Hegel is a revived Baumgartenism on the ground that this movement
regarded art as a mediator of philosophical concepts; they mention
the fact that a follower of Schelling, one Ast, was moved by the trend
of his system to substitute didactic poetry for drama as the highest
form of art.[45] Putting aside some isolated and accidental deviations,
there is no truth in this affirmation: these philosophers are hostile
to intellectualistic and moralistic views, frequently entering upon
definite and explicit polemic against them. Schelling wrote: "Æsthetic
production is in its origin an absolutely free production.... This
independence on any extraneous purpose constitutes the sanctity and
purity of art, enabling it to repel all connexion with mere pleasure, a
connexion which is a mark of barbarism, or with utility, which cannot
be demanded of art save at times when the loftiest form of the human
spirit is found in utilitarian discoveries. The same reasons forbid an
alliance with morality and hold even science at arm's length, although
nearest by reason of her disinterestedness; having her aim, however,
outside herself, she must restrict herself definitely to serve as means
to something higher than herself: the arts."[46] Hegel says, "Art
contains no universal as such." "If the aim of instruction is treated
as an aim, so that the nature of the content represented appears for
itself directly, as an abstract proposition, prosaic reflexion, or
general theory, and is not merely contained indirectly and implicitly
in the concrete artistic form, the result of such a separation is to
reduce the sensible and imaginative form, the true constituent of a
work of art, to an idle ornament, a covering (_Hülle)_ presented simply
as a covering, an appearance maintained as mere appearance. The very
nature of the work of art is thus completely altered, for a work of art
must not present to intuition a content in its universality, but this
universal individualized and converted into a sensible individual."[47]
It is a bad sign, he adds, when an artist sets himself about his work
from a motive of abstract ideas instead of that of the fulness of
life (_Überfülle des Lebens_).[48] The aim of art lies in itself, in
presentation of truth in a sensible form; any other aim is altogether
extraneous.[49] It would not be hard to prove, certainly, that by
separating art from pure representation and imagination and making it
in some sense the vehicle of the concept, the universal, the infinite,
these philosophers were facing in the direction of the road opened by
Baumgarten. But to prove this would mean accepting as a presupposition
the dilemma that if art be not pure imagination, it must be sensuous
and subordinate to reason; and it is just this presupposition and
dilemma that the metaphysical idealists denied. The road they tried to
follow was to conceive a faculty which should be neither imagination
nor intellect but should partake of both; an intellectual intuition or
intuitive intellect, a mental imagination after the fashion of Plotinus.
[Sidenote: _Mortality and decay of art in Hegel's system._]
In a greater degree than any of his predecessors Hegel emphasized the
cognitive character of art. But this very merit brought him into a
difficulty more easily avoided by the rest. Art being placed in the
sphere of absolute Spirit, in company with Religion and Philosophy,
how will she be able to hold her own in such powerful and aggressive
company, especially in that of Philosophy, which in the Hegelian
system stands at the summit of all spiritual evolution? If Art and
Religion fulfilled functions other than the knowledge of the Absolute,
they would be inferior levels of the Spirit, but yet necessary and
indispensable. But if they have in view the same end as Philosophy
and are allowed to compete with it, what value can they retain? None
whatever; or, at the very most, they may have that sort of value which
attaches to transitory historical phases in the life of humanity. The
principles of Hegel's system are at bottom rationalistic and hostile to
religion, and hostile no less to art. A strange and painful consequence
for a man like Hegel, endowed with a warmly æsthetic spirit and a
fervid lover of the arts; almost a repetition of the hard fate endured
by Plato. But as the Greek philosopher, in obedience to the presumed
command of religion, did not hesitate to condemn the mimetic art and
the Homeric poetry he loved, so the German refused to evade the logical
exigencies of his system and proclaimed the mortality, nay, the very
death, of art. "We have assigned," he says, "a very high place to
art: but it must be recollected that neither in content nor in form
can art be considered the most perfect means of bringing before the
consciousness of the mind its true interests. Precisely by reason of
its form, art is limited to a particular content. Only a definite
circle or grade of truth can be made visible in a work of art; that
is to say, such truth as may be transfused into the sensible and
adequately presented in that form, as were the Greek gods. But there
is a deeper conception of truth, by which it is not so intimately
allied to the sensible as to permit of its being received or expressed
suitably in material fashion. To this class belongs the Christian
conception of truth; and, furthermore, the spirit of our modern world,
more especially that of our religion and our mental evolution, seems to
have passed the point at which art is the best road to the apprehension
of the Absolute. The peculiar character of artistic production no
longer satisfies our highest aspirations.... Thought and reflexion
have superseded fine art." Many reasons have been adduced in order to
account for the moribund condition of modern art; in especial, the
prevalence of material and political interests; the true reason, says
Hegel, consists of the inferiority in grade of art in comparison with
pure thought. "Art in its highest form is and for us must remain a
thing of the past"; and just because the thing has vanished, one can
reason about it philosophically.[50] The Æsthetic of Hegel is thus a
funeral oration: he passes in review the successive forms of art, shows
the progressive steps of internal consumption and lays the whole in
its grave, leaving Philosophy to write its epitaph.
Romanticism and metaphysical idealism had elevated art to such a
fantastic height among the clouds that at last they were obliged to
admit that it was so far away as to be absolutely useless.
[1] _Vorles. über die Ästhetik_ (2nd ed., Berlin, 1842), vol. i. p. 78.
[2] Sommer, _Gesch. d. Psych. u. Ästh._ pp. 365-432.
[3] Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ p. 242.
[4] _Briefe ü. d. Ästh. Erzieh._ (in Werke, ed. Goedecke), Letters 15,
27.
[5] _Op. cit._ Letter 15.
[6] _Briefe_, Letter 22.
[7] _Op. cit._ Letter 25.
[8] _Briefe_, Letter 20.
[9] _Briefe,_ Letter 15.
[10] Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ p. 241.
[11] _Vorschule der Ästh.,_ 1804 (French trans., _Poétique ou
introduction à l'Esth.,_ Paris, 1862), preface.
[12] _Vorschule d. Ästh._ chs. 2, 3.
[13] _Grundl. der Wissenschaftslehre,_ in _Werke_ (Berlin, 1845), vol.
i. pp. 214-217.
[14] Danzel, _Ges. Aufs._ pp. 25-30; Zimmermann, _G. d. A._ pp. 522-572.
[15] Hegel, _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ introd. vol. i. pp. 82-88.
[16] _Vorles. üb. d. Methode d. akadem. Stud._ (1803), lecture 14; in
_Werke_ (Stuttgart, 1856-1861), vol. v, pp. 346-347.
[17] _Üb. d. Verhältniss d. bild. Künste, z. d. Natur_ in _Werke,_ vol.
vii. pp. 299-310.
[18] _Philos, d. Kunst,_ posthumous, introd. in _Werke,_ v. p. 362.
[19] _System d. transcend. Idealismus,_ in _Werke,_ § i. vol. iii.
introd. § 3, p. 349.
[20] _Op. cit._ § 4, p. 351.
[21] _System d. transcend. Idealismus,_ in _Werke,_ part vi. § 3, p.
627.
[22] _Op. cit._ § 3, pp. 627-629.
[23] _Phil. d. Kunst,_ pp. 368-369.
[24] _Op. cit._ p. 369.
[25] _Op. cit._ General Part, p. 381.
[26] _Phil. d. Kunst,_ p. 382.
[27] _Op. cit._ p. 383.
[28] _Op. cit._ p. 385.
[29] _Op. cit._ pp. 389-390.
[30] _Phil. d. Kunst,_ pp. 390-393.
[31] _Op. cit._ p. 395.
[32] _Op. cit._ pp. 405-451.
[33] _Vorles. üb. Ästhetik_, Heyse, Leipzig, 1829, pp. 35-43.
[34] Vorles. üb. Ästh. pp. 186-200.
[35] Op. cit. pp. 48-85.
[36] _Encykl. d. phil. Wiss._ §§ 557-563.
[37] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ (_ed. cit._) i. p. 118.
[38] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 129-133.
[39] _Vorles. üb. Ästh._ i. p. 141.
[40] _Op. cit._ i. p. 89.
[41] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 50-51.
[42] _Op. cit._ i. pp. 354-355.
[43] _Encykl._ § 450.
[44] Danzel, _Ästh. d. hegel. Sch._ p. 62; Zimmermann, _G. d. A._ pp.
693-697; J. Schmidt, _L. u. B._ pp. 103-105; Spitzer, _Krit. St._ p. 48.
[45] Fr. Ast, _System der Kunstlehre,_ Leipzig, 1805; cf. Spitzer, _op.
cit._ p. 48.
[46] _System d. transcend. Idealismus_ (1800), part vi. § 2; in
_Werke,_ § I, vol. iii. pp. 622-623.
[47] _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ i. pp. 66-67.
[48] _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ i. p. 353.
[49] _Op. cit._ i. p. 72.
[50] _Vorles. üb. d. Ästh._ i. pp. 13-16.
X
SCHOPENHAUER AND HERBART
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic mysticism in the opponents of Idealism._]
Nothing, perhaps, shows more clearly how well this imaginative
conception of art suited the spirit of the times (not only a particular
fashion in philosophy, but the psychological conditions expressed
by the Romantic movement) than the fact that the adversaries of
the systems of Schelling, Solger and Hegel either agreed with this
conception in general or, while believing themselves to be departing
widely from it, actually returned to it involuntarily.
[Sidenote: _A. Schopenhauer._]
Everybody knows with what lack, shall we say, of _phlegma
philosophicum_ Arthur Schopenhauer fought against Schelling, Hegel
and all the "charlatans" and "professors" who had divided amongst
themselves the heritage of Kant. But what was the artistic theory
accepted and developed by Schopenhauer?
[Sidenote: _Ideas as the object of art._]
His theory, like Hegel's own, turns upon the distinction between
the concept which is abstraction and the concept which is concrete,
or Idea; although Schopenhauer's Ideas are by himself likened to
Plato's, and in the particular form in which he presents them more
nearly resemble those of Schelling than the Idea of Hegel. They have
something in common with intellectual concepts, for like them they
are unities representing a plurality of real things: but "the concept
is abstract and discursive, entirely indeterminate in its sphere,
rigorously precise within its own limits only; the intellect suffices
to conceive and understand it, speech expresses it without need for
other intermediary, and its own definition exhausts its whole nature;
the idea, on the contrary (which may be defined clearly as the adequate
representative of the concept) is absolutely intuitive, and although
it represents an infinite number of individual things, it is not for
that any the less determined in all its aspects. The individual, as
individual, cannot know it; in order to conceive it he must strip
himself of all will, of all individuality, and raise himself to the
state of a pure knowing subject. The idea, therefore, is attained
by genius only, or by one who finds himself in a genial disposition
attained by that elevation of his cognitive powers inspired usually
by genius." "The idea is unity become plurality by means of space
and time, forms of one intuitive apperception; the concept, on the
contrary, is unity extracted from plurality by means of abstraction,
which is the procedure of our intellect: the concept may be described
as _unitas post yewi_ the idea, _unitas ante rem._"[1] Schopenhauer is
in the habit of calling ideas the genera of things; but on one occasion
he remarks that ideas are of species, not genera; that genera are
simply concepts, and that there are natural species, but only logical
genera.[2] This psychological illusion as to the existence of ideas for
types originates (as we find elsewhere in Schopenhauer) in the habit
of converting the empirical classifications of the natural sciences
into living realities. "Do you wish to see ideas?" he asks; "look at
the clouds which scud across the sky; look at a brooklet leaping over
rocks; look at the crystallization of hoar-frost on a window-pane
with its designs of trees and flowers. The shapes of the clouds, the
ripples of the gushing brook, the configurations of the crystals exist
for us individual observers, in themselves they are indifferent. The
clouds in themselves are elastic vapour; the brook is an incompressible
fluid, mobile, transparent, amorphous, the ice obeys the laws of
crystallization: and in these determinations their ideas consist."[3]
All these are the immediate objectification of will in its various
degrees; and it is these, not their pale copies in real things,
that art delineates; whence Plato was right in one sense and wrong
in another, and is justified and condemned by Schopenhauer exactly
in the same way as by Plotinus of old, as well as by Schopenhauer's
worst enemy, the modern Schelling.[4] In consequence, each art has
a special category of ideas for its own dominion. Architecture, and
in some cases hydraulics, facilitate the clear intuition of those
ideas which constitute the lower degrees of objectification--weight,
cohesion, resistance, hardness, the general properties of stone and
some combinations of light; gardening and (most curious association)
landscape painting represent the ideas of vegetable nature; sculpture
and animal painting those of zoology; historical painting and the
higher forms of sculpture that of the human body; poetry the very idea
of man himself.[5] As for music, that (let him who can justify the
logical discontinuity) is outside the hierarchy of the other arts.
We have seen how Schelling considered it to be representative of the
very rhythm of the universe;[6] differing but slightly from this,
Schopenhauer affirms that music does not express ideas but, parallel
with ideas, Will itself. The analogies between music and the world,
between the fundamental bass and crude matter, between the scale and
the series of species, between melody and conscious will, led him to
the conclusion that music was not, as Leibniz thought, an arithmetic
but a metaphysic: _exercitium metaphysices occultum nescientis se
philosophari animi_.[7]
[Sidenote: _Æsthetic catharsis._]
To Schopenhauer, no less than his idealistic predecessors, art
beatifies; it is the flower of life; he who contemplates art is no
longer an individual but a pure knowing subject, at liberty, free from
desire, from pain, from time.[8]
[Sidenote: _Signs of a better theory in Schopenhauer._]
Schopenhauer's system no doubt contains here and there premonitions
of a better and more profound treatment of art. Schopenhauer, who was
capable on occasion of clear and keen analysis, constantly insists
that the forms of space and time must not be applied to the idea
or to artistic contemplation, which admits of the general form of
representation only.[9] From this he might have inferred that art, so
far from being a superior and extraordinary level of consciousness, is
actually its most immediate level, namely that which in its primitive
simplicity precedes even common perception with its reference of
objects to a position in the spatial and temporal series. To free
oneself from common perception and to live in imagination does not mean
rising to a Platonic contemplation of the ideas, but descending once
more into the region of immediate intuition, becoming children again,
as Vico had seen. On the other hand Schopenhauer had begun to examine
the categories of Kant with an unprejudiced eye; he was not satisfied
with the two forms of intuition, and wished to add to them a third,
causality.[10] In conclusion, we note that, like his predecessors, he
makes a comparison between art and history, with this difference and
advantage over the idealist authors of the philosophy of history, that
for him history was irreducible to concepts; it was contemplation of
the individual, and therefore not science. Had he persevered in his
comparison between art and history, he would have arrived at a better
solution than that at which he stopped; that is to say, that the matter
of history is the particular in its particularity and contingency,
while that of art is that which is, and is always identical.[11] But
instead of pursuing these happy ideas Schopenhauer preferred to play
variations on the themes fashionable in his day.
[Sidenote: _J. F. Herbart._]
Most astounding of all is the fact that a dry intellectualist,
the avowed enemy of idealism, of dialectic and of speculative
constructions, head of the school calling itself realistic or the
school of exact philosophy, Johann Friedrich Herbart, when he
turns his attention to Æsthetic, turns mystic too, though in a
slightly different way. How weightily he speaks when expounding his
philosophical method! Æsthetic must not bear the blame of the faults
into which metaphysic has fallen; we must make it an independent study,
and detach it from all hypothesis about the universe. Nor must it be
confounded with psychology or asked to describe the emotions awakened
by the content of works of art, such as the pathetic or the comic,
sadness or joy; its duty is to determine the essential character of
art and beauty. In the analysis of particular cases of beauty and
in registering what they reveal lies the way of salvation. These
proposals and promises have misled numbers of people as to the nature
of Herbart's Æsthetic. But _ce sont là jeux de princes_; by paying
attention we shall see what Herbart meant by analysis of particular
case; and how he held himself aloof from metaphysics.
[Sidenote: _Pure Beauty and relations of form._]
Beauty, for him, consisted in relations: relations of tone, colour,
line, thought and will; experience must decide which of these relations
are beautiful, and æsthetic science consists solely in enumerating the
fundamental concepts (_Musterbegriffe)_ in which are summarized the
particular cases of beauty. But these relations, Herbart thought, were
not like physiological facts; they could not be empirically observed,
_e.g._ in a psycho-physical laboratory. To correct this error it is
only necessary to observe that these relations include not only tones,
lines and colours, but also thoughts and will, and that they extend to
moral facts no less than to objects of external intuition. He declares
explicitly "No true beauty is sensible, although it frequently happens
that sense-impressions precede and follow the intuition of beauty."[12]
There is a profound distinction between the beautiful and the pleasant;
for the pleasant needs no representation, while the beautiful consists
in representation of relations, followed immediately in consciousness
by a judgment, an appendix (_Zusatz)_ which expresses unqualified
approbation ("_es gefällt!_"). And while the pleasant and the
unpleasant "in the progress of culture gradually become transient and
unimportant, Beauty stands out more and more as something permanent and
possessed of undeniable value."[13] The judgment of taste is universal,
eternal, immutable: "the complete representation (_vollendete
Vorstellung_) of the same relations is always followed by the same
judgment; just as the same cause always produces the same effect.
This happens at all times and in all circumstances, conditions and
complications, which gives to the particularity of certain cases the
appearance of a universal rule. Granted that the elements of a relation
are universal concepts, it is plain that although in judging we think
only of the content of these concepts, the judgment must have a sphere
as large as that common to the two concepts."[14] Herbart considers
æsthetic judgements as a general class comprising ethical judgements as
a subdivision: "amongst other beauties is to be distinguished morality,
as a thing not only of value in itself but as actually determining the
unconditioned value of persons"; within morality in the narrowest sense
is distinguished in turn justice.[15] The five ethica ideas guiding
moral life (internal liberty, perfection, benevolence, equity and
justice) are five æsthetic ideas or rather æsthetic concepts applied to
relations of will.
[Sidenote: _Art as sum of content and form._]
Herbart looks on art as a complex fact, the combination of an
extra-æsthetic element, content, which may have logical or
psychological or any other kind of value, and a purely æsthetic
element, form, which is an application of the fundamental æsthetic
concepts. Man looks for that which is diverting, instructive, moving,
majestic, ridiculous; and "all these are mingled with the beautiful
in order to procure favour and interest for the work. The beautiful
thus assumes various complexions, and becomes graceful, magnificent,
tragic, or comic; it can become all these because the æsthetic
judgement, in itself calmly serene, tolerates the company of the most
diverse excitations of the soul which are no part of itself."[16] But
all these things have nothing to do with beauty. In order to discover
the objectively beautiful or ugly, one must make abstraction from
every predicate concerning the content. "In order to recognize the
objectively beautiful or ugly in poetry, one must show the difference
between this and that thought, and the discussion will concern itself
with thoughts; to recognize it in sculpture, one must show the
difference between this and that outline, and the discussion will turn
upon outlines; to recognize it in music, one should show the difference
between this and that tone, and the discussion will turn upon tones.
Now, such predicates as 'magnificent, charming, graceful' and so
forth contain nothing whatever about tones, outlines or thoughts, and
therefore tell us nothing about the objectively beautiful in poetry,
sculpture, or music; indeed they rather lead us to believe in the
existence of an objective beauty to which thought, outline, or tone are
equally accidental, which may be approached by receiving impressions
from poetry, sculpture, music and so forth, obliterating the object
and giving oneself up to the pure emotion of mind."[17] Very different
is the æsthetic judgement, the "cold judgement of the connoisseur"
who considers exclusively form, _i.e._ objectively pleasant formal
relations. This abstraction from the content in order to contemplate
pure form is the catharsis produced by art. Content is transitory,
relative, subject to moral law and liable to moral judgement: form is
permanent, absolute, free.[18] Concrete art may be the sum of two or
more values; but the æsthetic fact is form alone.
[Sidenote: _Herbart and Kantian thought._]
The reader who goes behind appearances and discounts diversities of
terminology will not fail to observe the close similarity of the
æsthetic doctrine of Herbart to that of Kant. In Herbart we again
find the distinction between free and adherent beauty, and between
form and the sensuous stimulus (_Reiz)_ attached to form: we find an
affirmation of the existence of pure beauty, the object of necessary
and universal, but not discursive, judgements; lastly, we find a
certain connexion between beauty and morality, between Æsthetic and
Ethics. In these matters Herbart is perhaps the most faithful follower
and propagator of the thought of Kant, whose doctrine contains the germ
of his own. In one passage he describes himself as "a Kantian, but of
the year 1828"; and he is quite right, even in pointing out the exact
difference in date. Amidst the errors and uncertainties of his æsthetic
thought, Kant is rich in suggestion and scatters fertile seed; he
belongs to a period when philosophy was still young and impressionable.
Herbart, coming later, is dry and one-sided; he takes whatever is
false in Kant's doctrine and hardens it into a system. If they had
done little else, the Romanticists and idealists had at least united
the theory of beauty to that of art, and destroyed the rhetorical
and mechanical view; and they had brought into relief (frequently
exaggerating, doubtless) various important characteristics of artistic
activity. Herbart re-states the mechanical view, restores the duality,
and presents a capricious, narrow, barren mysticism, devoid of all
breath of artistic feeling.
[1] _Welt als Wille u. Vorstellung,_ 1819 (in _Sämmtl. Werke,_ ed.
Grisebach, vol. i.). bk. iii. § 49.
[2] _Ergänzungen_ (ed. Grisebach, vol. ii.), ch. 29.
[3] _Welt a. W. u. V._ iii. § 35.
[4] See above, p. 291.
[5] _Welt a. W. u. V._ iii. §§ 42-51.
[6] See above, p. 293.
[7] _Welt a. W. u. V._ § 53.
[8] _Op. cit._ § 34.
[9] _Welt a. W. u. V._ § 32.
[10] _Kritik d. kantischen Philosophie,_ in append, to _op. cit._ pp.
558-576.
[11] _Ergänzungen,_ ch. 38.