AESTHETICS
A portion of Schopenhauer's system by which its pessimism is
considerably mitigated is his theory of the Beautiful and of Fine Art.
The characteristic of aesthetic contemplation is, he finds, that
intellect throws off the yoke and subsists purely for itself as clear
mirror of the world, free from all subjection to practical purposes of
the will. In this state of freedom, temporary painlessness is attained.
The theory starts from his adaptation of the Platonic Ideas. Regarded
purely as an aesthetic theory, it departs from Plato, as he notes; for,
with the later Platonists, who took up the defence of poetic myths and
of the imitative arts as against their master, he holds that Art
penetrates to the general Idea through the particular, and hence that
the work of art is no mere 'copy of a copy.' The difference of the Idea
from the Concept is that it is not merely abstract and general, but
combines with generality the characters of an intuition.
The Ideas, as we have seen, constitute the determinate stages of
objectivation of the Will. The innumerable individuals of which the
Ideas are the patterns are subject to the law of sufficient reason. They
appear, that is to say, under the forms of time, space, and causality.
The Idea is beyond these forms, and therefore is clear of plurality and
change. Since the law of sufficient reason is the common form under
which stands all the subject's knowledge so far as the subject knows as
individual, the Ideas lie outside the sphere of knowledge of the
individual as such. If, therefore, the Ideas are to be the object of
knowledge, this can only be by annulling individuality in the knowing
subject.
As thing-in-itself, the Will is exempt even from the first of the forms
of knowledge, the form of being 'object for a subject.' The Platonic
Idea, on the other hand, is necessarily an object, something known, a
presentation. It has laid aside, or rather has not taken on, the
subordinate forms; but it has retained the first and most general form.
It is the immediate and most adequate possible objectivity of the Will;
whereas particular things are an objectivation troubled by the forms of
which the law of sufficient reason is the common expression.
When intellect breaks loose from the service of the will, for which it
was originally destined in the teleology of nature, then the subject
ceases to be merely individual and becomes pure will-less subject of
knowledge. In this state the beholder no longer tracks out relations in
accordance with the principle of sufficient reason--which is the mode of
scientific as well as of common knowledge--but rests in fixed
contemplation of the given object apart from its connection with
anything else. The contemplator thus 'lost' in the object, it is not the
single thing as such that is known, but the Idea, the eternal form, the
immediate objectivity of the Will at this stage. The correlate of this
object--the pure Subject exempt from the principle of sufficient
reason--is eternal, like the Idea.
The objectivation of the Will appears faintly in inorganic
things,--clouds, water, crystals,--more fully in the plant, yet more
fully in the animal, most completely in man. Only the essential in these
stages of objectivation constitutes the Idea. Its development into
manifold phenomena under the forms of the principle of sufficient
reason, is unessential, lies merely in the mode of knowledge for the
individual, and has reality only for this. It is not otherwise with the
unfolding of that Idea which is the completest objectivation of the
Will. To the Idea of Man, the occurrences of human history are as
unessential as the shapes they assume to the clouds, as the figures of
its whirlpools and foam-drift to the stream, as its frost-flowers to the
ice. The same underlying passions and dispositions everlastingly recur
in the same modes. It is idle to suppose that anything is gained. But
also nothing is lost: so the Earth-spirit might reply to one who
complained of high endeavours frustrated, faculties wasted, promises of
world-enlightenment brought to nought; for there is infinite time to
dispose of, and all possibilities are for ever renewed.
The kind of knowledge for which the Ideas are the object of
contemplation finds its expression in Art, the work of genius. Art
repeats in its various media the Ideas grasped by pure contemplation.
Its only end is the communication of these. While Science, following the
stream of events according to their determinate relations, never reaches
an ultimate end, Art is always at the end. 'It stops the wheel of time;
relations vanish for it: only the essence, the Idea, is its object.' The
characteristic of genius is a predominant capacity for thus
contemplating things independently of the principle of sufficient
reason. Since this requires a forgetting of one's own person and the
relations between it and things, the attitude of genius is simply the
completest 'objectivity.' The 'subjectivity' opposed to this, in
Schopenhauer's phraseology, is preoccupation with the interests of one's
own will. It is, he says, as if there fell to the share of genius a
measure of intelligence far beyond the needs of the individual will: and
this makes possible the setting aside of individual interests, the
stripping off of the particular personality, so that the subject becomes
'pure knowing subject,' 'clear world-eye,' in a manner sufficiently
sustained for that which has been grasped to be repeated in the work of
art. A necessary element in genius is therefore Imagination. For without
imagination to represent, in a shape not merely abstract, things that
have not come within personal experience, genius would remain limited to
immediate intuition, and could not make its vision apprehensible by
others. Nor without imagination could the particular things that express
the Idea be cleared of the imperfections by which their limited
expression of it falls short of what nature was aiming at in their
production. 'Inspiration' is ascribed to genius because its
characteristic attitude is intermittent. The man of genius cannot always
remain on a height, but has to fall back to the level of the common man,
who can scarcely at all regard things except as they affect his
interests,--have a relation to his will, direct or indirect.
This is the statement in its first outline of a theory that became one
of Schopenhauer's most fruitful topics. Many are the pages he has
devoted to the contrast between the man of genius and 'the wholesale
ware of nature, which she turns out daily by thousands.' The genius is
for him primarily the artist. Scientific genius as a distinctive thing
he does not fully recognise; and he regards men of action, and
especially statesmen, rather as men of highly competent ability
endowed with an exceptionally good physical constitution than as men of
genius in the proper sense. Philosophers like himself, who, as he
frankly says, appear about once in a hundred years, he classes in the
end with the artists; though this was left somewhat indeterminate in his
first exposition. The weakness of the man of genius in dealing with the
ordinary circumstances of life he allows, and even insists on. Genius,
grasping the Idea in its perfection, fails to understand individuals. A
poet may know man profoundly, and men very ill. He admits the proximity
of genius to madness on one side, and explains it in this way. What
marks the stage of actual madness, as distinguished from illusion or
hallucination, is complete disruption of the memory of past life, of the
history of the personality as something continuous; so that the
particular thing is viewed by itself, out of relation. This gives a kind
of resemblance to the attitude of genius, for which present intuition
excludes from view the relations of things to each other. Or, as we may
perhaps sum up his thought in its most general form, 'alienation' or
dissolution of personality has the resemblance often noted between
extremes to the impersonality, or, as he calls it, 'objectivity,' that
is super-personal.
In spite of his contempt for the crowd, he has to admit, of course, that
the capacity of genius to recognise the Ideas of things and to become
momentarily impersonal must in some measure belong to all men;
otherwise, they could not even enjoy a work of art when produced. Genius
has the advantage only in the much higher degree and the greater
prolongation of the insight. Since, then, the actual achievement of the
artist is to make us look into the world through his eyes, the feelings
for the beautiful and the sublime may be treated irrespectively of the
question whether they are aroused by nature and human life directly or
by means of art.
AEsthetic pleasure in contemplation of the beautiful proceeds partly from
recognition of the individual object not as one particular thing but as
Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form of this whole kind of
things; partly from the consciousness the knower has of himself not as
individual, but as pure, will-less Subject of Knowledge. All volition
springs out of need, therefore out of want, therefore out of suffering.
No attained object of will can give permanent satisfaction. Thus, there
can be no durable happiness or rest for us as long as we are subjects of
will. 'The Subject of Will lies continually on the turning wheel of
Ixion, draws ever in the sieve of the Danaides, is the eternally
thirsting Tantalus. But in the moment of pure objective contemplation,
free from all interest of the particular subjectivity, we enter a
painless state: the wheel of Ixion stands still. The Flemish painters
produce this aesthetic effect by the sense of disinterested contemplation
conveyed in their treatment of insignificant objects. There are certain
natural scenes that have power in themselves, apart from artistic
treatment, to put us in this state; but the slightest obtrusion of
individual interest destroys the magic. Past and distant objects,
through their apparent detachment, have the same power. The essential
thing aesthetically, whether we contemplate the present or the past, the
near or the distant, is that only the world of presentation remains; the
world as will has vanished.
The difference between the feelings of the Beautiful and of the Sublime
is this. In the feeling of the beautiful, pure intelligence gains the
victory without a struggle, leaving in consciousness only the pure
subject of knowledge, so that no reminiscence of the will remains. In
the feeling of the sublime, on the other hand, the state of pure
intelligence has to be won by a conscious breaking loose from relations
in the object that suggest something threatening to the will; though
there must not be actual danger; for in that case the individual will
itself would come into play, and aesthetic detachment would cease.
Elevation above the sense of terror has not only to be consciously won
but consciously maintained, and involves a continuous reminiscence, not
indeed of any individual will, but of the will of man in general, so far
as it is expressed through its objectivity, the human body, confronted
by forces hostile to it. Pre-eminently this feeling arises from
contrast between the immensities of space and time and the apparent
insignificance of man. It means in the last resort that the beholder is
upheld by the consciousness that as pure subject of knowledge (not as
individual subject) he himself bears within him all the worlds and all
the ages, and is eternal as the forces that vainly seem to threaten him
with annihilation.
On the objective side, and apart from the subjective distinction just
set forth, the sublime and the beautiful are not essentially different.
In both cases alike, the object of aesthetic contemplation is not the
single thing, but the Idea that is striving towards manifestation in it.
Whatever is viewed aesthetically is viewed out of relation to time and
space: 'along with the law of sufficient reason the single thing and the
knowing individual are taken away, and nothing remains over but the Idea
and the pure Subject of Knowledge, which together make up the adequate
objectivity of the Will at this stage.' There is thus a sense in which
everything is beautiful; since the Will appears in everything at some
stage of objectivity, and this means that it is the expression of some
Idea. But one thing can be more beautiful than another by facilitating
aesthetic contemplation. This facilitation proceeds either from the
greater clearness and perfection with which the particular thing shows
forth the Idea of its kind, or from the higher stage of objectivation to
which that Idea corresponds. Man being the highest stage of
objectivation of the Will, the revelation of his essence is the highest
aim of art. In aesthetic contemplation of inorganic nature and vegetative
life, whether in the reality or through the medium of art, and in
appreciation of architecture, the subjective aspect, that is to say, the
enjoyment of pure will-less knowledge, is predominant; the Ideas
themselves being here lower stages of objectivity. On the other hand,
when animals and men are the object of aesthetic contemplation or
representation, the enjoyment consists more in the objective
apprehension of those Ideas in which the essence of the Will is most
clearly and fully manifested.
Of all Schopenhauer's work, its aesthetic part has met with the most
general appreciation. Here especially he abounds in observations drawn
directly, in his own phrase, from intuition. To make a selection of
these, however, is not appropriate to a brief sketch like the present. I
pass on, therefore, to those portions of his theory of Art by which he
makes the transition, in terms of his system, to Morality.
From Architecture onward the arts are obliged to represent the Will as
divided. Here, at the first stage, its division subsists only in a
conflict of inorganic forces which have to be brought to equilibrium.
The conflict between weight and rigidity is in truth the only aesthetic
material of architecture as a fine art. When we come to animal and
lastly to human life, which, in the Plastic Arts and in Poetry, as form,
individualised expression, and action, is the highest object of aesthetic
representation, the vehemence of divided will is fully revealed; and
here too is revealed the essential identity of every will with our own.
In the words of the Indian wisdom, 'Tat twam asi'; 'that thou art.'
Under the head of Ethics it will be shown expressly that by this
insight, when it reacts on the will, the will can deny itself. For the
temporary release from its striving, given in aesthetic contemplation, is
then substituted permanent release. To this 'resignation,' the innermost
essence of all virtue and holiness, and the final redemption from the
world, Art itself, at its highest stages, points the way.
The summits of pictorial and poetic art Schopenhauer finds in the great
Italian painters so far as they represent the ethical spirit of
Christianity, and in the tragic poets, ancient and modern. It is true
that the poverty of their sacred history or mythology puts the Christian
artists at a disadvantage; but events are merely the accidents of their
art. Not in these, as related according to the law of sufficient reason,
is the essence, but in the spirit we divine through the forms portrayed.
In their representation of men full of that spirit, and especially in
the eyes, we see mirrored the knowledge that has seized the whole
essence of the world and of life, and that has reacted on the will, not
so as to give it motives, but as a 'quietive'; whence proceeds complete
resignation, and with it the annulling of the will and of the whole
essence of this world. Of tragedy, the subject-matter is the conflict of
the will with itself at its highest stage of objectivity. Here also the
end is the resignation brought on by complete knowledge of the essence
of the world. The hero, on whom at last this knowledge has acted as a
quietive, gives up, not merely life, but the whole will to live. 'The
true meaning of tragedy is the deeper insight, that what the hero
expiates is not his particular sins, but original sin, that is, the
guilt of existence itself.' To illustrate this position Schopenhauer is
fond of quoting a passage from Calderon which declares that the greatest
sin of man is to have been born.
It seems strange that, after deriding as he does the popular notion of
'poetic justice' so detached a thinker should imagine an at least
equally one-sided view to receive its final confirmation from the
Spanish dramatist's poetic phrasing of a Christian dogma. The great
tragic poets, for Schopenhauer also, are AEschylus, Sophocles and
Shakespeare. Now it is safe to say that by none of these was any such
general doctrine held either in conceptual or in intuitive form. The
whole effect of any kind of art, of course he would admit, cannot be
packed into a formula; but if we seek one as an aid to understanding,
some adaptation of his own theory of the sublime would probably serve
much better as applied to tragedy than his direct theory of the drama.
In the case of pictorial art, all that is proved by what he says about
the representation of ascetic saintliness, is that this, like many other
things, can be so brought within the scope of art as to make us
momentarily identify ourselves with its Idea in the impersonal manner he
has himself described. His purely aesthetic theory is quite adequate to
the case, without any assumption that this is the representation of what
is best. Art, pictorial or poetic, can no more prove pessimism than
optimism. We pick out expressions of one or the other for quotation
according to our moods or subjective preferences; but, if we have the
feeling for art itself, our sense of actual aesthetic value ought to be
independent of these.
Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory, however, does not end here. There
follows the part of it by which he has had an influence on artists
themselves. For him, a position separate from all the other arts is held
by music. While the rest objectify the Will mediately, that is to say,
by means of the Ideas, Music is as immediate an objectivation of the
whole Will as the world itself, or as the Ideas, of which the pluralised
phenomenon constitutes the sum of particular things. The other arts
speak of the shadow, music of the substance. There is indeed a
parallelism, an analogy, between Music and the Ideas; yet Music never
expresses the phenomenon in which these are manifested, but only the
inner essence behind the appearance, the Will itself. In a sense it
renders not feeling in its particularity, but feeling _in abstracto_;
joy, sorrow, not a joy, a sorrow. The phenomenal world and music are to
be regarded as two different expressions of the same thing. The world
might be called embodied Music as well as embodied Will. 'Melodies are
to a certain extent like general concepts, an abstract of reality.' A
complete explanation of music, that is, a detailed repetition of it in
concepts, were this possible, would be a complete explanation of the
world (since both express the same thing) and therefore a true and final
philosophy. As music only reaches its perfection in the full harmony,
'so the one Will out of time finds its perfect objectivation only in
complete union of all the stages which in innumerable degrees of
heightened distinctness reveal its essence.' But here, too, Schopenhauer
adds, the Will is felt, and can be proved, to be a divided will; and the
deliverance wrought by this supreme art, as by all the others, is only
temporary.