(β) To the above there attaches itself in natural connection the second characteristic which has been ascribed to art as its essential purpose, viz. thepurificationof the passions, instruction andmoralperfecting. For the characteristic that art was to bridle savageness and educate the passions remained quite abstract and general, so that a question must again arise about adeterminatekind and an essentialendof this education.
(αα) The doctrine of the purification of passion suffers indeed under the same defect as the above doctrine of the mitigation of the desires; yet, when more closely looked at, it at any rate arrives at the point of accentuating the fact that the representations of art may be held to lack a standard by which their worth or unworthiness could be measured. This standard simply means their effectiveness in separating pure from impure in the passions. It therefore requires a content that has capacity to exercise this purifying power, and, in as far as the production of such an effect is taken to constitute the substantive end of art, it must follow that the purifying content must be brought before consciousness in itsuniversalityandessentiality.
(ββ) In this latter aspect the end of art has been pronounced to be that it shouldteach. Thus, on the one side, the peculiar character of art would consist in the movement of the emotions and in the satisfaction which lies in this movement, even in fear, compassion, in painful pathos and shock—that is to say, in the satisfying engagement of the emotions and passions, and to that extent in a complacency, entertainment, and delight in the objects of art, in their representation and effect; but, on the other side, this purpose (of art) is held to find its higher standard only in its instructiveness, in thefabula docet,[85]and thus in theuseful influence which the work of art succeeds in exerting on the subject.[86]In this respect the Horatian saw,[87]"Et prodesse volunt et delectare poetæ," ("Poets aim at utility and entertainment alike") contains, concentrated in a few words, all that has subsequently been elaborated in infinite degrees, and diluted into the uttermost extreme of insipidity as a doctrine of art. As regards such instruction we have, then, to ask, whether it is meant to be directly or indirectly, explicitly or implicitly contained in the work of art.
If, speaking generally, we are concerned about a purpose which is universal and not contingent, it follows that this purpose, considering the essentially spiritual nature of art, cannot but be itself spiritual, and indeed, moreover, one which is not contingent,[88]but actual in its nature and for its own sake. Such a purpose in relation to teaching could only consist in bringing before consciousness, by help of the work of art, a really and explicitly significant spiritual content. From this point of view it is to be asserted that the higher art ranks itself, the more it is bound to admit into itself such a content as this, and that only in the essence of such a content can it find the standardwhich determines whether what is expressed is appropriate or inappropriate. Art was, in fact, the firstinstructressof peoples.
But the purpose of instruction may be treated aspurpose, to such a degree that the universal nature of the represented content is doomed to be exhibited and expounded directly and obviously as abstract proposition, prosaic reflection, or general theorem, and not merely in an indirect way in the concrete form of a work of art. By such a severance the sensuous plastic form, which is just what makes the work of art a work ofart, becomes a mere otiose accessory, a husk which is expressly pronounced to be mere husk, a semblance expressly pronounced to be mere semblance. But thereby the very nature of the work of art is distorted. For the work of art ought to bring a content before the mind's eye, not in its generality as such, but with this generality made absolutely individual, and sensuously particularized. If the work of art does not proceed from this principle, but sets in relief its generalized aspect with the purpose of abstract instruction, then the imaginative and sensuous aspect is only an external and superfluous adornment, and the work of art is a thing divided against itself,[89]in which form and content no longer appear as grown into one. In that case the sensuouslyindividual and the spiritually general are become external to one another.
And further, if the purpose of art is limited to thisdidacticutility, then its other aspect, that of pleasure, entertainment, and delight, is pronounced to be in itselfunessential, and ought to have its substance merely in the utility of the teaching on which it is attendant. But this amounts to pronouncing that art does not bear its vocation and purpose in itself, but that its conception is rooted in something else, to which it is ameans. Art is, in this case, only one among the several means which prove useful and are applied for the purpose of instruction. This brings us to the boundary at which art is made no longer to be an end on its own merits, seeing that it is degraded into a mere toy of entertainment or a mere means of instruction.
(γγ) This boundary becomes most sharply marked when a question is raised, in its turn, about a supreme end and aim for the sake of which the passions are to be purified and men are to be instructed. This aim has often, in modern times, been declared to bemoralimprovement, and the aim of art has been placed in the function of preparing the inclinations and impulses for moral perfection, and of leading them to this goal. This idea combines purification with instruction, inasmuch as art is, by communicating an insight into genuine moral goodness—that is, by instruction,—atthe same time to incite to purification, and in this way alone to bring about the improvement of mankind as its useful purpose and supreme goal.
Regarding art in reference to moral improvement, the same hasprima facieto be said as about the didactic purpose. We may readily grant that art must not as a principle take for its aim the immoral and its furtherance. But it is one thing to take immorality for the express aim of representation, and another to abstain from taking morality. Every genuine work of art may have a good moral drawn from it, but, of course, in doing so much depends on interpretation and on him who draws the moral. Thus one may hear the most immoral representations defended by saying that we must know evil, or sin, in order to act morally; and, conversely, it has been said that the portrayal of Mary Magdalene, the beautiful sinner who afterwards repented, has seduced many into sin, because art makes it look so beautiful to repent, and you must sin before you can repent. But the doctrine of moral improvement, if consistently carried out, goes in general yet further. It would not be satisfied with the possibility of extracting a moral from a work of art by interpretation, but it would, on the contrary, display the moral instruction as the substantive purpose of the work of art, and, indeed, would actually admit to portrayal none but moral subjects, moral characters, actions, and incidents. For art hasthe choice among its subjects, in contradistinction to history or the sciences which have their matter fixed for them.
In order that we may be able to form a thoroughly adequate estimate of the idea that the aim of art is moral from this point of view, we must inquire first of all for the definite standpoint of the morality on which this doctrine is based. If we look closely at the standpoint of morality as we have to understand it in the best sense at the present day, we soon find that its conception does not immediately coincide with what apart from it we are in the habit of calling in a general way virtue, respectability,[90]uprightness, etc. To be respectable and virtuous is not enough to make a man moral.[91]Morality involvesreflectionand the definite consciousness of that which duty prescribes, and acting out of such a prior consciousness. Duty itself is the law of the will, which man nevertheless lays down freely out of his own self, and then is supposed to determine himself to this duty for duty's and its fulfilment's sake, by doing good solely from the conviction which he has attained that it is the good. Now this law, the duty which is chosen forduty's sake to be the guide of action, out of free conviction and the inner conscience, and is then acted upon, is, taken by itself,[92]the abstract universal of the will, and is the direct antithesis of nature, the sensuous impulses, the self-seeking interests, the passions, and of all that is comprehensively entitled the feelings[93]and the heart. In this antagonism the one side is regarded asnegativingthe other; and, seeing that both are present as antagonists within the subject (person), he has, as determining himself out of himself, the choice of following the one or the other. But, according to the view under discussion, amoralaspect is acquired by such a decision, and by the act performed in accordance with it, only through the free conviction of duty on the one hand, and, on the other hand, through the conquest, not only of the particular or separate will, of the natural motives, inclinations, passions, etc., but also through that of the nobler emotions and the higher impulses. For the modern moralistic view starts from the fixed antithesis of the will in its spiritual universality to its sensuous natural particularity,[94]and consists not in the completed reconciliationof these contrasted sides, but in their conflict with one another, which involves the requirement that the impulses which conflict with duty ought to yield to it.
This antithesis does not merely display itself for our consciousness, in the limited region of moral action; but also emerges as a fundamental distinction and antagonism between that which is real essentially and in its own right,[95]and that which is external reality and existence. Formulated in the abstract, it is the contrast of the universal and particular, when the former is explicitly fixed over against the latter, just as the latter is over against the former; more concretely, it appears in nature as the opposition of the abstract law against the abundance of individual phenomena, each having its own character; in the mind, as the sensuous and spiritual in man, as the battle of the spirit against the flesh, of duty for duty's sake, the cold command, with the individual interest, the warm feelings, the sensuous inclinations and impulses, the individual disposition as such; as the hard conflict of inward freedom and of natural necessity; further, as the contradiction of the dead conception—empty in itself—compared with full concrete vitality, or of theory and subjective thought contrasted with objective existence and experience.
These are antitheses which have not been invented, either by the subtlety of reflection or by thepedantry of philosophy, but which have from all time and in manifold forms preoccupied and disquieted the human consciousness, although it was modern culture that elaborated them most distinctly, and forced them up to the point of most unbending contradiction. Intellectual culture and the modern play of understanding create in man this contrast, which makes him an amphibious animal, inasmuch as it sets him to live in two contradictory worlds at once; so that even consciousness wanders back and forward in this contradiction, and, shuttle-cocked from side to side, is unable to satisfy itselfasitself on the one side as on the other. For, on the one side, we see man a prisoner in common reality and earthly temporality, oppressed by want and poverty, hard driven by nature, entangled in matter, in sensuous aims and their enjoyments; on the other side, he exalts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of thought and freedom, imposes on himself as awilluniversal laws and attributions, strips the world of its living and flourishing reality and dissolves it into abstractions, inasmuch as the mind is put upon vindicating its rights and its dignity simply by denying the rights of nature and maltreating it, thereby retaliating the oppression and violence which itself has experienced from nature. Such a discrepancy in life and consciousness involves for modern culture and its understanding the demand that the contradiction should be resolved. Yet theunderstanding cannot release itself from the fixity of these antitheses. The solution, therefore, remains for consciousness a mereought, and the present and reality only stir themselves in the unrest of a perpetual to and fro, which seeks a reconciliation without finding it. Then the question arises, whether such a many-sided and fundamental opposition which never gets beyond a mere ought and a postulated solution, can be the genuine and complete[96]truth, and, in general, the supreme purpose. If the culture of the world[97]has fallen into such a contradiction, it becomes the task of philosophy to undo or cancel it,i.e.to show that neither the one alternative in its abstraction nor the other in similar one-sidedness possesses truth, but that they are essentially self-dissolving; that truth only lies in the conciliation and mediation of the two, and that this mediation is no mere postulate, but is in its nature and in reality accomplished and always self-accomplishing. This intuition agrees directly with the natural faith and will, which always has present to the mind's eye precisely this resolved antithesis, and in action makes it its purpose and achieves it. All that philosophy does is to furnish a reflective insight into the essence of the antithesis in as far as it shows that what constitutes truth is merely the resolution of this antithesis, and that not in the sense that the conflict and itsaspects in any wayare not, but in the sense that theyare,in reconciliation.
(d) Now, as an ultimate aim implied a higher standpoint in the case of moral improvement, we shall have to vindicate this higher standpoint for art no less than for morals. Thereby we at once lay aside the false position, which has already been remarked upon, that art has to serve as a means for moral ends, and to conduce to the moral end of the world, as such, by instruction and moral improvement, and thereby has its substantive aim, not in itself, but in something else. If, therefore, we now continue to speak of an aim or purpose, we must, in the first instance, get rid of the perverse idea, which, in asking "What is the aim?" retains the accessory meaning of the question, "What is theuse?". The perverseness of this lies in the point that the work of art would then be regarded as aspiring to something else which is set before consciousness as the essential and as what ought to be; so that then the work of art would only have value as a useful instrument in the realization of an end having substantive importanceoutsidethe sphere of art. Against this it is necessary to maintain that art has the vocation of revealingthe truthin the form of sensuous artistic shape, of representing the reconciled antithesis just described, and, therefore, has its purpose in itself, in this representation and revelation. For other objects, such asinstruction, purification, improvement, pecuniary gain, endeavour after fame and honour, have nothing to do with the work of art as such, and do not determine its conception.
It is from this point of view, into whichreflectiveconsideration of the matter resolves itself, that we have to apprehend the idea of art in its inner necessity, as indeed it was from this point of view, historically speaking, that the true appreciation and understanding of art took its origin. For that antithesis, of which we spoke, made itself felt, not only within general reflective culture, but no less in philosophy as such, and it was not till philosophy discovered how to overcome this antithesis absolutely, that it grasped its own conception and, just in as far as it did so, the conception of nature and of art.
Hence this point of view, as it is the re-awakening of philosophy in general, so also is the re-awakening of the science of art; and, indeed, it is this re-awakening to which alone æsthetic as a science owes its true origin, and art its higher estimation.
HISTORICAL DEDUCTION OF THE TRUE IDEA OF ART IN MODERN PHILOSOPHY.
I Shall touch briefly upon the historical side of the transition above alluded to, partly for its historical interest, partly because, in doing so, we shall more closely indicate the critical points which are important, and on the foundation of which we mean to continue our structure. In its most general formulation, this basis consists in recognizing artistic beauty as one of the means which resolve and reduce to unity the above antithesis and contradiction between the abstract self-concentrated mind and actual nature, whether that of external phenomena, or the inner subjective feelings and emotions.
1. The Kantian philosophy led the way by not merely feeling the lack of this point of union, but attaining definite knowledge of it, and bringing it within the range of our ideas.[98]In general, Kant treated as his foundation for the intelligence as for the will,the self-related rationality or freedom, the self-consciousness that finds and knows itself in itself as infinite.[99]This knowledge of the absoluteness of reason in itself which has brought philosophy to its turning-point in modern times, this absolute beginning, deserves recognition even if we pronounce Kant's philosophy inadequate, and is an element in it which cannot be refuted. But, in as far as Kant fell back again into the fixed antithesis of subjective thought and objective things, of the abstract universality and the sensuous individuality of the will, it was he more especially who strained to the highest possible pitch the above-mentioned contradiction called morality,[100]seeing that he moreover exalted the practical side of the mind above the theoretical. In presence of this fixed antithesis, with its fixity acknowledged by the understanding, he had no course open but to propound the unity merely in the form of subjective ideas of the reason to which no adequate reality could be shown to correspond, or again, to treat it as consisting in postulates which might indeed be deduced from the practical reason, but whose essential nature[101]was not for him knowable by thought, and whose practical accomplishment remained a mere ought deferred to infinity. Thus, then, Kant no doubt brought thereconciled contradiction within the range of our ideas, but he succeeded neither in scientifically unfolding its genuine essence nor in presenting it as the true and sole reality. Kant indeed pressed on still further, inasmuch as he recognized the required unity in what he called theintuitive understanding; but here, again, he comes to a standstill in the contradiction of subjectivity and objectivity, so that although he suggests in the abstract a solution of the contradiction of concept and reality, universality and particularity, understanding and sense, and thereby points to the Idea, yet, on the other hand, he makes this solution and reconciliation itself a purelysubjectiveone, not one which is true and actual in its nature and on its own merits.[102]In this respect the Critique of the power of judgment, in which he treats of the æsthetic and teleological powers of judgment, is instructive and remarkable. The beautiful objects of nature and art, the rightly adapted products of nature, by connecting which Kant is led to a closer treatment of organic and animated beings, are regarded by him only from the point of view of the reflection which subjectively judges of them. Indeed Kant defines the power of judgment generally as "the power of thinking the particular as contained under the universal;" and he calls the power of judgmentreflective"when it has only the particular given to it, and has to findthe universal under which it comes." To this end it requires a law, a principle, which it has to impose upon itself; and Kant suggests as this law that ofTeleology. In the idea of freedom that belongs to the practical reason, the accomplishment of the end is left as a mere "ought," but in the teleological judgment dealing with animated beings, Kant hits on the notion of regarding the living organism in the light that in it the idea, the universal, contains the particulars as well. Thus in its capacity as end, it determines the particular and external, the structure of the limbs, not from without, but from within, and in the sense that the particular conforms to the endspontaneously. Yet even in such a judgment, again, we are supposed not to know the objective nature of the thing, but only to be enunciating a subjective mode of reflection. Similarly, Kant understands theæstheticjudgment as neither proceeding from the understanding as suchquathe faculty of ideas, nor from sensuous perception as such with its manifold variety, but from the free play of the understanding and of the imagination. It is in this free agreement of the faculties of knowledge, that the thing is related to the subject or person, and to his feeling of pleasure and complacency.
(a) Now this complacency is, in the first place, to be devoid of any interest, i.e.,devoid of relation to our appetitive faculty. If we have an interest, by way of curiosity for instance, or a sensuous interest on behalfof our sensuous want, a desire of possession and use, then the objects are not important to us for their own sake, but for the sake of our want. In that case, what exists has a value only with reference to such a want, and the relation is of such a kind that the object is on the one side, and on the other stands an attribution which is distinct from the object, but to which we relate it. If, for instance, I consume the object in order to nourish myself by it, this interest lies only in me, and remains foreign to the object itself. Now, what Kant asserts is, that the relation to the beautiful is not of this kind. The æsthetic judgment allows the external existence to subsist free and independent, giving licence to the object to have its end in itself. This is, as we saw above, an important consideration.[103]
(b) The beautiful, inthe second place, says Kant, is definable as that which, without a conception,i.e.without a category of the understanding, is perceived as the object of auniversaldelight. To estimate the beautiful requires a cultivated mind; the natural man[104]has no judgment about the beautiful, seeing that this judgment claims universal validity. The universal is, indeed to begin with,as suchan abstraction; but that which in itself and on its own merits[105]is true, bears in itself the attribution and the claim to be valid even universally. In this sense the beautiful, too, ought to beuniversallyrecognized, although the mere conceptions of the understanding are competent to no judgment thereupon. The good, that, for instance, which is right in particular actions, is subsumed under universal conceptions, and the act passes for good when it succeeds in corresponding to these conceptions. Beauty, on the other hand, according to the theory, should awaken a universal delight directly, without any such relation. This amounts to nothing else than that, in contemplating beauty, we are not conscious of the conception and of the subsumption under it, and do not permit to take place the severance of the individual object and of the universal conception which in all other cases is present in the judgment.
(c) In thethirdplace, the beautiful (Kant says) has the form of teleology,[106]in as far as a teleological character is perceived in the object without the idea of an end. At bottom this only repeats the view which we have just discussed. Any natural production,i.e.a plant or an animal, is organized teleologically, and is so immediately a datum to us in this its teleology that we have no separate abstract idea of the end, distinct from its given reality. It is in this way that eventhe beautifulis to be displayed to usas teleological. In finite teleology[107]end and means remain external to one another, inasmuch as the end stands in no essential inner relation to the material medium of its accomplishment. In this case, the idea of the end in its abstraction[108]distinguishes itself from the object in which the end appears as realized. The beautiful, on the other hand, exists as teleological in itself, without means and end revealing themselves in it as distinct aspects. For instance, the purpose of the limbs of an organism is the vitality which exists as actual in the limbs themselves; separately they cease to be limbs. For in the living thing the end and the material medium of the end are so directly united, that the existing being only exists so long as its purpose dwells in it. The beautiful, Kant maintains, when considered from this point of view, does not wear its teleology as an external form attached to it; but the teleological correspondence of the inner and outer is the immanent nature of the beautiful object.
(d) Lastly, Kant's treatment determines the beautiful, in thefourthplace, as being recognized, without a conception, as object of anecessarydelight. Necessityis an abstract category, and indicates an inner essential relation of two aspects;ifthe one is, andbecausethe one is,then(and therefore) the other is. The one in its nature involves the other as well as itself, just as cause,e.g., has no meaning without effect. The delight which the beautiful involves is such a necessary consequence, wholly without relation to conceptions,i.e.to categories of the understanding. Thus, for instance, we are pleased no doubt by what is symmetrical, and this is constructed in accordance with a conception of the understanding. But Kant requires, to give us pleasure, even more than the unity and equality that belong to such a conception of the understanding.
Now, what we find in all these Kantian laws is a non-severance of that which in all other cases is presupposed in our consciousness to be distinct. In the beautiful this severance finds itself cancelled, inasmuch as universal and particular, end and means, conception and object thoroughly interpenetrate one another. And thus, again, Kant regards the beautiful inartas an agreement in which the particular itselfisin accordance with the conception. Particulars, as such, areprima faciecontingent, both as regards one another and as regards the universal, and this very contingent element, sense, feeling, temper, inclination, is now in the beauty of art not merelysubsumedunder universal categories of the understanding andcontrolledby theconception of feeling in its abstract universality, but so united with the universal that it reveals itself as inwardly and in its nature and realization[109]adequate thereto. By this means the beauty of art becomes embodiment of a thought, and the material is not externally determined by this thought, but exists itself in its freedom. For in this case the natural, sensuous, the feelings and so forth havein themselvesproportion, purpose, and agreement; while perception and feeling are exalted into spiritual universality, and thought itself, not content with renouncing its hostility to nature, finds cheerfulness therein. Thus feeling, pleasure, and enjoyment are justified and sanctified, so that nature and freedom, sensuousness and the idea, find their warrant and their satisfaction all inone. Yet even this apparently complete reconciliation is ultimately inferred[110]to be, nevertheless, merely subjective in respect of our appreciation as in respect of our production, and not to be the naturally and completely true and real.
These we may take as the main results of the Kantian Criticism, so far as they have interest for us in our present inquiry. This criticism forms the starting-point for the true conception of artistic beauty. Yet this conception had to overcome the Kantian defects before it could assert itself as the higher grasp of the true unity of necessity andfreedom, of the particular and the universal, of the sensuous and the rational.
2. And so it must be admitted that the artistic sense of a profound, and, at the same time, philosophic mind was beforehand with philosophy as such, in demanding and enunciating the principle of totality and reconciliation as against that abstract endlessness of reflective thought, that duty for duty's sake, that intelligence devoid of plastic shape, which apprehend nature and reality, sensation and feeling as a merelimit, and as an absolutely hostile element. ForSchillermust be credited with the great merit of having broken through the Kantian subjectivity and abstractness of thought, and having dared the attempt to transcend these limits by intellectually grasping the principles of unity and reconciliation as the truth, and realizing them in art. Schiller, in his æsthetic discussions, did not simply adhere to art and its interest without concerning himself about its relation to philosophy proper, but compared his interest in artistic beauty with the principles of philosophy; and it was only by starting from the latter, and by their help that he penetrated the profounder nature and notion of the beautiful. Thus we feel it to be a feature in one period of his works that he has busied himself with thought—more perhaps than was conducive to their unsophisticated beauty as works of art. The intentional character of abstract reflectionand even the interest of the philosophical idea are noticeable in many of his poems. This has been made a ground of censure against him, especially by way of blaming and depreciating him in comparison with Goethe's agreeable straightforwardness[111]and objectivity. But in this respect Schiller, as poet, did but pay the debt of his time; and the reason lay in a perplexity which turned out only to the honour of that sublime soul and profound character, and to the profit of science and cognition.
At the same epoch the same scientific stimulus withdrew Goethe, too, from poetry, his proper sphere. Yet just as Schiller immersed himself in the study of the inner depths of themind, so Goethe's idiosyncrasy led him to thephysicalside of art, to external nature, to animal and vegetable organisms, to crystals, to cloud formation, and to colour. To such scientific research Goethe brought the power of his great mind, which in these regions put to rout[112]the science of mere understanding with its errors, just as Schiller, on the other side, succeeded in asserting the idea of the free totality of beauty against the understanding's science of volition and thought. A whole set of Schiller's productions is devoted to this insight of hisinto the nature of art, especially the "Letters upon Æsthetic Education." In these letters the central point from which Schiller starts is that every individual human being has within him the capacity of an ideal humanity. This genuine human being, he says, is represented by the State,[113]which he takes to be the objective, universal, or, so to speak, normal form in which the diversity of particular subjects or persons aims at aggregating and combining itself into a unity. There were, then, he considered, two imaginable ways in which the human being in time (in the actual course of events) might coincide with the human being in the Idea: on the one hand, by the State,quagenus or class-idea of morality,[114]law, and intelligence, destroying individuality; on the other hand, by the individual raising himself to the level of his genus,i.e.by the human being that lives in time ennobling himself into the human being of the Idea. Now reason, he thinks, demands unity as such, the generic character, but nature demands diversity and individuality; and both these legislative authorities have simultaneous claims on man. In presence of the conflict between these antagonistic elements, æsthetic education simply consists in realizing the requirementof mediation and reconciliation between them. For the aim of this education is, according to Schiller, to give such form to inclination, sensuousness, impulse, and heart, that they may become rational in themselves, and by the same process reason, freedom, and spirituality may come forward out of their abstraction, and uniting with the natural element, now rationalized throughout, may in it be invested with flesh and blood. Beauty is thus pronounced to be the unification of the rational and the sensuous, and this unification to be the genuinely real.
This notion of Schiller's may be readily recognized in the general views of "Anmuth und Würde,"[115]and in his poems more particularly from the fact that he makes the praise of women his subject matter; because it was in their character that he recognized and held up to notice the spontaneously present combination of the spiritual and natural.
Now thisUnityof the universal and particular, of freedom and necessity, of the spiritual and the natural, which Schiller grasped from a scientific point of view as the principle and essence of art, and laboured indefatigably to evoke into actual existence by help of art and æsthetic culture, was considered, by a further advance,as the Idea itself, and was thus constituted the principle of knowledge and of existence, while theIdea in this sense was recognized as the sole truth and reality. By means of this recognition, science, in Schelling's philosophy, attained its absolute standpoint, and although art had previously begun to assert its peculiar nature and dignity in relation to the highest interests of humanity, yet it was now that the actualnotionof art and its place in scientific theory were discovered. Art was now accepted, even if erroneously in one respect, which this is not the place to discuss, yet in its higher and genuine vocation. No doubt before this time so early a writer as Winckelmann had been inspired by his observation of the ideals of the ancients in a way that led him to develop a new sense for the contemplation of art, to rescue it from the notions of commonplace aims and of mere mimicry of nature, and to exert an immense influence in favour of searching out the idea of art in the works of art and in its history. For Winckelmann should be regarded as one of the men who have succeeded in furnishing the mind with a new organ and new methods of study in the field of art. On the theory, however, and the scientific knowledge of art his view has had less influence.
3. To touch briefly on the further course of the subject, A. W. and Friedrich von Schlegel, in proximity to the renaissance of philosophy, being covetous of novelty and with a thirst for what was striking and extraordinary, appropriated as muchof the philosophical idea as their natures, which were anything but philosophical, and essentially of the critical stamp, were capable of absorbing. Neither of them can claim the reputation of a speculative thinker. But it was they who, armed with their critical understanding, set themselves somewhere near the standpoint of the Idea, and with great plainness of speech and audacity of innovation, though with but a poor admixture of philosophy, directed a clever polemic against the traditional views. And thus they undoubtedly introduced in several branches of art a new standard of judgment in conformity with notions which were higher than those that they attacked. As, however, their criticism was not accompanied by the thorough philosophical comprehension of their standard, this standard retained a character of indefiniteness and vacillation, with the result that they sometimes did too much and sometimes too little. No doubt they are to be credited with the merit of bringing afresh to light and extolling in a loving spirit much that was held obsolete and was inadequately esteemed by their age, e.g. the work of the older painters of Italy and the Netherlands, the "Nibelungen Lied," etc.; and, again, they endeavoured with zeal to learn and to teach subjects that were little known, such as the Indian poetry and mythology. Nevertheless, they attributed too high a value to the productions of such epochs, andsometimes themselves fell into the blunder of admiring what was but mediocre,e.g.Holberg's comedies, and attaching a universal importance to what had only relative value, or even boldly showing themselves enthusiasts for a perverse tendency and subordinate standpoint as if it were something supreme.
Out of this tendency, and especially out of the sentiments[116]and doctrines of Fried. von Schlegel, there further grew in all its manifold shapes the so-calledIrony. This idea had its deeper root, if we take it in one of its aspects, in Fichte's philosophy, in so far as the principles of his philosophy were applied to art. Fried. von Schlegel, as also Schelling, started from Fichte's point of view; Schelling, to pass wholly beyond it, Fried. von Schlegel to develop it in a peculiar fashion, and to tear himself loose from it. As regards the intimate connection of Fichte's principles with one tendency (among others) of the irony, we need only lay stress on the following point, that Fichte establishes theIas the absolute principle of all knowledge, of all reason and cognition; and that in the sense of theIwhich is, and is no more than, utterly abstract and formal. For this reason, in the second place, thisIis in itself absolutely simple, and, on the one hand, every characteristic, every attribute, every content is negated therein—for every positive matter is annihilated by absorption into this abstractfreedom and unity; on the other side, every content which is to be of value for theI, is given position and recognition only by favour of theI. Whatever is, is only by favour of theI,[117]and what is by my favourIam in turn able to annihilate.
Now, if we abide by these utterly empty forms which have their origin in the absoluteness of the abstractI, then nothing has value in its real and actual nature, and regarded[118]in itself, but only as produced by the subjectivity of theI. But if so, it follows that theIis able to remain lord and master of everything, and in no sphere of morality or legality, of things human or divine, profane or sacred, is there anything that would not have to begin by being given position by theI, and that might not, therefore, just as well be in turn annihilated thereby. This amounts to making all that is actual in its own right[119]a meresemblance, not true and real for its own sake and by its own means, but a mere appearance due to theI, within whose power and caprice it remains, and at its free disposal. To admit it or to annihilate it stands purely in the pleasure of theIwhich has attained absoluteness in itself and simply asI.
In the third place,[120]then, theIis aliving, active individual, and its life consists in bringing its individuality to its own consciousness as to that of others, in uttering itself and taking shape in phenomena. For every human being while he lives, seeks to realize himself, and does realize himself. With respect to beauty and art this receives the meaning of living as artist and forming one's lifeartistically. But, according to the principle before us,Ilive as artist when all my action and utterance in general, whenever it has to do with any content, is for me on the level of meresemblance, and assumes a shape which is wholly in my power. SoIam not really inearnest, either about this content, or generally, about its utterance and realization. For genuine earnest comes into being only by means of a substantial interest, a matter that has something in it, truth, morality, and so forth; by means of a content which, as such (without my help) is enough to have value for me as something essential, so thatImyself only become essential in my own eyes in as far asIhave immersed myself in such a matter and have come to be in conformity with it in my whole knowledge and action. At the standpoint according to which the artist is theIthat binds and looses[121]of its own power, for whom no content ofconsciousness counts as absolute and as essentially real, but only as itself an artificial and dissoluble semblance, such earnest can never come into being, as nothing has validity ascribed to it but the formalism of theI. By others, indeed, my self-display in whichIpresent myself to them may be taken seriously, inasmuch as they interpret me as though I were really concerned about the matter in hand; but therein they are simply deceived, poorbornécreatures, without talent and capacity to apprehend and to attain my standpoint. And this shows me that not every one is so free (formally[122]free, that is) as to see in all that usually has value, dignity, and sanctity for mankind, simply a product of his own power of caprice, whereby he is able to set his seal on the value of such matters, and to determine himself and obtain a content by their means, or not. And then this skill in living an ironical artist life apprehends itself as aGod-like geniality,[123]for which every possible thing is a mere dead creature, to which the free creator, knowing himself to be wholly unattached, feels in no way bound, seeing that he can annihilate as well as create it. He who has attained such a standpoint of God-likegeniality looks down in superiority on all mankind besides, for they are pronouncedbornéand dull in as far as law, morality, and so forth retain for them their fixed, obligatory, and essential validity. And the individual who thus lives his artist life assigns himself indeed relation to others, lives with friends, mistresses, etc., but as genius he sets no value on this relation to his determinate reality and particular actions, or to what is universal in its own right; that is, he assumes an ironical attitude towards it.
This is the universal import of the genial God-like irony, as that concentration of theIinto itself for which all bonds are broken, and which will only endure to live in the bliss of self-enjoyment.[124]This irony was the invention of Herr Fried. von Schlegel, and many followed him in prating about it then, or are prating of it afresh just now.
The proximate form of this negativity which displays itself as irony is, then, on the one hand the futility[125]of all that is matter of fact, or moral and of substantive import in itself; the nothingness of all that is objective, and that has essential and actual value. If theIremains at this point of view, allappears to it as nothing worth and as futile, excepting its own subjectivity, which thereby becomes hollow and empty, and itself mere conceit.[126]But on the other hand, the reverse may happen, and the I may also find itself unsatisfied in its enjoyment of itself, and may prove insufficient to itself, so as in consequence to feel a craving for the solid and substantial, for determinate and essential interests. Out of this there arises misfortune and antinomy, in that the subject desires to penetrate into truth and has a craving for objectivity, but yet is unable to abandon its isolation and retirement into itself, and to strip itself free of this unsatisfied abstract inwardness (of mind), and so has a seizure of sickly yearning[127]which we have also seen emanate from Fichte's school. The discontent of this quiescence and feebleness,—which does not like to act or to touch anything for fear of surrendering its inward harmony, and, for all its craving after the absolute, remains none the less unreal and empty, even though pure in itself,—is the source of morbid saintliness[D] and yearning. For a true saintly soul acts and is a reality. But all that craving is the feeling of the nullity of the emptyfutile[128]subject or person, which lacks the strength to escape this its futility,[129]and to fill[130]itself with something of substantial value.
In so far, however, as the Irony was treated as a form of art, it did not content itself with conferring artistic shape upon the life and particular individuality of the artist. In addition to the works of art presented by his own actions, etc., the artist was bound to produce external works of art as creations of his fancy. The principle of these productions, which for the most part can only come to the birth in poetical form, is, in due course, the representation of the Divine as the Ironical. The ironical, as "genial" individuality, consists in the self-annihilation of what is noble, great, and excellent; and thus even the objective shapes of art will have to represent the mere principle of absolute subjectivity, by displaying what has value and nobleness for man as null in its self-annihilation. This implies, not merely that we are not to be serious about the right, the moral, and the true, but that the highest and best of all has nothing in it, inasmuch as in its exhibition through individuals, characters, and actions, it refutes and annihilates itself, and so is irony at its own expense. This mode, taken in the abstract, borders closely on the principleof comedy; but yet within this affinity the comic must be essentially distinguished from the ironical. For the comic must be limited to bringing to nothing what is in itself null, a false and self-contradictory phenomenon; for instance, a whim, a perversity, or particular caprice, set over against a mighty passion; or even asupposedreliable principle or rigid maxim may be shown to be null. But it is quite another thing when what is in reality moral and true, any substantial content as such, exhibits itself as null in an individual and by his means. Such an individual is then null and despicable in character, and weakness and want of character are thus introduced into the representation. In this distinction between the ironical and the comic it is therefore an essential question what import that has which is brought to nothing. In the case supposed they are wretched worthless subjects, persons destitute of the power to abide by their fixed and essential purpose, but ready to surrender it and let it be destroyed in them. The "Irony" loves this irony of the characterless. For true character involves on the one hand an essential import in its purpose; on the other hand, adherence to that purpose, such that the individuality would be robbed of its whole existence if forced to desist from and to abandon it. This stability and substance constitute the keynote of character.Catocan live only as Roman and as republican. Now, if Irony is takenas the keynote of the representation, this means that the supremely inartistic is taken as the true principle of the work of art. For the result is in part insipid figures; in part shapes void of import and of conduct,[131]seeing that their substantive nature turns out to be a nullity; and in part, finally, those yearning moods and unresolved contradictions of the heart that attach themselves to such conceptions. Representations of this kind can awake no genuine interest. And for this reason it is from the Irony that we have eternal lamentations over the lack of profound feeling, artistic insight, and genius in the public, inasmuch as it does not understand these heights of Irony. That is to say, the public does not like all this mediocrity, half grotesque and half characterless. And it is well that these unsubstantial languishing natures afford no pleasure; it is a comfort that such insincerity and hypocrisy are not approved, and that, on the contrary, man has a desire no less for full and genuine interests than for characters which remain true to the weighty purposes of their lives.
It may be added as an historical remark that those who more particularly adopted irony as the supreme principle of art were Solger and Ludwig Tieck.
This is not the place to speak of Solger at the length which is due to him, and I must content myselfwith a few observations. Solger was not like the others, satisfied with superficial philosophical culture, but the genuine speculative need of his innermost nature impelled him to descend into the depths of the philosophic idea. And therein he hit upon the dialectical element of the Idea, the point to which I give the name of "infinite absolute negativity," the activity of the idea in that it negates itself as the infinite and universal, so as to become finiteness and particularity, and just as really cancels this negation in turn, establishing thereby the universal and infinite in the finite and particular. Solger got no further than this negativity, and it is no doubt an element in the speculative idea, but yet when conceived as this mere dialectic unrest and dissolution both of infinite and of finiteno more thanan element; not, as Solger maintains,the entire Idea. Unhappily Solger's life was too soon interrupted for him to have achieved the concrete development of the philosophical Idea. And so he never got beyond this aspect of negativity, which has affinity with the dissolution that Irony effects of what is determinate and of what has substantive value in itself, a negativity in which he saw the principle of artistic activity. Yet in his actual life, considering the solidity, seriousness, and strength of his character, he neither was himself, in the sense above depicted, an ironical artist, nor was his profound feeling for genuine works of art, developed in protracted artstudies, in this respect of an ironical nature. So much in vindication of Solger, whose life, philosophy, and art merit to be distinguished from the previously mentioned apostles of irony.
As regards Ludwig Tieck, his culture, too, dates from that period in which for some time Jena was the literary centre.[132]Tieck and others of these distinguished people display great familiarity with the phrases in question, but without telling us what they mean by them. Thus, Tieck no doubt always says there ought to be Irony; but when he himself approaches the criticism of great works of art, though his recognition and portrayal of their greatness is excellent, yet, if we fancy that now is the best opportunity to explain where the Irony is,e.g.in such a work as "Romeo and Juliet," we are taken in—for we hear no more about the Irony.
DIVISION OF THE SUBJECT.
1. After the above introductory remarks, it is now time to pass to the study of our object-matter. But we are still in the introduction, and an introduction cannot do more than lay down, for the sake of explanation, the general sketch of the entire course which will be followed by our subsequent scientific considerations. As, however, we have spoken of art as proceeding from the absolute Idea, and have even assigned as its end the sensuous representation of the absolute itself, we shall have to conduct this review in a way to show, at least in general, how the particular divisions of the subject spring from the conception of artistic beauty as the representation of the absolute. Therefore we must attempt to awaken a very general idea of this conception itself.
It has already been said that the content of art is the Idea, and that its form lies in the plastic use ofimages accessible to sense. These two sides art has to reconcile into a full and united totality. Thefirstattribution which this involves is the requirement that the content, which is to be offered to artistic representation, shall show itself to be in its nature worthy of such representation. Otherwise we only obtain a bad combination, whereby a content that will not submit to plasticity and to external presentation, is forced into that form, and a matter which is in its nature prosaic is expected to find an appropriate mode of manifestation in the form antagonistic to its nature.
Thesecondrequirement, which is derivable from this first, demands of the content of art that it should not be anything abstract in itself. This does not mean that it must be concrete as the sensuous is concrete in contrast to everything spiritual and intellectual, these being taken as in themselves simple and abstract. For everything that has genuine truth in the mind as well as in nature is concrete in itself, and has, in spite of its universality, nevertheless, both subjectivity and particularity within it. If we say,e.g., of God that he is simplyOne, the supreme Being as such, we have only enunciated a lifeless abstraction of the irrational understanding. Such a God, as he himself is not apprehended in his concrete truth, can afford no material for art, least of all for plastic art. Hence the Jews and the Turks have not been able torepresent their God, who does not even amount to such an abstraction of the understanding, in the positive way in which Christians have done so. For God in Christianity is conceived in His truth, and therefore, as in Himself thoroughly concrete, as a person, as a subject,[133]and more closely determined, as mind or spirit. What He is as spirit unfolds itself to the religious apprehension as the Trinity of Persons, which at the same time in relation with itself isOne. Here is essentiality, universality, and particularity, together with their reconciled unity; and it is only such unity that constitutes the concrete. Now, as a content in order to possess truth at all must be of this concrete nature, art demands the same concreteness, because a mere abstract universal has not in itself the vocation to advance to particularity and phenomenal manifestation and to unity with itself therein.
If a true and therefore concrete content is to have corresponding to it a sensuous form and modelling, this sensuous form must, in the third place, be no less emphatically something individual, wholly concrete in itself, and one. The character of concreteness as belonging to both elements of art, to the content as to the representation, is precisely the point in which both may coincide and correspond to one another; as, for instance, the natural shape of the human body is such a sensuous concrete as is capable of representing spirit, which is concrete in itself, and of displaying itself in conformity therewith. Therefore we ought to abandon the idea that it is a mere matter of accident that an actual phenomenon of the external world is chosen to furnish a shape thus conformable to truth. Art does not appropriate this form either because it simply finds it existing or because there is no other. The concrete content itself involves the element of external and actual, we may say indeed of sensible manifestation. But in compensation this sensuous concrete, in which a content essentially belonging to mind expresses itself, is in its own nature addressed to the inward being; its external element of shape, whereby the content is made perceptible and imaginable, has the aim of existing purely for the heart and mind. This is the only reason for which content and artistic shape are fashioned in conformity with each other. Themeresensuous concrete, external nature as such, has not this purpose for its exclusive ground of origin. The birds' variegated plumage shines unseen, and their song dies away unheard, theCereus[134]which blossoms only for a night withers without having been admired in the wilds of southern forests, and these forests, jungles of the most beautiful and luxuriant vegetation, with the most odorous and aromatic perfumes, perish and decay no less unenjoyed. The work of art has not such a naïve self-centred being, but is essentially a question, an address to the responsive heart, an appeal to affections and to minds.
Although the artistic bestowal of sensuous form is in this respect not accidental, yet on the other hand it is not the highest mode of apprehending the spiritually concrete. Thought is a higher mode than representation by means of the sensuous concrete. Although in a relative sense abstract, yet it must not be one-sided but concrete thinking, in order to be true and rational. Whether a given content has sensuous artistic representation for its adequate form, or in virtue of its nature essentially demands a higher and more spiritual embodiment, is a distinction that displays itself at once, if, for instance, we compare the Greek gods with God as conceived according to Christian ideas. The Greek god is not abstract butindividual, and is closely akin to the natural human shape; the Christian God is equally a concrete personality, but in the mode of pure spiritual existence, and is to be known asmind[135]and in mind. His medium of existence is therefore essentially inward knowledge and not external natural form, by means of which He can only be represented imperfectly, and not in the whole depth of His idea.
But inasmuch as the task of art is to represent the idea to direct perception in sensuous shape, and not in the form of thought or of pure spirituality as such, and seeing that this work of representation has its value and dignity in the correspondence and the unity of the two sides,i.e.of the Idea and its plastic embodiment, it follows that the level and excellency of art in attaining a realization adequate to its idea,[136]must depend upon the grade of inwardness and unity with which Idea and Shape display themselves as fused into one.
Thus the higher truth is spiritual being that has attained a shape adequate to the conception of spirit. This is what furnishes the principle of division for the science of art. For before the mind can attain the true notion of its absolute essence, it has to traverse a course of stages whose ground is in this idea itself; and to this evolution of the content with which it supplies itself, there corresponds an evolution,immediately connected therewith, of the plastic forms of art, under the shape of which the mind as artist presents to itself the consciousness of itself.
This evolution within the art-spirit has again in its own nature two sides. In thefirstplace the development itself is a spiritual[137]and universal one, in so far as the graduated series of definiteconceptions of the worldas the definite but comprehensive consciousness of nature, man and God, gives itself artistic shape; and, in thesecondplace, thisuniversaldevelopment of art is obliged to provide itself with external existence and sensuous form, and the definite modes of the sensuous art-existence are themselves a totality of necessary distinctions in the realm of art—which arethe several arts. It is true, indeed, that the necessary kinds of artistic representation are on the one handquaspiritual of a very general nature, and not restricted to any one material;[138]while sensuousexistence contains manifold varieties of matter. But as this latter, like the mind, has the Idea potentially for its inner soul, it follows from this that particular sensuous materials have a close affinity and secret accord with the spiritual distinctions and types of art presentation.
In its completeness, however, our science divides itself into three principal portions.
First, we obtain ageneral part. It has for its content and object the universal Idea of artistic beauty—this beauty being conceived as the Ideal—together with the nearer relation of the latter both to nature and to subjective artistic production.
Secondly, there develops itself out of the idea of artistic beauty aparticularpart, in as far as the essential differences which this idea contains in itself evolve themselves into a scaleparticularplastic[139]forms.
In thethirdplace there results afinalpart, which has for its subject the individualization of artistic beauty, that consists in the advance of art to the sensuous realization of its shapes and its self-completion as a system of the several arts[140]and their genera and species.
2. With respect to the first part, we must begin by recalling to mind, in order to make the sequel intelligible, that the Ideaquathe beautiful in art is not the Idea as such, in the mode in which a metaphysical logic apprehends it as the absolute, but the Idea as developed into concrete form fit for reality, and as having entered into immediate and adequate unity with this reality. For theIdea as such, although it is the essentially and actually true, is yet the truth only in its generality which has not yet taken objective shape; but theIdeaas thebeautiful in artis at once the Idea when specially determined as in its essence individual reality, and also an individual shape of reality essentially destined to embody and reveal the Idea. This amounts to enunciating the requirement that the Idea, and its plastic mould as concrete reality, are to be made completely adequate to one another. When reduced to such form the Idea, as a reality moulded in conformity with the conception of the Idea, is theIdeal. The problem of this conformity might, to begin with, be understood in the sense that any Idea would serve, so long as the actual shape, it did not matter what shape, represented this particular Idea and no other. But if so, the required truth of the Ideal is confounded with mere correctness, which consists in the expression of any meaning whatever in appropriate fashion so that its import may be readily recognized in the shapecreated. The Ideal is not to be thus understood. Any content whatever may attain to being represented quite adequately, judged by the standard of its own nature, but it does not therefore gain the right to claim the artistic beauty of the Ideal. Compared indeed with ideal beauty, even the presentation will in such a case appear defective. From this point of view we must remark to begin with, what cannot be proved till later, that the defects of a work of art are not to be regarded simply as always due, for instance, to individual unskillfulness.Defectiveness of formarises fromdefectiveness of content. So, for example, the Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians in their artistic shapes, their forms of deities, and their idols, never got beyond a formless phase, or one of a vicious and false definiteness of form, and were unable to attain genuine beauty; because their mythological ideas, the content and thought of their works of art, were as yet indeterminate in themselves, or of a vicious determinateness, and did not consist in the content that is absolute in itself. The more that works of art excel in true beauty of presentation, the more profound is the inner truth of their content and thought. And in dealing with this point, we have not to think merely perhaps of the greater or lesser skill with which the natural forms as given in external reality are apprehended and imitated. For in certain stages of art-consciousness and of representation, the distortionand disfigurement of natural structures is not unintentional technical inexpertness and want of skill, but intentional alteration, which emanates from the content that is in consciousness, and is required thereby. Thus, from this point of view, there is such a thing as imperfect art, which may be quite perfect, both technically and in other respects,in its determinatesphere, yet reveals itself to be defective when compared with the conception of art as such, and with the Ideal. Only in the highest art are the Idea and the representation genuinely adequate to one another, in the sense that the outward shape given to the Idea is in itself essentially and actually the true shape, because the content of the Idea, which that shape expresses, is itself the true and real content. It is a corollary from this, as we indicated above,[141]that the Idea must be defined in and through itself as concrete totality, and thereby possess in itself the principle and standard of its particularization and determination in external appearance. For example, the Christian imagination will be able to represent God only in human form and with man's intellectual expression, because it is herein that God Himself is completely known in Himself as mind. Determinateness is, as it were, the bridge to phenomenal existence. Where this determinateness is not totality derived from the Idea itself, where the Idea is not conceived as self-determiningand self-particularizing, the Idea remains abstract and has its determinateness, and therefore the principle that dictates its particular and exclusively appropriate mode of presentation, not in itself but external to it. Therefore, the Idea when still abstract has even its shape external, and not dictated by itself. The Idea, however, which is concrete in itself bears the principle of its mode of manifestation within itself, and is by that means the free process of giving shape to itself. Thus it is only the truly concrete Idea that can generate the true shape, and this correspondence of the two is the Ideal.