in contrast with that which followed. He had constituted himself
guardian of the teaching of Kant and refused to abandon the realm of
criticism; faithful disciple of his master, he conceived the third
sphere not as real but as an ideal, a concept not constitutive but
regulative, an imperative. "From transcendental motives, reason here
demands that communion be established between formal and material
activity; that is to say, there must be an activity of play, since the
concept of humanity can be complete only by the union of reality with
form, the accidental with the necessary, passivity with liberty. This
demand must be made because reason, in conformity with her essence,
aims at perfection and at sweeping away all obstacles; and every
exclusive operation of one or other activity leaves humanity incomplete
and confined within limits."[9] Schiller's thought, as it appears in
his correspondence with Körner, has been well represented as follows:"
The union of sensibility with liberty in the Beautiful, which does
not actually take place but is supposed to do so, suggests to man
an intuition of the union of these elements within himself: a union
which does not take place actually but ought to do so."[10] The times
which followed had no such nice scruples. Kant had given new vigour
to the production of works on æsthetic, and, as in the days following
Baumgarten, every new year saw a number of new treatises. It was the
fashion. "Nothing swarms like æstheticians" (wrote Jean Paul Richter
in 1804 when preparing his own book on the subject for publication):
"it is rare for a youth who has paid his fees for a course of lectures
on Æsthetic not to produce a book on some point of the science in the
hope that the public may refund him his expenses by buying his book:
some there are indeed who pay their professor's fees out of their
author's royalties."[11] It was hoped, not unreasonably, that the
exploration of the obscure region of æsthetic might throw some light
on metaphysics, and the procedure of artists seemed to offer a good
example to philosophers seeking to create a world for themselves:
so philosophy modelled itself upon art and, as though to render the
transition easier, the concept of art was brought as close as possible
to that of philosophy. Romanticism, gaining vogue daily, was a renewal
or continuation of that "age of genius" in which the youth of Goethe
and Schiller had been passed; and as the period of _Sturm und Drang_
had zealously worshipped the genius who breaks all rules and oversteps
all limitations, so did Romanticism hail the domination of a faculty
called Fancy, or more frequently Imagination, to which were attributed
the most diverse characteristics and the most miraculous effects.
[Sidenote: _Ideas on Art: J. P. Richter._]
The Romantic theorists, artists themselves for the most part, abounded
in truthful and subtle observations concerning artistic procedure. Jean
Paul Richter makes many excellent remarks about productive imagination,
which he distinguishes clearly from the reproductive and asserts to be
shared by all men as soon as they are able to say "This is beautiful";
for "how could a genius be acclaimed or even tolerated for a single
month, not to mention thousands of centuries, by the common herd, if
he had not a strong connecting-link of relationship with the herd?" He
also describes how imagination is variously divided among individuals:
as simple talent, as passive or feminine genius, and in the highest
degree as the active or masculine genius, formed by reflexion and
instinct, in which "all faculties flourish simultaneously and fancy
is no isolated flower, but the goddess Flora herself who, in order
to produce new combinations, crosses with each other those blossoms
whose conjunction is fertile, and is, so to speak, a faculty full of
faculties."[12] This latter sentence betrays a tendency on Richter's
part to exaggerate the functions of imagination and to construct upon
it a kind of mythology.
[Sidenote: _Romantic Æsthetic and idealistic Æsthetic._]
Contemporary systems of philosophy are partly impregnated with, and
partly the source of, such mythologies: the Romantic conception of
art may be said to have found its most complete expression in German
idealism, where this attained its most coherent and systematic form.
[Sidenote: _J. G. Fichte._]
It did not attain this form with Fichte, the first great pupil of Kant;
for though Fichte regarded imagination as the activity which creates
the universe, effects the synthesis of the ego and the non-ego, posits
the object and therefore precedes consciousness, he does not connect it
with art.[13] In his æsthetic notions Fichte is influenced by Schiller,
with the addition of a moralism imposed upon him by the general
character of his system; hence the ethical sphere, midway between the
cognitive and the æsthetic, becomes from his point of view a mere
appurtenance of morality, as being the representation of, and hence
reverence for, the moral ideal.[14] His subjective idealism eventually
produced an æsthetic doctrine through the work of Friedrich Schlegel
and Ludwig Tieck; the doctrine of Irony as the basis of art.
[Sidenote: _Irony: Schlegel, Tieck, Novalis._]
The ego which created the universe can also destroy it; the universe is
an empty appearance at which the only true reality, the ego, can smile,
holding itself aloof, like an artist or a creative god, from creatures
of its own which it does not take seriously.[15] Friedrich Schlegel
described art as a perpetual parody of itself and a "transcendental
farce." Tieck defined irony as "a power which allows the poet to
dominate the matter which he handles." Another Romantic Fichtian,
Novalis, dreamed of a magical idealism, an art of creation by the
instantaneous act of the ego and of realizing our dreams.
[Sidenote: _F. Schelling._]
But it is only to the _System of Transcendental Idealism_ (1800) of
Schelling, to his _Bruno_ (1802), to his celebrated course of lectures
on the _Philosophy of Art_ given at Jena in 1802-1803 (repeated at
Würzburg, and distributed subsequently in manuscript notes all over
Germany), to the no less celebrated lecture on the _Relation between
the Figurative Arts and Nature_ (1807), as well as to other works
of this eloquent and enthusiastic philosopher that we owe the first
great philosophical affirmation of Romanticism, and of a renewed and
conscious neo-Platonism in Æsthetic.
[Sidenote: _Beauty and character._]
Like all the other idealistic philosophers, Schelling held firmly to
the fusion of the theories of art and the beautiful already effected
by Schiller. From this point of view it is interesting to note his
explanation of the condemnation of art by Plato: this condemnation,
says Schelling, was directed against the art of his time, the natural
and realistic art of antiquity in general, with its character of
finitude: Plato could not have uttered such a condemnation (as we
moderns are unable to utter it) if he had known Christian art, whose
characteristic is infinity.[16] The pure abstract beauty of Winckelmann
is not enough; no less inadequate, false and negative is that concept
of the characteristic which would try to make art something dead, hard
and ugly by imposing upon it the limitations of the individual. Art is
beauty and characteristic in one; characteristic beauty, character from
which beauty is evolved, according to Goethe's saying; it is therefore
not the individual but the living concept of the individual. When the
artist's eye recognizes the creative idea of the individual and draws
it forth, he transforms the individual into a world in itself, into a
species (_Gattung_), an eternal idea (_Urbild_), and fears no more the
limitation or hardness which is the condition of life: characteristic
beauty is that plenitude of form which kills form; it does not inflame
passion, it regulates it, like the banks of a river which are filled
but not overflowed by the waters.[17] In all of this we feel the
influence of Schiller, with something added which Schiller could never
have expressed.
[Sidenote: _Art and Philosophy._]
Indeed, whilst gratefully acknowledging the excellent contributions to
the theory of art made by the writers who succeeded Kant, Schelling
laments that in none of them can he find exact scientific method
(_Wissenschaftlichkeit_),[18] The true point of departure in his
theory is in the philosophy of nature, _i.e._ in that criticism of
the teleological judgement which Kant places directly after that of
the æsthetic judgement in his third _Critique._ Teleology is the
union of theoretical and practical philosophy; but the system would
be incomplete but for the possibility of demonstrating in the subject
itself, in the ego, the identity of the two worlds, theoretical and
practical; an activity which has, and at the same time has not,
consciousness; unconscious as nature, conscious as spirit. This
activity is precisely the æsthetic activity: "the general organ of
philosophy, keystone of the whole edifice."[19] There are but two ways
open to one who is desirous of escaping from common realities: poetry,
which transports into the ideal world; and philosophy which annihilates
the real world.[20] Strictly speaking, "there is but one sole absolute
work of art; it may exist in various exemplars, but in itself it is
one, although it may not yet possess existence in its original form."
True art is not the impression of one moment, but the representation
of infinite life;[21] it is transcendental intuition become objective,
and is therefore not only the organ but the document of philosophy.
A time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, from which
she has detached herself; and from the new philosophy a new mythology
will arise.[22] The Absolute is thus the object of art as well as of
philosophy (as Schelling insists elsewhere in greater detail): the
first represents it in idea (_Urbild_), the second in its reflexion
(_Gegenbild)_: "philosophy portrays ideas, not realities: so is it with
art: those same ideas of which real things, as philosophy demonstrates,
are imperfect copies, themselves appear in the objective arts as
ideas, _i.e._ in all their perfection, and represent the intellectual
world in the world of reflexion."[23] Music is the "very ideal rhythm
of Nature and the Universe, which by means of this art makes itself
felt in the derivative world"; perfect creations of statuary are "the
very ideas of organic nature represented objectively"; the Homeric
epic, "the very identity constituting the foundation of history in the
Absolute."[24] But while philosophy gives an immediate representation
of the Divine, of absolute Identity, art can but give the immediate
representation of Indifference; and "since the degree of perfection
or reality in a thing becomes higher in proportion as it approaches
nearer to the absolute Idea and the fulness of infinite affirmation
and in proportion as it comprehends within itself other powers, it is
clear that art, above everything else, is in closest relation with
philosophy, from which it is distinguished merely by the character
of its specification: in everything else it may be considered as the
highest power in the ideal world."[25] To the three powers of the real
and ideal world correspond in a rising scale the three ideas of Truth,
Goodness and Beauty. Beauty is neither the mere universal (truth),
nor mere reality (action), but the perfect interpenetration of both:
"beauty exists when the particular (the real) is so adequate to its
concept that the latter, as infinite, enters the finite and presents
itself to our contemplation in concrete form. With the appearance of
the concept, the real becomes truly similar and equal to the idea,
wherein the universal and the particular find their absolute identity.
Without ceasing to be rational, the rational becomes at the same time
apparent and sensible."[26] But as above the three powers is poised
God, their point of union, so Philosophy stands supreme over the three
ideas; concerning itself not with truth or morality or even beauty
alone, but with that which belongs to all the three in common, deduced
from one common source. If philosophy assumes the character of science
and truth, while yet remaining superior to truth, this is made possible
by the fact that science and truth are its formal determination;
"philosophy is science in the sense that truth, goodness and beauty,
_i.e._ science, virtue and art, interpenetrate each other; therefore
it is also not science but is that which is common to science, virtue
and art." This interpenetration distinguishes philosophy from all other
sciences; for instance, if mathematics can dispense with morality and
beauty, philosophy cannot do so.[27]
[Sidenote: _Ideas and the gods. Art and mythology._]
In Beauty are contained truth and goodness, necessity and liberty. When
beauty appears to be in conflict with truth, the truth in question
is a finite truth with which beauty ought not to agree, because, as
we have seen, the art of naturalism and of the merely characteristic
is a false art.[28] The individual forms of art, being in themselves
representatives of the infinite and the universe, are called Ideas.[29]
Considered from the point of view of reality, Ideas are gods; their
essence, their "in-itself," is in fact equivalent to God; every idea
is an idea so far as it is God in a particular form; every idea,
therefore, is equal to God, but to a particular god. Characteristic of
all the gods is pure limitation and indivisible absoluteness: Minerva
is the idea of wisdom united with strength, but she is lacking in
womanly tenderness; Juno is power without wisdom and without the sweet
attraction of love, for which she is forced to borrow the cestus of
Venus; Venus again has not the weighty wisdom of Minerva. What would
become of these ideas if deprived of their limitations? They would
cease to be objects of Imagination.[30] Imagination is a faculty which
has no connexion with pure intellect or with reason (_Vernunft_) and is
distinct from fancy (_Einbildungskraft_) which collects and arranges
the products of art, whereas imagination intuits them, forms them out
of itself, represents them. Imagination is to fancy as intellectual
intuition is to reason: it is therefore the intellectual intuition of
art.[31] "Reason" no longer suffices in a philosophy such as this:
intellectual intuition, which for Kant was a limiting concept, is now
asserted as really existing: intellect sinks to a subordinate place:
even the genuine imagination which operates in art is overshadowed
by this new-fangled Imagination, twin with intellectual Intuition,
who sometimes changes places with this sister of hers. Mythology
is proclaimed a necessary condition of all art: mythology which is
not allegory, for in the latter the particular signifies only the
universal, while the former is already itself the universal; which
explains how easy it is to allegorize, and how fascinating are such
poems as those of Homer which lend themselves to such interpretations.
Christian, as well as Hellenic, art has its mythology: Christ; the
persons of the Trinity; the Virgin mother of God.[32] The fine between
mythology and art is as shadowy as that between art and philosophy.
[Sidenote: _K. W. Solger._]
The year 1815 saw the publication of Solger's principal work, _Erwin,_
a long philosophical dialogue on the beautiful; subsequently in
1819 he gave a course of lectures on Æsthetic which were published
posthumously. He was one of those who found but a glimpse of truth
in Kant and held the post-Kantians in very slight estimation,
particularly Fichte; in Schelling, who begins from the original unity
of the subjective and the objective, he detects for the first time a
speculative principle not adequately developed, since Schelling had
never triumphed dialectically over the difficulties of intellectual
intuition.[33]
[Sidenote: _Fancy and Imagination._]
Solger was one of those who conceived of Imagination as totally
distinct from Fancy: fancy (says he) belongs to common cognition
and is none other than "the human consciousness, in so far as it
continues, in temporal succession, infinitely reasserting an original
intuition"; it presupposes the distinctions between common cognition,
abstraction and judgement, concept and representation, amongst which
"it acts as mediator by giving to the general concept the form of
individual representation; and to the latter the form of a general
concept; in this manner it has its being among the antitheses of the
ordinary understanding." Imagination is totally different; proceeding
"from the original unity of the antitheses in the Idea, it acts so
that the elements in opposition, separated as they are from the idea,
find themselves united in the reality; by its means we are capable
of apprehending objects higher than those of common cognition and of
recognizing in them the idea itself as real: also, in art, it is the
faculty of transforming the idea into reality." It presents itself
in three modes or degrees: as Imagination of the Imagination, which
conceives the whole as idea, and activity as nothing more than the
development of the idea in reality; as Sensibility of the Imagination,
in so far as it expresses the life of the idea in the real and reduces
the one to the other; lastly (and here we have the highest grade of
artistic activity, corresponding with Dialectic in philosophy) as
Intellect of the Imagination or artistic Dialectic, conceiving idea and
reality in such a way that one passes over into the other, that is to
say, into reality. Other divisions and subdivisions are made on which
it is not necessary to dwell. Imagination is said to produce the Irony
essential to true art: this is the Irony of Tieck and Novalis, of whom
Solger is in a sense a follower.[34]
[Sidenote: _Art, practice and religion._]
Solger joins Schelling in placing beauty in the region of the Idea,
inaccessible to common consciousness. It is distinct from the idea
of Truth, because instead of dissolving the appearances of common
consciousness after the manner of truth, art accomplishes the
miracle of making appearance dissolve itself while still remaining
appearance; artistic thought, therefore, is practical, not theoretical.
Furthermore, it is distinct from the idea of Goodness, with which
at first sight it would seem to be closely related, because in the
case of Goodness the union of ideal with real, of the simple with the
multiple, of the infinite with the finite, is not real and complete,
but remains ideal, a mere ought-to-be. It is related more closely
to Religion, which thinks the Idea as the abyss of life where our
individual conscience must lose itself in order to become "essential"
(_wesentlich_), while in beauty and art the Idea manifests itself by
gathering into itself the world of distinctions between universal
and particular and placing itself in their place. Artistic activity
is more than theoretical, it is of a practical nature, but realized
and perfected; art, therefore, belongs not to theoretical philosophy
(as Kant thought, according to Solger), but to practical. Necessarily
attached on one side to infinity, it cannot have common nature as its
object; for example, art is absent from a portrait, and the ancients
showed their discrimination in selecting gods and heroes for objects
in sculpture since every deity--even in limited and particular
form--always signifies a determinate modification of the Idea.[35]
[Sidenote:_ G. W. F. Hegel_.]
The same concept of art appears in the philosophy of Hegel, whatever
may be the minor differences which he felt to separate himself from his
predecessors. Little concerned as we are with the shades and varieties
of mystical Æsthetic exhibited by each of these thinkers, we are
chiefly concerned to lay bare the substantial underlying identity,
the mysticism of arbitrarism which gives them their historic place in
Æsthetic.
[Sidenote: _Art in the sphere of absolute spirit._]
Opening the _Phenomenology_ and the _Philosophy of Spirit,_ one need
not expect to find any discussion of art in the analysis of the forms
of the theoretical Spirit, among definitions of sensibility and
intuition, language and symbolism, and various grades of imagination
and thought. Hegel places Art in the sphere of absolute Spirit,
together with Religion and Philosophy,[36] and in this he regards
Kant, Schiller, Schelling and Solger as his precursors, for like them
he strongly denies that art has the function of representing the
abstract concept, but not that it represents the concrete concept
or Idea. Hegel's whole philosophy consists in the affirmation of a
concrete concept, unknown to ordinary or scientific thought. "Indeed,"
says he, "no concept has in our day been more mishandled than the
concept in itself and for itself; for by concept is generally meant
the abstract determinateness or one-sidedness of representation and
intellectualistic thought, with which it is naturally impossible to
think either the entirety of truth or concrete beauty."[37] To the
realm of the concrete concept belongs art, as one of the three forms
wherein the freedom of the spirit is achieved; it is the first form,
namely that of immediate, sensible, objective knowledge (the second is
religion, a representative consciousness _plus_ worship, an element
extraneous to mere art: the third is philosophy, free thought of the
absolute spirit).[38]
[Sidenote: _Beauty as sensible appearance of the Idea._]
Beauty and truth are at the same time one yet distinct. "Truth is
Idea as Idea, according to its being-in-itself and its universal
principle, and so far as it is thought as such. There is no sensible
or material existence in Truth; thought contemplates therein nothing
but universal idea. But the Idea must also realize itself externally
and attain an actual and determinate existence. Truth also as such
has existence; but when in its determinate external existence it is
immediately for consciousness, and the concept remains immediately one
with the external appearance, the Idea is not only true but beautiful.
In this way Beauty may be defined as the sensible appearance of the
Idea."[39] The Idea is the content of art: its sensible and imaginative
configuration; its form: two elements which must interpenetrate and
form a whole, hence the necessity that a content destined to become
a work of art should show itself capable of such transformation;
otherwise we have but an imperfect union of poetic form with prosaic
and incongruous content.[40] An ideal content must gleam through the
sensible form; the form is spiritualized by this ideal light;[41]
artistic imagination does not work in the same way as the passive
or receptive fancy, it does not stop at the appearances of sensible
reality but searches for the internal truth and rationality of the
real. "The rationality of the object selected by him should not be
alone in awakening the consciousness of the artist: he should have
well meditated upon the essential and the true in all their extension
and profundity, for without reflexion a man cannot become conscious
of that which is within himself, and all great works of art show
that their material has been thought again and again from every
side. No successful work of art can issue from light and careless
imagination."[42] It is a delusion to fancy that poet and painter need
nothing beyond intuitions: "a true poet must reflect and meditate
before and during the execution of his poem."[43] But it is always
understood that the thought of the poet does not take the form of
abstraction.
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic in metaphysical idealism and Baumgartenism._]