Art and thing dead, hard and ugly by imposing upon it the limitations of the individual. Art is beauty and characteristic in one; characteristic beauty, character from which beauty is evolved, according to Goethe's saying; it is therefore not the individual but the living concept of the individual. When the artist's eye recognizes the creative idea of the individual and draws it forth, he transforms the individual into a world in itself, into a species (Gattung), an eternal idea (Urbild), and fears no more the limitation or hardness which is the condition of life characteristic beauty is that plenitude of form which kills form; it does not inflame passion, it regulates it, like the banks of a river which are filled but not overflowed by the waters.1 In all of this we feel the influence of Schiller, with something added which Schiller could never have expressed. Indeed, whilst gratefully acknowledging the excellent contributions to the theory of art made by the writers who succeeded Kant, Schelling laments that in none of them can he find exact scientific method (Wissenschaftlichkeit).2 The true point of departure in his theory is in the philosophy of nature, i.e. in that criticism of the teleological judgement which Kant places directly after that of the æsthetic judgement in his third Critique. Teleology is the union of theoretical and practical philosophy; / but the system would be incomplete but for the possibility of demonstrating in the subject itself, in the ego, the identity of the two worlds, theoretical and practical; an activity which has, and at the same time has not, consciousness; unconscious as nature, conscious as spirit. This activity is precisely the æsthetic activity: "the general organ of philosophy, keystone of the whole edifice." There are but two ways open to one who is desirous of escaping from common realities poetry, which transports into the ideal world; and philosophy which annihilates the real world. Strictly 1 Üb. d. Verhältniss d. bild. Künste, z. d. Natur in Werke, vol. vii. PP. 299-310. 2 Philos. d. Kunst, posthumous, introd. in Werke, v. p. 362. 3 System d. transcend. Idealismus, in Werke, § i. vol. iii. introd. § 3, P. 349. ▲ Op. cit. § 4, P. 351. 4 1 speaking, "there is but one sole absolute work of art; it may exist in various exemplars, but in itself it is one, although it may not yet possess existence in its original form." True art is not the impression of one moment, but the representation of infinite life; it is transcendental intuition become objective, and is therefore not only the organ but the document of philosophy. A time will come when philosophy will return to poetry, from which she has detached herself; and from the new philosophy a new mythology will arise.2 The Absolute is thus the object of art as well as of philosophy (as Schelling insists elsewhere in greater detail): the first represents it in idea (Urbild), the second in its reflexion (Gegenbild): philosophy portrays ideas, not realities: > so is it with art: those same ideas of which real things, as philosophy demonstrates, are imperfect copies, themselves appear in the objective arts as ideas, i.e. in all their perfection, and represent the intellectual world in the world of reflexion." 3 Music is the "very ideal rhythm of Nature and the Universe, which by means of this art makes itself felt in the derivative world"; perfect creations of statuary are "the very ideas of organic nature represented objectively"; the Homeric epic, the very identity constituting the foundation of history in the Absolute."4 But while philosophy gives an immediate representation of the Divine, of absolute Identity, art can but give the immediate representation of Indifference; and "since the degree of perfection or reality in a thing becomes higher in proportion as it approaches nearer to the absolute Idea and the fulness of infinite affirmation and in proportion as it comprehends within itself other powers, it is clear that art, above everything else, is in closest relation with philosophy, from which it is distinguished merely by the character of its specification in everything else it may be considered as the highest power in the ideal world." 5 To the three powers 1 System d. transcend. Idealismus, in Werke, part vi. § 3, p. 627. 4 Op. cit. p. 369. Ideas and the mythology. of the real and ideal world correspond in a rising scale the three ideas of Truth, Goodness and Beauty. Beauty is neither the mere universal (truth), nor mere reality (action), but the perfect interpenetration of both: "beauty exists when the particular (the real) is so adequate to its concept that the latter, as infinite, enters the finite and presents itself to our contemplation in concrete form. With the appearance of the concept, the real becomes truly similar and equal to the idea, wherein the universal and the particular find their absolute identity. Without ceasing to be rational, the rational becomes at the same time apparent and sensible." 1 But as above the three powers is poised God, their point of union, so Philosophy stands supreme over the three ideas; concerning itself not with truth or morality or even beauty alone, but with that which belongs to all the three in common, deduced from one common source. If philosophy assumes the character of science and truth, while yet remaining superior to truth, this is made possible by the fact that science and truth are its formal determination; philosophy is science in the sense that truth, goodness and beauty, i.e. science, virtue and art, interpenetrate each other; therefore it is also not science but is that which is common to science, virtue and art." This interpenetration distinguishes philosophy from all other sciences; for instance, if mathematics can dispense with morality and beauty, philosophy cannot do so.2 "" In Beauty are contained truth and goodness, necessity gods. Art and and liberty. When beauty appears to be in conflict with truth, the truth in question is a finite truth with which beauty ought not to agree, because, as we have seen, the art of naturalism and of the merely characteristic is a false art. The individual forms of art, being in themselves representatives of the infinite and the universe, are called Ideas. Considered from the point of view of reality, Ideas are gods; their essence, their "in-itself," is in fact equivalent to God; every idea is an idea so 1 Phil. d. Kunst, p. 382. 3 Op. cit. p. 385. 2 Op. cit. p. 383. far as it is God in a particular form; every idea, therefore, is equal to God, but to a particular god. Characteristic of all the gods is pure limitation and indivisible absoluteness Minerva is the idea of wisdom united with strength, but she is lacking in womanly tenderness; Juno is power without wisdom and without the sweet attraction of love, for which she is forced to borrow the cestus of Venus ; Venus again has not the weighty wisdom of Minerva. What would become of these ideas if deprived of their limitations? They would cease to be objects of Imagination.1 Imagination is a faculty which has no connexion with pure intellect or with reason (Vernunft) and is distinct from fancy (Einbildungskraft) which collects and arranges the products of art, whereas imagination intuits them, forms them out of itself, represents them. Imagination is to fancy as intellectual intuition is to reason: it is therefore the intellectual intuition of art.2 Reason" no longer suffices in a philosophy such as this: intellectual intuition, which for Kant was a limiting concept, is now asserted as really existing intellect sinks to a subordinate place: even the genuine imagination which operates in art is overshadowed by this new-fangled Imagination, twin with intellectual Intuition, who sometimes changes places with this sister of hers. Mythology is proclaimed a necessary condition of all art: mythology which is not allegory, for in the latter the particular signifies only the universal, while the former is already itself the universal; which explains how easy it is to allegorize, and how fascinating are such poems as those of Homer which lend themselves to such interpretations. Christian, as well as Hellenic, art has its mythology: Christ; the persons of the Trinity; the Virgin mother of God. The line between mythology and art is as shadowy as that between art and philosophy. The year 1815 saw the publication of Solger's principal K. W. Solger. work, Erwin, a long philosophical dialogue on the beautiful ; 1 Phil. d. Kunst, pp. 390-393. 2 Op. cit. p. 395. 3 Op. cit. pp. 405-451. Fancy and subsequently in 1819 he gave a course of lectures on Esthetic which were published posthumously. He was one of those who found but a glimpse of truth in Kant and held the post-Kantians in very slight estimation, particularly Fichte; in Schelling, who begins from the original unity of the subjective and the objective, he detects for the first time a speculative principle not adequately developed, since Schelling had never triumphed dialectically over the difficulties of intellectual intuition.1 Solger was one of those who conceived of Imagination as totally distinct from Fancy: fancy (says he) belongs to common cognition and is none other than "the human consciousness, in so far as it continues, in temporal succession, infinitely reasserting an original intuition"; it presupposes the distinctions between common cognition, abstraction and judgement, concept and representation, amongst which "it acts as mediator by giving to the general concept the form of individual representation; and to the latter the form of a general concept; in this manner it has its being among the antitheses of the ordinary understanding." Imagination is totally different; proceeding "from the original unity of the antitheses in the Idea, it acts so that the elements in opposition, separated as they are from the idea, find themselves united in the reality; by its means we are capable of apprehending objects higher than those of common cognition and of recognizing in them the idea itself as real also, in art, it is the faculty of transforming the idea into reality." It presents itself in three modes or degrees as Imagination of the Imagination, which conceives the whole as idea, and activity as nothing more than the development of the idea in reality; as Sensibility of the Imagination, in so far as it expresses the life of the idea in the real and reduces the one to the other; lastly (and here we have the highest grade of artistic activity, corresponding with Dialectic in philosophy), as Intellect of the Imagination or artistic Dialectic, conceiving idea and reality in such a way that one passes 1 Vorles. üb. Asthetik, Heyse, Leipzig, 1829, pp. 35-43. |
