Appendix

Chapter 41: Towards an Ontology of the Aesthetic Object

a) The strata of the aesthetic object and ontic strata

Why art is not imitation was discussed above. Not all art is even representation. There is, however, an inner homogeneity between representational and non-representational art – it extends all the way into ornamental art, in the free play with form, which is not in any way similar to any given forms. And yet all art remains close to what is real. Indeed, if it separates itself from reality, it is untrue to life.

Why does art stay so close to life, to being? Why is this true not only for literature and painting, but also for music and architecture? Because existent things are reflected in all art. All art must lay a claim to the true-to-life. That means it has a tendency to see as we see in life, through the external appearance, concretely, intuitively, in part also veiled and hidden by the appearance. That is even true of music and architecture; with them, the relation is concealed only by the specific matter upon which it bestows form. It is most visible in the representational arts. But how do they represent?

That turned out to be quite clear: they represent by means of the appearance-relation, and this relation is then in turn active in the series of strata; it goes on from stratum to stratum (Cf. Chaps. 11–15). So far the structure of the object remained constant. But there is still another question to be posed: how is it with these strata, how does the aesthetic object come to them? Why is the appearance-relation active precisely in them?

The answer to this question cannot be given via another description of these strata, as has been done here earlier. Nor it is a question of the foundations: how are these strata in the aesthetic object – which after all, repeat themselves in a certain analogous way in the various domains of art – related to the universal ontic strata of the real world?

On the one hand, they remind us specifically of the ontic strata, but on the other hand there are more of them, and the importance does not lie as much upon there being a great distance between the strata, but rather in part upon much shorter leaps. The question is perhaps (458) without importance for aesthetics. But it is of great interest for ontology. For here we have the opportunity to test out the import of the stratification of being.

This must now be stated clearly: at bottom, in the aesthetic object, the same ontic strata exist that make up the constitution of the real world. Briefly and simply, there are four: Thing (sensible) – Life – Soul – World of Spirit; but each one can be broken down further, and broken down in fact very differently in the different arts.

Thus, in painting, for example, the lowest ontic stratum is already broken down into 1) the two-dimensional surface of the picture, with its flecks of color; 2) the three-dimensional spatial field with its apparent space and apparent light; and 3) the appearance of motion in the figures; the apparent animation of the figures begins only with a fourth stratum. In painting, specifically, the outer strata are the most important. Only behind them begin the elements corresponding to the higher ontological strata: that of the psychic realm, of human character, the stage setting, etc.

It is informative to contrast here something quite different, i.e., the art of literature in its larger formats: drama, the epic, and the novel. Here too, we have the same series of strata as in the existing things upon which they are based, but the way they are divided up is different, and their relative importance is differently distributed.

The stratum of sensible objects is represented by nothing more than language (speech, writing); likewise, the stratum upon which animation appears is represented only by that of motion and gesture (apparent or real – by means of the actor –). The psychic stratum lies in character and response; the spiritual stratum can be broadly analyzed as follows: 1) situation and plot, 2) destiny, 3) ideal personality, 4) universal idea. There is a peculiar feature here: a partial stratum of the spiritual is prior even to the psychic (it is a foreground element in relation to the latter). That may lie in the human way of seeing; for the beholder, the situation and action are more immediately apparent than are the elements of character.

It is again different in music. In the external strata, we arrive quickly at the limit to which sounds can be heard together as unities; beyond that limit larger musical unities are superimposed upon each other, and, as such, they are not given to the senses. Yet behind these a further series of strata appears, but of a different kind. Among them the psychic has by far the preponderance; but the stratum of animation is also not lacking there, similarly not that of the spiritual, which again can be analyzed further.

Here in the inner strata, the ontic series of strata is easy to rediscover. In the outer strata, that is not so easy. For the latter, the reason is that form is bestowed upon quite different matter – and without any claim to representation. Mutatis mutandis, the same is true for architecture, where heterogeneity is still rather coarse.

The general ontological strata of the world are not everywhere so easily recognizable as in literature, but on the whole they can be identified. The foreground strata are the most vacillating and irregular (459); these stand so strongly under the law of aesthetical matter that the basic ontic law of the strata disappears behind their uniqueness.

One may ask: why, at bottom, must the ontic strata of the real recur in the strata of the work of art? The answer is because the represented objects all contain the same ontic series of strata – expressed more correctly: in so far as they stretch upward into the higher strata, yet retain the lower ones (following the law that the lower strata are the ones that bear, the higher the ones that are borne). In the representational arts, almost every material extends into the human sphere; and since man has all four strata in himself, those must therefore reappear in the representation of the human.

It is therefore very important that an artist does not omit any stratum. If he does, he will immediately become abstract and conceptual, lacking in vividness –like the poet who psychologizes instead of letting his characters speak and act, and in that way reveal themselves. We see, hear, and experience in life the soul and spirit about us in no other way than by the mediation of the psychical-psychic, existential stratum, on which alone we are bound directly by our senses, and, as in life everything else is already given mediately, so too in art. Art takes advantage of these facts. That is the ontic sense of the appearance-relation.

b) Convergence of all great art

Now the general order of things in this context is, in general, that the ontically higher strata lie concealed deeper down in the interior of the work of art and appear only through the transparency of the outer strata. That has an ontic basis: the arts direct themselves towards the senses, but the senses are tied to the physical, and can allow further matters to be grasped only by their mediation. This point of departure cannot be shifted or exchanged. For the fact is that the senses directly communicate nothing that is psychical or living, absolutely nothing but the material world – that which belongs to the broad area of the physical. For that reason, the ontically higher strata must be the aesthetically “deeper” ones. Then, too, nothing can be traded away from this relationship. It is valid, with only slight alterations, for all regions of the arts. And that is also true for human and natural beauty.

But then something quite strange appears. The outer strata, as we have seen, are everywhere different; within the arts, they deviate from each other considerably – the material substances in which the arts work are also of completely different kinds, yet it is through them that the outer strata are determined. One cannot shape the same forms in stone as in tones, in words as in colors.

In comparison, closely related and in many respects almost identical, are the last inner strata; indeed to a certain extent not only just the last ones, for even in the deeper middle strata there begins a convergence. That is not so strange (460) as it may seem. The last inner strata are those having the character of ideas, and the universally human is, after all, what is held in common. What has, however, the nature of an individual idea – the idea of personality – is unusual even in great and profound works of art (we consider here only the representational arts). And when the individual idea is present, it never opposes itself to the universal, but makes it stand out even more prominently by means of the contrast.

But even in the remaining inner strata – those lying more shallow – we see the same tendency toward identity. Human destinies repeat themselves, and they are reencountered in quite different characters; human characters fall entirely under a certain typology, of which we quickly apprise ourselves. These common characteristics, which easily impose themselves upon us, are those that often dominate entirely here, while the others of less importance disappear. This process is different in the inner strata from that in the outer, and it affects the non-representational arts, because in their inner strata the same psychic existence is expressed, and, indeed, in much greater universality.

From this standpoint, it becomes understandable why there exist certain kinship phenomena that pass through the entire domain of artistic creativity. The extraordinary diversity of the arts in the appearances of both a sensible and nearly sensible form has its compliment in the uniformity of their inner contents –and these contents must not be understood merely as raw material, but as fully formed content.

And there we come upon a phenomenon that has often been noticed by aestheticians, but that has never really been explained: namely, the overall kinship among the heterogeneous arts, indeed even quite heterogeneous works of art – if one understands them primarily in their depths, or seeks out works of the great epochs and masters and leaves aside less significant ones.

One can express the matter, very cautiously and in abbreviated fashion, as follows. All art works of slight or even of a more median value diverge immensely and are hardly comparable; but, in contrast, all truly great works of art converge and come close to an impalpable identity.

This process of convergence expresses itself in no other way than this: we experience what is otherwise heterogeneous nonetheless as kindred. Thus the Parthenon and [J.S. Bach’s] Art of the Fugue, the ceiling of the Sistine Chapel (perhaps in the figures of youths or of the Prophets) and Shakespeare’s Henry IV (including the figure of Falstaff), Rembrandt’s self-portrait in old age (Amsterdam) 154 and the Apollo on the pediment [of the temple of Zeus] at Olympia, Beethoven’s fifth or seventh symphony. …

No one can say wherein the kinship of what is entirely heterogeneous lies. We can only point to the fact we experience the kinship as such. Specifically: when we experience it in that way. For all of us may not sense it; indeed not all of us can, but only those who penetrate with their eyes to the deepest and most inward domain. (461)

When looked at fleetingly, such monumental works have very little to do with each other, they are inescapably different in kind; one cannot easily find a common genus. One must simply dig very deeply – then surely the kinship will become convincing.

That is not easy to demonstrate. Take Rembrandt’s portrait as an old man –an entirely ordinary man – with a somewhat peculiar look in his eyes – it is not easy to go further. But something makes us take notice: the state of being marked by something in the form of destiny, by tragic greatness, stands over the whole, as though the fate of all men were reflected in that face. And then it dawns on us: something of ourselves is reflected there, too.

Or the Art of the Fugue. Music can have the deepest transparency, but only when it comes before us bearing the highest standards. That is the miracle of Bach’s fugues. Externally, it is the driest music one can imagine, much like a school exercise. Internally it is most moving, most profound in meaning; indeed it is virtually the most inward in its emotional force, and truly metaphysical in its power to lift a man above himself and to seize him and turn him about in his deepest inwardness. It is full of challenges, and is tied to conditions that not many men are capable of meeting. And yet it possesses the greatest directness in the manner of its revelation.

That is characteristic of all great art – of the truly rare ones – which come to be only once in a thousand years. Then, too, not all great art draws such a circle of exclusivity about itself as does the fugue; for that reason, great art is not so salient in all of its domains.

What is the explanation of this peculiar phenomenon? It is now easy to give: in all domains of art, the final inward strata are relatively identical, or at least converge to a high degree, and so too in part the strata located immediately before them. For everywhere in those regions man is in question; however, in the background of man’s nature some moral or metaphysical “Something” always lies. Just because great art reaches down into those depths and can allow them to appear after their own manner – and that is done by every truly great work of art –, it must be aimed at a convergence with other art of its kind.

In that way, we receive the impression of close kinship among quite heterogeneous works. The predominance of the last inner strata constitutes the convergence. In fact, upon their background the much more shallow and external series of the outer strata disappears when one at last has penetrated their depths. And that is so despite the variety and peculiarities of the outer strata.

Another matter is connected to this one: this convergence of the greatest in all great art is at the same time a convergence upon the sublime. For the sublime is that kind of beauty in which the inner strata have unconditional predominance.

That is implied by theory. One may compare with respect to this the convergences mentioned above: the Doric temple, Bach’s counterpoint, Shakespeare’s histories, etc. They are all pure examples of the sublime. And other examples of the sublime that are just as pure are Michelangelo’s (462) prophets and youths, Rembrandt’s self-portrait in old age, the Olympian Apollo, Beethoven’s symphonies.

In all of this, one thing remains quite puzzling. To great art – especially in its masterworks – belongs more than the mere preponderance of the last inner strata: precisely as works of art these creations can be perfect only when they also demonstrate adequately that form has been bestowed upon the outer strata, so that they are able to reveal its profundities with shapes that have clarity and animation.

But how does it happen that in very great works of art we find adequacy of form along with profundity of idea? As though both did not demand very different talents of the artist! One may put the question in this form: why do techniques in execution demanded by the arts and profundity of content (of the idea) go hand in hand in superlatively great artists? … Why are they widely separated in artists of a lesser order? We have the answer in our feelings: only in imperfect efforts do these two elements become separated; in their perfection, they are not even two distinct gifts, but rather two sides of this same gift.

How does this finally occur? It is simpler than it appears. Consider: the artist does not grasp at all the idea of his work in an abstract intellectual or conceptual way, but rather in an inward vision; this is at the same time a sketch of how form will be bestowed even upon the sensible foreground. And, we must add: great works of art come into existence only where these two aspects of inward contemplation are there from the very beginning, and supplement each other adequately. That happens only rarely; and even in the case of the greatest masters, it does not always occur, but in especially fortunate cases they are brought together as a unity. It is an error to think that such strokes of genius simply have to converge frequently. And we commit this error only because we are careless in our artistic judgment, and hold many things to be great that are far from earning that title.

c) The disappearance of individual strata and leapfrogging

The account given regarding the relation of the objective ontic and the aesthetical strata – that it is at bottom a question of the same stratification, stricter in the former, relaxed and split open in the latter – must not be understood pedantically. Individually the strata cannot be recognized at a first glance: usually several aesthetical strata take the place of a single ontic one. The splitting open of the stratification is what disguises the relation.

In any case, the principle is that here is given the point of intersection between the ontological analysis of general categories and the aesthetical analysis of objects. It would be quite false to divorce the fundamental features of aesthetics from those of ontology; that would also run contrary to the meaning of the theory of categories. This does not extend itself to (463) the real sphere of being alone, but indirectly also to every kind of sphere of appearance.

Here we meet with some oblique questions. One of these asks what happens if an ontic stratum is omitted from a work of art. It is true that, as a whole, the appearance-relation passes from stratum to stratum without any leaps. It does happen, however – first of all in narrations – that the stratum of life – of active movement and the images of persons – can be leapfrogged over, and that in that way the writer brings us directly into the psychic situation. We are encouraged here by the capacity of language to touch even human inwardness directly and, indeed, to do so in a rather conceptual and abstract way. It should of course be understood that in such cases any further transparency fails. At the very last, it will be a bit unclear and, with that, inartistic. This is even clearer in painting. Where the living quality of the figures does not come to appear in a vivid and striking way, the elements in them of deep feeling, character, and morality will also not be clear.

One should not carry these implications too far. It is not as if each stratum for itself must be worked out thematically. It may very well be that at times one of them “disappears” – that is, for the eyes that are peering through it – simply because the transparency of the next stratum in the series predominates, and, as it were, “devours” it. That does not mean that the middle stratum must be “lacking.” Rather, it must be present, but it does not appear as an object. In any case, such disappearance has its limits. Beyond those, it has a destructive effect upon the pictorial element of the appearance.

Something similar occurs even in music although it is not directly represented. That is the case wherever the composer wishes to produce directly, as by magic, some effects upon the emotions without allowing them to grow organically out of the structure of the tonal composition. Such music seems shallow and unjustifiably pretentious.

This easily happens, of course, in literature. In such cases, the narrator speaks in concepts rather than in clear, living images. The thought may be expressed very beautifully and may even have a kind of pictorial quality, but it does not grow out of the composition of the material and is instead loosely placed on top of it; thereby the compositional unity is once more in jeopardy.

Very great writers have become victims of this danger. It is a temptation for the highly experienced writer rich with ideas – quite possibly those writers who are highly interested in philosophical matters – to compose in thought rather than in characters and scenes. The greatest example of this is the late Goethe, who was no longer capable of creating tightly organized works, except in a minor literary form, lyric poetry.

This example immediately demonstrates, moreover, that a large dose of intellectual material, when it is weighty and has a unique, tightly constructed form, may still be borne by a work. Thought, for its part can have a pictorial quality (464) even when the picture does not grow out of the total composition. But then, of course, the unity of the greater whole is lost, and the work comes close to being a loose concatenation of thoughts bearing images. That can go so far that one always hears the author lecturing on his opinions – instead of seeing him develop a piece of interconnected life. …

By far the greatest and most pure art works through our inner vision, and uses words only to awaken the imagination, so that the reader sees the figures come and go, speak and fall silent. That is the natural way of the artist: pure letting-appear. In that respect, literature at bottom is no differently situated from the fine arts. One is more easily deceived by it, however, if one lets oneself be roped in by words, and thereby forget the meaning of poetry. Within certain limits, mere fantasy alone, once it is aroused, is capable of leaping over the empty space left by omitted or only vaguely suggested strata.

Genuinely vivid appearance fails then, to be sure, and concreteness becomes fragile and cracked; yet this does not cause everything to collapse at once. Rather, what is intended to “appear” is now only “guessed at” by means of suggestion, and since such guessing plays a broad role even in the vivid appearance-relation, this requirement does not immediately destroy artistic unity.

Nonetheless, such unity is possible only when, in all the remaining elements, the appearance-relation is intact. That means that on one side and the other of the break in the series of strata the appearance-relation retains the necessary unbroken force of vivid clarity. If not, poetry turns into discussion, and art into the discursive expression of lived experience. And it is well known how easy it is to pass beyond those limits.

What we have before us in such cases is in itself a broader phenomenon of literature. A very flowing borderline is in force here, and there are no clear barriers to speak of that make themselves directly felt. However, a touch of poetry may be found in many scientific presentations, most strongly in the historical, but then too in the philosophical ones.

The last case is seen in all of the greater thinkers. And that could not be otherwise, because, for the philosopher, the conceptualizations already at hand are always insufficient: he must turn to vivid images. Plato and Nietzsche are only extreme cases of this, but at bottom Hegel and Kant have hardly less traces of literary quality. This can go so far that it may put a thinker in danger of playing with fantasy.

But when we ignore even such matters, which obviously lie on the far side of a flowing border, we are faced with a broken appearance-relation even this side of the border. It is “broken” by the breach of transparency, which, properly, should pass through uninterruptedly an intact sequence of the middle strata. (465)

The case is simply that the entire appearance-relation does not fail just because of this. For it is precisely here that the active imaginative capacity leapfrogs over the empty space. We are in any case already too inured by life to such breaches; we are, so to speak, adapted to their appearance. And with utmost ease, the power of supplementation goes to work in our fantasy, which keeps a storehouse of developed forms at the ready.

In certain cases, it takes a special poetic technique to leapfrog artistically over a stratum. The reader is challenged to contribute a powerful synthetic act of fantasy; he experiences the imputation of this capacity to him as a stimulus, and can inwardly grow from it.

d) Two kinds of limits to artistic ability

The question of the limits of artistic ability is connected with these reflections. What do we know of these limits? After reflecting carefully, one must admit: we know very little of them. For the absence of a certain kind of gift or of certain peculiarities of character tells us nothing that we did not know or already understood under the term “talent.” It is rather more useful to point to its objective preconditions.

We find that we can say something quite specific if we base ourselves on the perspective of strata: the failure of a created work with reference to the claims that it makes lies always in the relative absence of the real foreground. It never depends upon the lack of a deeper stratum. The breaking off of the series of strata before the last possible stratum is, for art, not an error or a lack; it means only that the art work has entered the domain of a simpler or shallower genre, and thus it renounces greater depth. Such a work can never rise to the level of sublimity, but it can to all levels of the charming, the comic, and the beautiful in general, such as we can see in all simple art, insofar as it has achieved some standing. No doubt, however, the simple forms of art in all areas incline towards the loss of such standing.

Why does it have this tendency? Because the deeper strata are the ones that sternly demand of creativity the achievement of its high tasks. They command insistently a tightness of form, unity, and the appearance-relation, while the outer strata leave greater latitude to the artist and can have an effect just by themselves. Such works cannot achieve the highest levels of beauty – those levels that converge upon the sublime. But that is not to be required of every art (recall what was said in Chap. 18c about shallow and profound art).

While we thus see that the absence of the last inner strata is compatible with having aesthetic value, absence in the foreground and in the outer strata lying near to it is a failure of concreteness, clarity, and animation. One could also say it is an absence of transparency. As a result, the appearance-relation itself comes in danger; it is disturbed and (466) broken. A lack in the outer strata is either something unlovely or a sign that we are not dealing with an aesthetic object at all.

The limits of artistic ability lie, when viewed from this standpoint, in two opposite directions. 1. In becoming shallow – when the inner strata lack weight. In this case, only the deeper effects are lacking, not aesthetical attractiveness; greatness and proximity to the sublime are lacking, but not at all charm, allure, loveliness, magic; not even a carefree innocence. 2. In what is unclear – when form is lacking in the outer strata, or too much of one form is absent. This is the failure of artistry proper, of falling into abstraction or ambition (without capacity). Here lies all botched amateurism, indeed almost all dilettantism (in the bad sense), and, in extreme cases, all kitsch.

What does amateurism consist in? Just in this, that a person cannot express what he has before his mind, but he tries to force the matter with false or inadequate means – especially when he is unaware of what is happening, when he does not notice what damage he does. …

The essence of art, as of all genuine “ability,” consists precisely in the creator reaching after the only correct resource with the certainty of a sleepwalker, and in fact finding the form after which he is searching. He may search for it in an agonizing struggle and experimentation, but in the end, it must be such that when he has once found it, he is also sure of it, that is, he recognizes with intuitive certainty that this is the appropriate form.

Yet we must make still another thing clear. Absolute perfection in the success of what the artist desired may be assumed only in very uncommon cases. No doubt, artistic ability grows in a person along with the greatness of his tasks. But on both sides – that of profundity and that of clarity – his limits remain attached to him. In a practical sense, we deal with the imperfect in art as in all human undertakings – if one may say so, with unachieved tasks.

This insight is important on both sides.

1. A clear consciousness exists in the creative artist that corresponds to this situation: critical knowledge of many of his half-baked efforts and poorly executed works, a consciousness, which often afflicts him, of his not having been able to do better; a vision of the distance between what he has seen into intuitively or of what he has dreamed, and what he has achieved. Overall, one may say: the greater the artist, the stronger the consciousness of failure – if only because his ambitions lie so much higher. And since the greater artist has the greater ability, one may say also: the more marked the ability, the stronger the awareness of inability.

Here also lies the reason why creative people are so often sensitive about criticism at the hands of others: just because he knows better about where he has in fact not been successful, he has a passionate need (467) to be recognized and understood at least in what he is trying to achieve. The alien critic does the opposite: he rejects even what was successful, because he does not see what it was aiming at, and what should really have been achieved by it. Thus he rubs salt on the most painful spot. …

2. The reverse phenomenon also occurs in observers: an inchoate knowledge of the real impact of the failure, and, as a result, a clairvoyant beholding of what was really desired and sought after. For this process in an observer, the deficiencies in the work are not purely negative (modi deficientes), but eminently positive points of departure for his own active artistic powers. These powers do not have to be trained in art, they do not even become creative on their own; it is sufficient that they inwardly activate themselves as after-creativity and let themselves be led by what has been given to the senses, and in that way arrive upon the heights of the original conception of the artist.

One can call this the higher way of enjoying a great work of art. What is lacking in the work is sensed so strongly that it becomes a positive challenge, and the observer, without suspecting how active he has become, enjoys his own activity along with the work. He rises up as a co-creator who perfects the imperfect – in the same way that the actor rises up in a dramatist’s masterwork as a co-dramatist.

Chapter 42: On the Historicity of the Arts

a) Historical stability and mutability of great art

How does one recognize “great art”? Idle question! One feels it in the face of its overpowering immediacy – or one does not feel it. In the latter case, if one does not have an organ for it, then one does not need to know, for no knowledge can replace the organ, and such a person is in any case excluded. Yet the question has a meaning, if one understands it objectively – not for the sake of any practical use, but as a question about the external essential signs of “great art.” What is assumed here is that as an inner trace of essence, the greater importance must be found in the last inner strata and in the adequate transparency of the outer strata.

One essential outward sign was touched upon in the previous chapter. It consists in the phenomenon of convergence, where, characteristically, the focal point of such convergence lies in the region of the sublime. But this feature is directed at a very delicate artistic sensibility. It would be strange if there were no other features of it that were more tangible.

Of course, there are such. But they lie where one would not expect. The most important of them are found in the domain of the historicity of works of art. What specifically is strange about this is that greater works of art (468) do not descend into history and fade away in time, but rather ascend. This ascending means that they do not only maintain continuously the living objective spirit within themselves, but that they also bear fruit, and permit ever-new interpretations; in this way, they, the works, themselves give to other times things ever different and ever new. Thus they show themselves to be inexhaustible.

We spoke above about how all objectivations that do have their entire detail not in themselves but external to themselves, descend into history. So descend concepts, also, because they are only living so long as they are present to intuitive vision and are fully given with the same intuitive content to every thinking person.

This content, however, does not lie within the concepts, but outside of them, usually in the interconnections of an entire theory (that means literally of a total vision); the latter itself consists in an entire system of concepts, judgments, etc. The single concept receives from such a system of concepts its life, its meaning, and its content; when it is separated from that system it becomes empty of content, and its meaning can no longer be restored. One can reconstruct it only by a return to the system of concepts out of which it grew.

Only what has its entire content in itself can ascend, and that means that it not only has the laws of its form in itself, but also its detail and its inward multiplicity. Only then is it possible that the characters of a literary work can be understood in ever-new ways and thus offer concrete possibilities for interpretation; that a musical composition can undergo ever new interpretations and thereby grow beyond itself; that a painting says new things to new epochs; and a work of architecture speaks to other and different men with a grandeur that is always new.

Again, that is valid only for very great works of art. Only they contain everything in themselves, detail and formal lawfulness. Lesser work cannot stand fast before changes in the historical spirit of an age. Here we have a genuine criterion of “great art.” This is of practical importance also. For an individual by himself does not understand through his autonomous sense of values what is surpassingly great.

Here we have touched upon the point at which life and art reveal themselves as close correlatives: namely the historical life of the spirit and the specific, historically conditioned art of an epoch – with (469) the contingent tendencies of its preferences, its tastes, its aims, and its style.

This is, in itself, not strange. Art comes out of life and returns naturally back into life, as does all objectified spirit. It can also not put itself at too great a distance from life, although art seems to resist life and isolate itself. What is strange, however, is that precisely the artistically highest creations turn out to be the most potent in history. Given great art’s tendency to self-isolation, we should expect precisely the opposite. And as far as this tendency is concerned, it clearly consists just in the way the individual work of art is set off against the contexts of life.

But that is precisely the great deception: even as observers, we sense upon our own selves the state of separation; the work forces us into its world, to another place and another time, to other events and other life, and, as a result, we think that it has lifted us out of the entire real world and that art itself belongs to an entirely different world. In truth, the work is simply the unique moment, the locus in the context of the real, out of which we have been forced. We remain a part of life, even while enraptured. Otherwise, the claim of the work of art to being true to life would have no sense.

The ascent of great works in the course of time is the unambiguous sign that the rootedness of art in historical life is essential to it, but that, at the same time, it is essential to life. In this great phenomenon, art in fact gives back to life compound interest upon what it received from life. Although, in every epoch of art, only very few works reach this height and everything else sinks into the ash-heap of history, these few great works still suffice to pay back richly the debt of art to historical life.

Something further must be said in this connection: namely that in the historical “ascent” of great masterpieces, the element of imperfection plays an entirely affirmative role. We saw earlier such a turn from the negative to the positive; the one now at hand will cause no further wonderment. But in this case, a different role is at stake.

The imperfection of great works does not consist in an error or an aberration, but rather more in a certain indeterminacy and generality, which challenges the fantasy of the observer, the performer, or the interpreter to supplement it and fulfill it intuitively. Great works of art are static only within certain outlines; in order to take possession of them, one must complete their writing, their painting, and their composition. It is all the same whether one executes that task either in mere seeing, hearing, and reading, or in acting it out, playing it back, etc.

This genuinely active work of the audience is what lifts a work beyond passive appreciation. Naturally, that is only when the audience (470) brings to the work the preconditions of such active appreciation. Furthermore, an entire generation can grow to meet these preconditions, if it stands under the weight of the demands that great works make upon their audience. Under such conditions, it is clear that precisely a certain kind – or perhaps one should say a certain “degree” –of imperfection in a work of art itself works to its advantage: it is not to its disadvantage, but rather to its merit, that there is still something about it that needs to be completed, to be supplemented. That keeps men, keeps whole epochs under its spell. …

b) The tendency back towards life. Enchainment and inspiration

The function that the arts and aesthetical life in general exert in history depends upon these matters. It is not a question here only of the highest tasks that fall to the lot of surpassingly great art, i.e., of spiritual leadership and direction, of the formation of ideals, the revelation of new concepts of form and the moral education of the epoch. It is a question also of less significant factors, which, as they are omnipresent and attached to creations of a lesser greatness, carry considerable weight. For all objectified spiritual goods tend back towards life. That is a consequence of their attachment to some stable material out of which they are fashioned.

Given this, it is no puzzle why there is the reverse tendency. Recall the members of the threefold relation. Alongside of matter and the bestowal of form is a third thing, the beholding living spirit, whether it appears in the individual, as personal spirit, or in an epoch as objective spirit. This spirit undergoes change, it is always different, and, depending on whether it brings with itself the conditions of a specific kind of beholding or not, the work of art either exists for the objective spirit or it does not. But since any extant objectification at all is there only “for” some person, one can also say: according to the presence or absence of the beholder, the work of art exists or it does not exist at all.

The historical strangeness here is that the existence of works of art has periodic empty spots. There are times that art seems to have disappeared from the very earth and only the “foregrounds” of physicality and reality loiter in museums and libraries, and at other times they are there and vigorously assert their presence – all this according to whether an adequately receptive spirit presents itself or not. Such persons do not come when they are called, yet there is a kind of omnipresence about them – they stand “waiting,” so to speak, on the far side of the current spiritual life – and wait for the appearance of a spirit adequate for them; when that appears, they too are there again, resurrected, “reborn.”

Now because the living spirit is mutable and, where it strives towards its full maturity, it wins over ever again the organ specific to artistic beholding, there recurs a renaissance of the art of the past. Or, to express the matter in reverse: for that reason, there is always a return of art to life. (471)

Very different effects can be tied to this return. Spiritual goods of the past can fructify, can awaken slumbering powers and encourage autonomous activity, but they can also put the living spirit in chains and, as it were, cripple it. The first case happens in a genuine renaissance, the second where a more youthful and still undeveloped culture is overrun by an older, fully mature one. Thus Roman literature was once overrun by the Greek, thus later the Germanic culture by the late Roman. We see that this occurs not only in the arts; it is true for the entire life of the spirit, and is easier to see in the arts just because its works stand as witnesses to the process in all its phases.

However, both kinds of consequences do not in fact limit themselves to striking upsurges. Rather, there is such enchainment and liberation on a small scale at every time and place. Whenever there is vital activity in one of the arts, it struggles with received forms in order to liberate itself from them; yet at the same time, it goes looking for great models, because it cannot do without the inspiration they give to it.

From this, we are quick to see that the strongest enchainment always emanates from art of slighter value, not from very great art. And when a justifiable reaction begins, when the living spirit defends itself from the danger of such chains and tries to shake them off, it does not as a rule turn away from truly great and surpassing art, but from the huge mass of lesser and mediocre works. For it is not the former but the latter that is burdensome – although the spiritual influence that emanates from the great works has, at bottom, the greater weight.

Why that is so seems at first to be obscure; and one might almost be willing to assume providential powers in the history of spirit, which are kind enough to protect men from incalculable errors. But in truth, the situation is simpler.

The preponderance of this huge mass of works of lesser quality exists, for the most part, only for its own time: in its epoch, great and small talents come to the fore, and it is difficult for a contemporary to distinguish them, for he has to struggle with many innovations, which he, as a layman, cannot follow. No one, even the connoisseur, can judge at first sight where a new trend is leading; he must wait a bit, look carefully, and retrain himself; and, frequently, an entire lifetime is insufficient to deal with it all.

It is otherwise when generations have passed through these developments. These generations have done the work of vetting; the bulk of the lesser works has vanished, one no longer knows of them, and no longer has to grapple with them. … What remains are the great works that have established themselves. These need not be the greatest works alone; there always remain many works that challenge us to a struggle. But the preponderance of what remains in the spiritual inheritance of an age are still the works that have the power to liberate rather than to enchain. (472)

But if one now asks what is the significance of the fact that it is just the great works of the past that are left to an age, the answer must be: its significance is that these are continuously inspiring; they win us to them and give us direction, but do not enchain us. And they do not “enchain” because they do not tie the work of the appreciating recipient to specific details; they do not bind tightly but rather loosen the bestowing of form in the outer strata. Their effective influence is in general one of depth; and the techniques of an art can very well grow under such tutelage, as under a very high set of standards. But it will not let itself be stifled, as under schoolmasterly rules.

Closely related is the fact that the authority of a work increases considerably with its historical antiquity. We sense this antiquity itself as its venerability, and we mean by that nothing more than the pre-eminent power we accord to its active influence. Very great art has its strongest effect when it has long ago become “historical.” Its works and its figures have then become mythical, which, so to speak, creates a world of its own. Even the figure of the creator can rise to the level of myth. With that, of course, both are reconfigured by the living spirit and receive a new face.

c) On life in the Idea 155

It is a widespread opinion, one almost become legendary, that what enables the artist to create is a “life in the Idea,” which also enables the observer to assimilate art properly. Along with these opinions, one always thinks of the relatively rare and great works of art that shake the world, not of the great mass of lesser achievements. One denies of these latter that they were born out of ideas; yet one asserts it of the former. Thus we have two opinions without any orientation at all as to how this “Idea” should be conceived. What is it, really?

There is of course a “life in the Idea” – better, perhaps, to say a creation out of ideas. But it is not what the Idealists take it to be; and it in no wise concerns all art, but only great art. For it is not a question here of the mind’s intuitive gaze –neither in the Platonic sense nor in that of the phenomenologists – also not of the grasping in mente “the one Idea” in Hegel’s sense – which would presuppose an entire metaphysics of spirit – but of something quite different.

This quite different thing is an active-creative, synthetically formal beholding of something that lies over and beyond all real existence. Thus it is a beholding that has nothing more to do with a beholding of existing things, but rather brings into the world, so to speak, non-existent being, i.e., that which never was.

Such beholding is of course not peculiar to artists. The ethical man brings it about, the statesman, who posits great goals for the future, even, on a smaller scale, everyone who works and effects change. However, (473) these agents are then all burdened with realizing what they have beheld, and they must sweat to achieve it.

The artist is not burdened in this way. He realizes nothing at all; he only lets appear, only represents. For that reason he possesses that other kind of freedom that asserts its right to pure possibility without necessity and without a long chain of conditions.

But it is not just that one advantage alone that an artist has over the practical man. He has a quite different talent: he can show, clearly and objectively, what the idea he has grasped looks like. That is his special quality, one that he shares with no one else. The ethical man leads a life in the Idea no less that the artist, likewise the statesman, the practically effective men of all kinds, as far as they survey only what is beyond the given. But none of them can communicate what they have beheld in the Idea, and none can make it concretely visible and palpable, and thereby let it become a determining factor in life. Only the artist can do that, because he “lets it appear,” living and vital, and therefore convincing –although it remains unreal. Only the artist can do what, according to the faith of believers, otherwise only God can do: reveal.

He does not have life in the idea for himself alone, but certainly the power to reach from this life to the real life of men, to hold before their eyes a light and an image that shows them what they do and what they ought to be. The artist does not do that by uttering, “thou shalt!” but by planting in men’s hearts a longing that will not let them go.

Here we meet with the prophetic quality in an artist, with vates in poeta [the seer in the poet], with moral leadership in the poet as the bearer of ideas. He does not need to know this himself. He must only be such that the beheld Idea works itself through his creative activity.

The beholding of the Idea passing through the multitude of strata and their variegated contents is the revelation sent forth by the artist. This act is identical to the many-tiered depths of transparency, which now and then is achieved in great artistic works. For it is precisely there that the artist arrives at the last stratum, and what is in that stratum appears in living form on the figures that are beheld there.

Among the variety of levels of the beautiful, it is of course only the highest ones that have such depths of transparency. One ought not to understand that merely in terms of their content. For it is precisely here that the greatest demands are placed upon the forms in the outer strata: these must have the very highest transparency; they must achieve what nothing else in the world can achieve: the becoming visible, for the first time, of what was never in the world at all, and indeed insofar as it is incapable of also being put into words.

Most artists shrink before the greatness of this task. They are, for the most part, no visionaries and bearers of ideas. But it must be said: they usually shrink back even when they possess moral elevation and far-seeing (474) prophetic powers, and thus are bearers of ideas. For success demands something more, that is, the ability to show things, the depths of transparency, and the clarity of what is made to appear. It is no doubt true that the greatest artist knows how to unite these two to an amazingly adequate degree; but there exists much prophetic art that lacks the other side, and thus is unable to present its ideas clearly. In this respect, for example, Nietzsche failed as a poet: he was able to behold and love his new ideal for humanity, but he could not objectify it clearly and give it a concrete shape. And so it remained, despite the great catchphrases that have assembled about it, floating partially in abstractions.

d) The creative power in man

The last observations once again concern the creativity in man. In small things, man is everywhere creative in a practical sense – in all “work,” in all activity, in all his planning and his pursuit of ends. But here we are concerned with creativity on a grand scale, with creating for a distant posterity, with great ventures in which man himself is at stake and – can lose the game. In this creative struggle, this bringing of man into being, the revelations of the artist plays their quite determinate and irreplaceable role.

It is important to be clear that this creative function is, in human history, a purely practical – in a broad sense ethical – one, and is not at all identical with that of the artist. The connection between the two is rather one of ends and means; yet the relation is not such that the means are exhausted in the production of the ends; the means remain autonomous, for, after all, they were not conceived and discovered for the purposes of history. In order to clarify this relation, we must return to the general kinds of creativity of which we have knowledge.

We know primarily two kinds of creativity in the world. They are so different that we cannot compare them; and yet they are so similar to one another that philosophy has often attempted to reduce the one to the other. The one is creativity in nature – without consciousness, without aim, a dark impulse, but one driving inexorably upwards within the realm of possible forms. In truth, it is without any “tendency,” without will, driven only by the competition among creatures and the cruel process of selection. The other is creativity in man. It is quite the opposite of the first; it is purposive, conscious, willful, and mutable in the choice of its directions and the aims placed before it, but it is very limited, as is the foresight of man; all the while, nature keeps of “producing” without limit.

As far as reduction of one to the other is concerned, the two are close. One simply foists a picture of an enlarged “human” purposiveness upon nature, (475) calls it God, demiurge, or providence, and thus traces the “productivity” of nature back to man. Our picture of the world inevitably becomes anthropomorphic. Or one puts man’s consciousness of goals into the processes of nature, and understands man’s act as a fragment of the natural process; then the positing of goals becomes secondary, for it is already determined by motives that are rooted in the human essence bestowed upon man by nature. In this case, the peculiar nature of the actions that proceed from human will is nullified, and, with it, the special quality of human nature itself.

We can leave both reductions out of consideration here. One sees just from a cursory glance that they are one-sided; besides, they both contradict two categorial laws, the first one being that of “strength,” the second that of “freedom.” What is rather more important is that both kinds of creativity are fundamentally distinct, and one cannot be reduced to the other. Man as creator is consciously active, while nature is of course infinitely more powerful and in many ways more “inventive”; but for all that, its own productions stem from a blind drive.

The creativity of man is everywhere active in practical life. In every area of its activity, spirit, utilizing the powers of nature, brings about new syntheses that nature knows not of: the external reworking of things (material) for the realization of its goals, in synthetic chemistry, in technology, in the cultivation and hybridization of plants and animals, in the education and cultivation of its own kind, in the direction of historical processes – as far as he may be capable of it.

Yet the creative power of man does not reach its highest form in the domain of practical life. This higher form is first found where it is no longer a question of the creation of something, but of a mere letting-appear. The aesthetical form of creativity in man is superior to all other forms of production in that it does not need to realize what it creates in beholding.

That is the great, unique freedom of him who sees and produces aesthetically. It is similar to self-propulsion in a vacuum without resistance; and, in fact artistic representation circulates in the domain of “de-actualization.” Here we meet perfectly the genuine sense of this word, which denotes the act of distancing ourselves from the real world – the opposite of “realization,” which suggests work upon the real world.

But it is especially remarkable that no turning away from real life hereby occurs, that it is much rather the case that from this creativity, hovering in the domain of the unreal, ties of an infinitely subtle nature lead back into the real world and, indeed, precisely into a life on a grand scale, into historical life. (476)

This power is a purely spiritual one, the power to enlighten and to convince in places where no demonstrations and philosophizing ever could convince a man; indeed the power to direct the gaze upon what is to be beheld – in the Platonic image, to execute the act of [conversion]. For that is decisive. And just for that reason, so much in human life depends upon our living, alongside of all actuality, a “life in the Idea.” We can do that, because we possess the power of aesthetical beholding. (477)