Fragmentary Notes §42—§45

§42

We frequently speak of “loving” and “cherishing” photographs. But what do we mean by this? What are we really expressing our “love” for? What is the genuine object of our “cherishment”? As soon as we begin to reflect upon the nature of photographs, we uncover webs of subtle and unconscious knots—confusions resulting not only from the haziness of common expressions and causal parlance, but also from the enigmatic relationship between what a thing “is” and what it is “of”—a relation of identity-in-difference.

§43

A photograph both is, and is not, itself. Indeed, a photograph is a photograph only insofar as it vanishes into what is “other” than itself—a hilly landscape, a blooming flower, a colorful bowl of fruit, etc. The visual medium “discloses” a message; and in disclosing the message, it must, in some respect, be in contact with it through a point of shared identity. The identity of every photograph is dependent upon its own self-abasement and self-denial as a stand-alone, self-dependent, and self-contained being. Mere “likeness” or “similarity” fails to capture the essence of the relationship between a photograph and its subject matter. And understanding this relationship is essential for grasping what we really mean when we speak of “loving” and “cherishing” photographs.

§44 

A photograph’s meaning, subject-matter, and value is determined by the person who comes into contact with it (physically or digitally). A photograph–by itself–is rarely the object of sentimental attachment. We treasure a photograph because of an object, event, or scene that lies outside or beyond the photograph—the photograph being a digital or chemical “representation” of said object, event, or scene. We “cherish” a photograph only insofar as we “love” what is “represented” by means of it or what is “disclosed” through it. We “treasure” and protect a photograph because it puts us into contact with an object of love and concern–and in most cases, this object has long since vanished.

§45

Unlike a photographic print, a digital photograph is, almost always, something “transparent”—like a glass window. If I am inside my house, I may see an object or event that is occurring outside “by means of” a glass window, or “through” a glass window. The glass window facilitates my view of the object or event without itself becoming the object of my attention or concern. 

Heidegger and Magnetic Mountain

Surrealism was a radical, revolutionary art movement that sprung into being at the turn of the 20th century and reshaped the nature of aesthetic experience. Kurt Seligmann’s 1948 oil on canvas painting, Magnetic Mountain, is a surrealist work that ensnares its audience in a haunting atmosphere without any means of escape. The work depicts a unique, captivating scene that startles the onlooker, drawing them in, and implanting a seed of mystery and curiosity within the audience’s wandering imagination. The work is best understood in conjunction with the aesthetic theory of the 20th century German phenomenologist, Martin Heidegger. Magnetic Mountain reinforces (a) Heidegger’s concept of Dasein being “thrown” into actuality, (b) Heidegger’s concept of art as a “happening of truth;” and (c) Heidegger’s contrasting between the “thingliness” and “artliness” of a work of art.  When viewed from the standpoint of phenomenology, Magnetic Mountain is a work of art that vindicates Heidegger’s aesthetic theory.

Kurt Seligmann’s Magnetic Mountain is an abstract, disorienting, and haunting landscape weaved together by bright, colorful organic figures juxtaposed with sharp, piercing geometrical shapes. The shapes and figures hover over layers of intersecting, crooked, planimetric surfaces, which, in turn, appear to be either “collapsing-into” a central, unextended point on the canvas, or “bursting out” of this central point with tremendous fury. When first encountering this painting, the audience is unsure as to what they are exactly looking at. They are taken aback, uncertain, and disoriented. The onlooker experiences what Heidegger calls “thrownness;” i.e., he is tossed into a world without knowing whence or wither; and is tasked with making sense of his situation in and through that which appears to him in consciousness. He must approach the artwork with an “artly consciousness” in order for it to speak to him.  

The painting, as it initially appears in consciousness, is, prima facie, something without order—a chaotic, unpleasant, and unruly work. However, upon closer examination, the work’s “thingliness” transitions into a vehicle that reveals the work’s “artliness.” The painting pulls the onlooker’s consciousness towards the burst of energy effervescing at the center of the canvas. At this explosive point, emerging out of the jumble of shapes, and figures, a knight on horseback charges out from the center of the piece—disclosing itself to the audience. However, paradoxically, the exact reversal of this is also disclosed! It is equally the case that the knight appears as being forced back into the compact center of the painting; like a genie being forced back into a lamp. A dragon’s wing flaps mid-air, and hovers next to the knight. Could the knight be fighting a dragon? All of these bursts of creative possibility and meaning are hallmarks of the disclosure of truth. This “happening of truth” is just what Heidegger defines as the core tenant of art; writing, “Thus art is: the creative preserving of truth in the work. Art then is the becoming and happening of truth.”1 Indeed, the work’s truth manifests itself in and through its disclosure to Dasein as stories. As Heidegger writes, “Truth, as the clearing and concealing of what is, happens in being composed, as a poet composes a poem. All art, as the letting happen of the advent of the truth of what is, is, as such, essentially poetry.”2 The amount of truth that the painting discloses is, in essence, unbounded and unlimited.

Magnetic Mountain is internally differentiated into discrete and continuous elements that compliment and play off each other. Interestingly, each element has its own “thingly” character, just as the painting itself has its own “thingly” character. Indeed, there is a recursion here. The painting is a “thing” with a “thingly” character and is internally differentiated into “things” that have their own “thingly” character, and so on and so on.  Like a line of dominoes being knocked down, as soon as the painting becomes an object of “artly” consciousness, its internally differentiated elements take on an “artly” character, and so on and so on without end. This “fractal-like” pattern that results in the work being a medium whereby truth is disclosed to the audience.

Kurt Seligmann’s Magnetic Mountain is a painting that challenges the audience with a winding stream of twists and turns. Its complexity, originality, and hypnotic, surrealist verve come together into a masterful work of art. With the help of Heidegger’s aesthetic theory, Magnetic Mountain is able to be appreciated, understood, and experienced in a way that reveals the power of art as a vehicle for disclosing truth.

Footnotes

[1] Heidegger, Martin. “The Origin of the Work of Art.” Art and Its Significance: An Anthology of Aesthetic Theory. Ed. Stephen David. Ross. Albany: State U of New York, 1987. 258-87. Print. 284.

[2] Ibid, 285.

The Aesthetic Theories of Schopenhauer and Hegel

One of the most famous and uncompromising rivalries in the history of Western Philosophy was the feud between the two 19th-century German thinkers: Arthur Schopenhauer and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel. Despite their differences, both thinkers shared a deep appreciation for aesthetics and the philosophy of art. Both Schopenhauer’s and Hegel’s aesthetic theories were shaped by their divergent conceptions of reality. I will first provide a brief overview of the meaning each philosopher attached to “aesthetics” and “art,” then I will provide background information that is necessary to understand the place of aesthetics in each philosopher’s Weltanschauung. I will then analyze the major components of Schopenhauer’s and Hegel’s account of art and the aesthetic experience, as well as their similarities and differences. Finally, I will conclude with an overview of Schopenhauer’s and Hegel’s philosophy of art as a whole. 

Schopenhauer’s and Hegel’s understanding of the meaning, significance, and nature of art are deeply influenced by their idiosyncratic metaphysical doctrines. Despite being idealists, and influenced by the writings of Kant, both Schopenhauer and Hegel viewed the nature of art and its relation to experience differently. For Schopenhauer, “the object of art, the depiction of which is the aim of the artist…is an Idea, in Plato’s sense, and absolutely nothing else; not the particular thing, the object of common apprehension, and not the concept, the object of rational thought and science.”1 For him, the artist endeavors to translate “objective perception” into a medium that retains the hallmark of perceptual immediacy. Likewise, the apprehension of art is characterized by “intuitive apprehension.” For Hegel, on the other hand, art is sensuous, but is also conceptual, intellectual, and fused with self-conscious thought. He writes that “art and its works as generated and created by the mind (spirit), are themselves of a spiritual nature, even if their mode of representation admits into itself the semblance of sensuous being, and pervades what is sensuous with mind. In this respect art is, to begin with, nearer to mind and its thinking activity than is mere external unintelligent nature; in works of art, mind has to do but with its own.”2 To better grasp the essence of Schopenhauer’s and Hegel’s approach to art, one must examine their aesthetic theories in light of their respective metaphysical frameworks.

In order to understand Schopenhauer’s general attitude regarding the nature of aesthetic theory, it is essential to review his metaphysic and theory of knowledge. Schopenhauer’s magnum opus, The World as Will and Idea, published in late 1818, is a work that expands upon Kant’s “Copernican Revolution” in philosophy, and undertakes to show that the world, in and through which we live and move, is of a two-fold nature: it is our idea (or Vorstellung), and our will. Like Virgil, Schopenhauer takes the reader by the hand, and opens his eyes to the endless, miserable strivings of the empirical world, and dives deep into its nature as it is in itself to find that the blind, relentless strife of empirical nature is, at bottom, grounded in the very same thing: an eternal, insatiable, and blind will. The cosmic Will, the “thing-in-itself,” is indivisibly present as the core and kernel of each and every one of its “objectifications” in idea; manifesting as the fundamental forces of nature (e.g., gravity and electromagnetism, etc.), up through unorganized matter (e.g., minerals); into organic, non-human beings (e.g., plants, aquatic life, animals, etc.); and, culminating at the apex, the highest grade of the “Objectification” of the Will: the human being. This “great chain of Being” or “pyramid” of the Will’s “Objectifications” possesses an infinite series of degrees, yet no grade is any less a manifestation of the Will than another. Schopenhauer calls the “adequate Objectification of the Will” the Platonic Idea, i.e., the genuine object of all artistic endeavors, and the object of aesthetic experience.

When understanding Hegel’s philosophy, we quickly find that Schopenhauer was his foil. While Schopenhauer held that “The world is just what it is because the will, whose manifestation it is, is what it is, because it so wills;” Hegel elevated reason and thought above all else, writing that “What is rational is actual; and what is actual is rational.”3,4 Hegel’s philosophy was founded upon the process of “Spirit” or “Mind” dialectically unfolding itself through history, eventually becoming conscious of itself as “Spirit.” Hegel’s historicism and his notion of the progressive developmental character of reality into higher forms of consciousness can be illustrated in the following passage:

“History [is] a progression in consciousness, from consciousness to self-consciousness and then to self-consciousness of self-consciousness, the giving of law reflexively to oneself as lawgiver. The process of development in consciousness is conceived by Hegel as dialectical opposing moments, conflicting principles, reconciled in a synthesis which supersedes each moment, only to undergo conflict itself and subsequent supersession. The fulfillment of the process is consciousness aware of itself as free cause of itself. This is Absolute Spirit, the Absolute Idea, realizable only through its own history, the Universal in the concrete.”5

This progression of consciousness gradually manifests itself in art; however, art, for Hegel, fails to culminate in the highest expression of Spirit; instead, religion and philosophy sublate the achievements of art and proceed to manifest themselves as the highest forms of consciousness. Hegel points out this shortcoming when he says, “There is, however, a deeper form of truth, in which it is no longer so closely akin and so friendly to sense as to be adequately embraced and expressed by [the artistic] medium…The particular mode to which artistic production and works of art belong no longer satisfies our supreme need…Thought and reflection have taken their flight above fine art.”6 And fine art encounters this “supreme need” and “deeper truth” when “it has taken its place in the same sphere with religion and philosophy.”7

Returning now to Schopenhauer, we can proceed to investigate the core principles that ground his aesthetic theory. Schopenhauer maintains that aesthetic experience has “two inseparable constituent parts—the knowledge of the object, not as individual thing but as Platonic Idea, that is, as the enduring form of this whole species of things; and the self-consciousness of the knowing person, not as individual, but as pure will-less subject of knowledge.”8 The fact that the “Platonic Idea” is the object of aesthetic experience is “due not merely to the fact that art presents things more clearly and characteristically by emphasizing the essential and eliminating the inessential, but just as much to the fact that the absolute silence of the will, required for the purely objective apprehension of the true nature of things, is attained with the greatest certainty.”9  Schopenhauer emphasizes that in the act of aesthetic apprehension, an individual transforms into a “pure will-less subject” and, being released from his own selfhood, is free from personal interests, cravings, desires, and wants. He is liberated from the pangs of his own individual will. He becomes an “eternal world-eye:”

“This eye looks out from all living beings, though with varying different degrees of clearness, and is itself, constantly one and the same, and the supporter of the world of permanent Ideas, i.e., of the adequate objectivity of the will. On the other hand, the individual subject, clouded in his knowledge by the individuality that springs from the will, has as object only particular things, and is as transient and fleeting as these themselves are.”10

For Schopenhauer, the disclosure of the Platonic Ideas of things are not concepts accessed by an individual’s rational and conceptual faculties. On the contrary, conceptual knowledge, “as a rule, remains always subordinate to the service of the will, as indeed it originated for this service, and grew, so to speak, to the will, as the head to the body.”11 However, the knowledge of the Platonic Ideas in aesthetic experience is a form of knowledge that is not subordinate to the will; indeed it is an ephemeral moment of relief wherein “knowledge breaks free from the service of the will...”12 Schopenhauer stresses the importance of genuine art being “non-conceptual;” as opposed to it being a product of abstract concepts which—Schopenhauer condemned as being the result of “will-laden” pursuits. And, since the object of art is “to facilitate knowledge of the Ideas of the world” it follows that conceptual and abstract knowledge cannot be the ground, purpose, or medium of genuine art.13 Schopenhauer provides an elegant illustration of this process:

“If, raised by the power of the mind, a man relinquishes the common way of looking at things, gives up tracing…the where, the when, the why, and the whither of things, and looks simply and solely at the what; if, further, he does not allow abstract thought, the concepts of the reason, to take possession of his consciousness, but, instead of all this, gives the whole power of his mind to perception, sinks himself entirely in this, and lets his whole consciousness be filled with the quiet contemplation of the natural object actually present, whether a landscape, a tree, a mountain, a building, or whatever it may be; inasmuch as he loses himself in this object (to use a pregnant German idiom), i.e., forgets even his individuality, his will, and only continues to exist as the pure subject, the clear mirror of the object, so that it is as if the object alone were there, without any one to perceive it, and he can no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but both have become one, because the whole consciousness is filled and occupied with one single sensuous picture…”14

On the other hand, man’s “natural attitude” is driven solely by his attention to particular things, how they may be of use to him, where they are from, what is their purpose, etc.—all of which are concerned with the principle of sufficient reason. However, in aesthetic experience, man—now the pure, will-less subject of knowledge—and the work of art—the Platonic Idea—transcend the principle of sufficient reason and cease to be subordinate to the pangs of the Will.

A notable point of intersection between Schopenhauer and Hegel is their common usage of expressions when speaking of the nature of art. For example, Hegel, like Schopenhauer, held that “the content of art is the Idea, while its form is the configuration of sensuous material.”15 We also see a similarity, albeit to a lesser extent, when Hegel writes, “the content of art that it be not anything abstract in itself, but concrete, though not concrete in the sense in which the sensuous is concrete when it is contrasted with everything spiritual and intellectual.”16 We have hitherto seen that Schopenhauer vehemently criticized the impinging of the “will-driven” intellect into the realm of aesthetic production and appreciation, and elevated the clear, purely sensuous image of perception as being the hallmark of fine art. By contrast, Hegel, held that fine art was art insofar as it was impregnated and shaped by the active and transformative power of thought—a feature that Schopenhauer held to be abstract (as opposed to “concrete”) and subordinate to the Will, and incapable of transcending the Will. More importantly, Hegel held that “Art is not, either in content or in form, the supreme and absolute mode of bringing the mind’s genuine interests into consciousness,” and that “religion” and “philosophy” captured the being of art in a truer and richer manner.17 Schopenhauer, an atheist and vehement opponent of religion, would profoundly disagree with the assertion that religion was a better expression of the truths that art sought to articulate, than art itself. On the other hand, Schopenhauer does show signs of agreement—albeit with respect to some art forms (music being an exception)—writing that “the works of poets, sculptors, and pictorial or graphic artists generally contained an acknowledged treasure of profound wisdom…yet only virtualiter or implicite. Philosophy, on the other hand, endeavors to furnish the same wisdom actualiter and explicite; in this sense philosophy is related to these arts as wine is to grapes.”18

In conclusion, the aesthetic theories of Arthur Schopenhauer and Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel are the workings of two diametrically opposed thinkers. Beginning from vastly different metaphysical standpoints, both thinkers managed to arrive at a variety of intersections of mutual agreement and reconciliation. Where differences persist, both thinkers work to solidify their theories by appealing to their respective cornerstones: Will and Thought. Overall, Schopenhauer and Hegel provide insightful analyses into the meaning, significance, and richness of art.

Footnotes

[1] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J Payne, vol. I (New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications Inc., 1969), 233. 

[2] Hegel, Georg. The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art. trans. Bernard Bosanquet. (London, England: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886), 58.

[3] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, vol. I (London, England: K. Paul, Trench, Trübner & Company, Limited, 1906), 427.

[4] Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, The Hegel Reader, ed. Stephen Houlgate (Oxford, UK, England: Blackwell Publishers, 2005), 325.

[5] G.W.F. Hegel, “Philosophy of Fine Art,” in Art and Its Significance: an Anthology of Aesthetic Theory, ed. Stephen David. Ross (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987), pp. 145-162, 145.

[6] Georg Hegel, The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. Bernard Bosanquet (London, England: Kegan Paul, Trench & Co., 1886), 53.

[7] Ibid., 48.

[8] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, vol. I, 253.

[9] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J Payne, vol. II (New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications Inc., 1966), 370.

[10] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J Payne, vol. II, 371.

[11] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, vol. I, 230.

[12] Ibid, 230.

[13] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J Payne, vol. II, 408.

[14] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Idea, trans. R.B. Haldane and J. Kemp, vol. I, 231.

[15] G.W.F. Hegel, “Philosophy of Fine Art,” in Art and Its Significance: an Anthology of Aesthetic Theory, ed. Stephen David. Ross (Albany, N.Y.: State University of New York Press, 1987), 146.

[16] Ibid., 147.

[17] Georg Hegel, The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Art, trans. Bernard Bosanquet, 52-53.

[18] Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation, trans. E.F.J Payne, vol. II (New York, N.Y.: Dover Publications Inc., 1966), 407.

“Nature Loves to Hide”

Heraclitus’s marvelous fragment, “Nature loves to hide,” should not be dismissed as mystical or esoteric. While it may be admitted that Heraclitus cloaks its meaning in rather whimsical and abstruse language, his words bear a stamp of inner truth that cannot be ignored. I argue that Heraclitus’ objective is rather straightforward, and his anthropomorphizing of “Nature” is a creative way of articulating his thoughts and capturing his audience’s attention. Apart from its style, the fragment has a twofold interpretation: (i) Heraclitus sought to convey nature as a unified whole that “hides” behind its seemingly infinite manifestations. (ii) Heraclitus wanted to expose the naïve attitude that we approach Nature with and how we fail to appreciate the fact that many of Nature’s fundamental features are never actually perceived in-themselves, but instead “hide” behind something other than what they are.

It is very likely that Plato and Aristotle would have had divergent opinions about Heraclitus’ “Nature loves to hide” remark. Plato would have likely agreed with Heraclitus and would have said that what we experience is not “Nature” proper but merely sensible copies or images of Nature’s contents as they are in themselves. Thus, Nature hides behind its fleeting, imperfect, and transitory manifestations. Aristotle would have disagreed strongly with Heraclitus and would have retaliated by saying that if Nature “loves to hide,” that would entail that Nature is in some degree unintelligible and thus render philosophical inquiry into Nature futile.

There are many examples in Nature which support Heraclitus’ argument that “Nature loves to hide.” Gravity, for instance, is not observable in-and-of-itself. It can only be “observed” as a relation between certain mediums, such as extended, material bodies. No one has ever “seen” gravity because it is invisible. Furthermore, we can come to understand gravity’s effects by observing the pushing and pulling occurring between at least two material bodies. I’ll illustrate this with a concrete example. If I drop a book on the floor, I do not “see” gravity reach out and pull the book towards the floor, rather I see the book fall from my hand and make contact with the floor below. This echoes Heraclitus’ famous fragment, “Nature loves to hide.”

The same applies to all “activity” as well. For example, I do not see the abstract concept of “running” jogging across a road, rather I see a person—a corporeal entity—running. Nobody has ever perceived “activity” without a material or sensible correlative. Activity is nothing in-itself, it is entirely abstract. In fact, one cannot even conceive of pure activity without it being in relation to a sensible medium. With that said, one could say that “activity,” like Nature, loves to hide.

Heraclitus’ words also apply to even more fundamental aspects of Nature, such as space and time. Time is never “seen,” nor can it be touched, smelled, tasted, or heard. Space is, apart from its objects, an empty void that cannot be conceived of as having any boundaries because all boundaries are in space. We perceive the passage of time through the qualitative and quantitative changes of objects. From this, we come to recognize the phenomena of time as “eroding” all sensible objects in nature. Time is the possibility of change, and it is through change that we come to know time. Without time, there can be no succession because all succession is in time. Time can neither have a beginning nor an end because all beginnings and ends are in time. Time having a “beginning” is inconceivable. Space is the possibility of co-extension, and through the relation between extended bodies that we come to understand space. Without space, there can be no position because all positions are in space. Space, like time, can neither have a beginning nor an end, because all beginnings and ends are in space. Space and time can be taken as independent from each other conceptually; however, space and time are intertwined in our experience of them. When taken by themselves, space and time wouldn’t really fall under the ontological class of “objects” proper, because they are not objects in-themselves. In fact, we cannot coherently speak of space and time using the terms that we ascribe to objects. For example, space and time (as they “appear” to us in experience) are infinitely divisible and infinitely extended; thus, we neither do justice to space nor time if we treat them as “wholes.” All “wholes” imply a boundary of sorts which rounds them off, just as a “whole” circle is confined to its area. That which is infinite in extension cannot be taken as a “whole” because all “wholes” are finite. Based on these examples, it is not at all absurd to suggest that space, time, gravity, and activity (in-itself) all “love” to hide.