] _Op. cit._ §§ 1-8.
[16] See above, pp. 4-5.
[17] _Krit. d. r. Vern._ § 8, and introd. to § ii.; cf. _Krit. d.
Urth._ § 15.
[18] See catalogue in Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp. 403-404, and _passim._
[19] _Krit. d. Urth._ §§ 1-9.
[20] _Op. cit._ §§ 10-22.
[21] Schlapp, _op. cit._ p. 78.
[22] _Krit. d. Urth._ § 14.
[23] For Kant's judgement of Herder, see Schlapp, _op. cit._ pp.
320-327, note.
[24] _Kritik d. Orth._ §§ 57-59.
IX
THE ÆSTHETIC OF IDEALISM: SCHILLER, SCHELLING, SOLGER, HEGEL
[Sidenote: _The "Critique of Judgment" and metaphysical idealism._]
It is well known that Schelling held the _Critique of Judgment_ to be
the most important of the three Kantian _Critiques,_ and that Hegel
together with the great majority of the followers of metaphysical
idealism had a special affection for the book. According to them the
third _Critique_ was the attempt to bridge the gulf, to resolve the
antitheses between liberty and necessity, teleology and mechanism,
spirit and nature: it was the correction Kant was preparing for
himself, the concrete vision which dispelled the last traces of his
abstract subjectivism.
[Sidenote: _F. Schiller._]
The same admiration and an opinion even more favourable were extended
by them to Friedrich Schiller, the first to elaborate that part
of Kant's philosophy and to study the third sphere which united
sensibility to reason. "It was the artistic sense dwelling in his
also profoundly philosophical mind," says Hegel, "which, against the
abstract infinity of Kant's thought, against his living for duty,
against his conception of nature and reality, and of sense and feeling
as utterly hostile to intellect, asserted the necessity and enunciated
the principle of totality and reconciliation, even before it had been
recognized by professed philosophers: to Schiller must be allowed the
great merit of having been the first to oppose the subjectivity of
Kant, and of having dared try to go beyond it."[1]
[Sidenote: _Relations between Schiller and Kant._]
Discussion has raged around the true relation between Schiller and
Kant, and it has lately been maintained that his Æsthetic was not, as
would seem to be the case, derived from Kant, but from the pandynamism
which, starting from Leibniz, had propagated itself in Germany through
Creuzens, Ploucket and Reimarus down to Herder, who had conceived
a wholly animated nature.[2] There can be no doubt that Schiller
shared Herder's conception, as may be seen from the theosophical tone
of the fragment of correspondence between Julius and Raphæl and in
other writings. It cannot be denied, however, that whatever personal
feelings Kant may have had towards Herder, or Herder towards his
former teacher (against whose _Critique of Judgment_ he published his
_Kaligone,_ as he had replied to the _Critique of Pure Reason_ with his
_Metacritica_), when Kant in a somewhat dubious manner made the first
step towards a reconciliation, the breach was at all events partially
healed. The dispute is therefore of small importance: we shall find it
more useful to observe that Schiller introduced an important correction
of Kant's views when he obliterated every trace of the double theory
of art and the beautiful, giving no weight to the distinction drawn
between pure and adherent beauty, and finally abandoning the mechanical
conception of art as consisting in beauty joined to the intellectual
concept. It was certainly his own experience of active artistic work
that led him to this simplification.
[Sidenote: _The æsthetic sphere as the sphere of Play._]
Schiller defined the æsthetic sphere as the sphere of play (_Spiel_);
the unfortunate term, suggested to him partly by some phrases of Kant,
partly, perhaps, by an article on card-games by one Weisshuhn which he
published in his review _The Hours_ (_Die Horen_),[3] has given rise
to the belief that he anticipated certain modern doctrines of artistic
activity as the overflow of exuberant spirits, analogous with the play
of children and animals. Schiller did not fail to warn his readers
against such a mistaken interpretation (to which, however, he lent
himself) when he begged them not to think of "games in real life,
which are usually concerned with wholly material things," nor yet of
the idle dreaming of the imagination left to itself.[4] The activity
of the play of which he treated held the mean between the material
activity of the senses, of nature, of animal instinct or passion as
it is called, and the formal activity of intellect and morality. The
man who plays, _i.e._ contemplates nature æsthetically and produces
art, sees all natural objects as animated; in such a phantasmagoria
mere natural necessity gives place to the free determination of the
faculties; spirit appears as spontaneously reconciled with nature,
form with matter. Beauty is life, the living form (_lebende Gestalt)_;
not life in the physiological sense, since beauty does not extend
throughout all physiological life, nor is it restricted to that alone:
marble when worked by an artist may have a living form; and a man,
although possessed of life and form, need not be a living form.[5]
Wherefore art must conquer nature with form: "in an artistic work of
true beauty the content ought to be nil, the form everything: by form
man is influenced in his entirety; by content in his separate faculties
only. The true secret of great artists is that they cancel matter
through form (_den Stoff durch die Form vertilgt)_; the more imposing,
overwhelming or seductive the matter is in itself, the greater its
obstinacy in striving to emphasize its own particular effect, the more
the spectator inclines to lose himself immediately in the matter, so
much the more triumphant is the art which brings it into subjection
and enforces its own sovereign power. The mind of hearer or spectator
should remain perfectly free and calm; from the magic circle of art
it should issue as pure and perfect as when it left the hands of the
Creator. The most frivolous object should be treated in such a manner
as to enable us to pass at once to the most serious matters; and the
most serious in such a way that we may pass from them to the lightest
game." There is a fine art of passion; a passionate fine art would be
a contradiction in terms.[6] "So long as man in his early physical
state passively absorbs the world of senses and simply feels it, he is
one with it; and precisely because he merely is a world there is for
him as yet no world at all. Only when in his æsthetic state he places
the world outside himself and contemplates it, does he detach his
personality from the rest; then a world appears to him, since he is no
longer one with the world."[7]
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic education._]
Schiller ascribed high educational value to art thus conceived as at
once sensible and rational, material and formal. Not that it teaches
moral precepts or excites to good actions; if it acted thus, or when
it acted thus, it would at once cease, as we have seen, to be art.
Determination in whatsoever direction, to the good or the bad, to
pleasure or to duty, destroys the character of the æsthetic sphere,
which is rather indeterminism. By means of art man frees himself from
the yoke of the senses; but before putting himself spontaneously under
that of reason and duty, he takes as it were a little breathing-space
by staying in a region of indifference and serene contemplation. "While
having no claim to promote exclusively any special human faculty, the
æsthetic condition is favourable to each and all without favouritism;
and the reason why it favours none in particular is that it is the
foundation of the possibility of all alike. Every other exercise gives
some inclination to the soul, and therefore presupposes a special
limit; æsthetic activity alone is unlimited." This indifference, which
if not yet pure form is not pure matter, confers its educational value
on art; it opens a way to morality, not by preaching and persuading,
that is to say, determining, but by making determination possible.
Such is the fundamental concept of his celebrated _Letters on the
Æsthetic Education of Man_ (1795), in which Schiller took his cue from
the conditions of his times and from the necessity of finding a middle
way between supine acquiescence in tyranny and savage rebellion as
exemplified by the revolution then raging in France.
[Sidenote: _Vagueness and lack of precision in Schiller's Æsthetic._]
The defects of Schiller's æsthetic doctrine are its lack of precision
and its generality. Who has given a better description of certain
aspects of art, the catharsis produced by artistic activity, the
serenity and calm resulting from the domination over natural
impressions? Equally just is his remark that art, although wholly
independent of morality, is in some way connected with it. But what
precisely this connexion may be, or what the exact nature of æsthetic
activity, Schiller does not succeed in explaining. Conceiving the
moral and intellectual as the only formal activities (_Formtrieb)_ and
denying as a convinced anti-sensationalist in opposition to Burke and
philosophers of his type that art can belong to the passionate and
sensuous nature (_Stofftrieb_), he cut himself off from the means of
recognizing the general category to which artistic activity belongs.
His own concept of the formal is too narrow: too narrow, also, his
concept of the cognitive activity, in which he is able to see the
logical or intellectual form, but not that of the imagination. What
for him was this art he describes as an activity neither formal nor
material, neither cognitive nor moral? Was it for him, as for Kant,
an activity of feeling, a play of several faculties at once? It would
seem so, since Schiller distinguishes four points of view or relations
of man with things: the physical, in which these affect our senses:
the logical, in which they excite knowledge: the moral, in which they
appear to us as an object of rational volition: and the æsthetic
"in which they refer to our powers in entirety without becoming the
determinate object of any one faculty." For example, a man is pleased
æsthetically when his feeling depends in no way on the pleasure of
the senses and when he is not conscious of thinking about any law or
end.[8] We look in vain for any more conclusive reply.
It must not be overlooked that Schiller delivered a course of lectures
on Æsthetic in Jena University in 1792, and that his writings on the
subject intended for reviews were couched in a popular style: no
less popular, in his own opinion, was the style of the book quoted
above, which grew out of a series of letters actually sent to his
patron the Duke of Holstein-Augustenburg. But the great work to be
entitled _Rallias,_ which he intended writing upon Æsthetic, was never
completed; the only fragments which have reached us are contained in
the correspondence with Körner (1793-1794). From the discussions between
the two friends we gather that Körner was not satisfied with Schiller's
formula and desired something objective, something more precise, a
positive characteristic of the beautiful: and one day Schiller told him
that he had definitely discovered such a characteristic. But what it
was that he had discovered we do not know; no mention of it occurs in
any further document, and we are left in doubt as to whether we have
lost an integral part of his thought or merely the momentary illusion
of a discovery.
[Sidenote: _Schiller's caution and the rashness of the Romanticists._]