Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics result from his doctrine of the primacy of the Will as the thing in itself, the ground of life and all being; and from his judgment that the Will is evil. Schopenhauer held that art offers a way for people to temporarily escape the suffering that results from willing. Basing his doctrine on the dual aspect of the world as will and representation, he taught that if consciousness or attention is fully engrossed, absorbed, or occupied with the world as painless representations or images, then there is no consciousness of the world as painful willing. Aesthetic pleasure results from experience of the world as representation [mental image or idea] without any experience of the world as will [need, craving, urge].
I agree with this when I put my own spin on it. I do think The Will is the thing in itself. Perhaps not Kant's thing in itself. But I do think it is the ground of all being and life, since God's will is such a ground. What I particular love here is S.'s belief that art allows you to escape the suffering that results from willing. I want to distinguish this 'willing' from C.S. Lewis' desire for Something otherworldly, something outside of this space/time. I believe this 'desire' is the desire to merge with The Will. I also believe in this will/representation distinction. That it is another form of Lewis' contemplation/enjoyment distinction, and Kierkegaard's subjective/objective distinction, and Nietzsche's Apollonian/Dionysian distinction. Perhaps it is this 'painful willing' which I shed for the moment that I am taken away by the music. But a part of me is suspicious, because there is an acute kind of pain which I feel during melancholy songs. But perhaps this is the feeling of catharsis, that my nameless, inner feelings are given musical expression, and the unspeakable feeling is given somewhat of a form in my consciousness, and it is in this sense that I shed 'painful willing' in S.'s sense. This sort of satisfies the thought that when we merge with God in the afterlife, the bittersweet desire that's been with me all my life will be swallowed up, that God will stoop to suit my puny representational capacities, like an ocean suits a canoe at that little part where the canoe happens to be floating.
For Schopenhauer, the Will is an aimless desire to perpetuate itself, the basis of life. Desire engendered by the Will is the source of all the sorrow in the world; each satisfied desire leaves us either with boredom, or with some new desire to take its place. A world in thrall to Will is necessarily a world of suffering. Since the Will is the source of life, and our very bodies are stamped with its image and designed to serve its purpose, the human intellect is, in Schopenhauer's simile, like a lame man who can see, but who rides on the shoulders of a blind giant.
It's amazing how close S. was to God. I wouldn't call it aimless. This is more in line with the 'elan vital' that Bergson spoke of in his book Creative Evolution. Or what Lewis hinted at when he spoke of the insolence of Nature to grow. And I think S. focused on the bad part of the Will to the exclusion of the good, and falls into the error (though a noble one) of the Buddha. I believe this Desire I have for God to be 'engendered by The Will', but I might not call it the root of all my sorrow, unless S. means the sorrow I have because that Desire isn't satisfied until Heaven. But his plan is to cut off the Will in this life for the negative of 'will-less' nirvana. He wants to remove the stomach because we're always hungry; I want to feed it eternal life. I'm with Nietzsche in thinking that S. was too negative and pessimistic, metaphysically. I love the metaphor of the intellect, like a lame man on the shoulders of a blind giant.
Schopenhauer's aesthetics is an attempt to break out of the pessimism that naturally comes from this world view. Schopenhauer believed that what distinguished aesthetic experiences from other experiences is that contemplation of the object of aesthetic appreciation temporarily allowed the subject a respite from the strife of desire, and allowed the subject to enter a realm of purely mental enjoyment, the world purely as representation or mental image. The more a person's mind is concerned with the world as representation, the less it feels the suffering of the world as will. Schopenhauer analysed art from its effects, both on the personality of the artist, and the personality of the viewer.[1]
It's interesting that even S. thought his philosophy was pessimistic. His solution, which I have complete understanding with, is that aesthetic experience is a temporary release. I feel intensely a sort of self-forgetfulness when I listen to War Pigs by Black Sabbath. My attention is focused completely outer and other. I melt away. Because of the 'contemplation of the object'. But it's a special kind of contemplation only possible because of Lewis' 'enjoyment' (as distinct from Lewis' brand of contemplation, inspired by Samuel Alexander). This is why it is then called 'purely mental enjoyment'. This probably completely explains the peace I feel with the so-called problem of suffering when I watch that part in the movie Philadelphia when Tom Hanks' character narrates during the Opera. Or why God answered Job the way He did in The Book of Job, in the spirit of the way The Tree of Life did it.
"Perhaps the reason why common objects in still life seem so transfigured and generally everything painted appears in a supernatural light is that we then no longer look at things in the flux of time and in the connection of cause and effect …. On the contrary, we are snatched out of that eternal flux of all things and removed into a dead and silent eternity. In its individuality the thing itself was determined by time and by the [causal] conditions of the understanding; here we see this connection abolished and only the Platonic Idea is left." (Manuscript Remains, Vol. I, § 80)
Wow. Perfectly said. We are 'snatched out of that eternal flux'. Doesn't all art do this? And this is the sense in which only the Platonic Idea is left. Through art we can harness the Platonic Ideas. I couldn't agree with him more.
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