The Genealogy of Aesthetics 0521811821

Table of contents :
genealogy aesthetics0000......Page 1
genealogy aesthetics000a_2R......Page 2
genealogy aesthetics000b_1L......Page 3
genealogy aesthetics000b_2R......Page 4
genealogy aesthetics000c_2R......Page 5
genealogy aesthetics000d_1L......Page 6
genealogy aesthetics000d_2R......Page 7
genealogy aesthetics000e_1L......Page 8
genealogy aesthetics000e_2R......Page 9
genealogy aesthetics000f_1L......Page 10
genealogy aesthetics000f_2R......Page 11
genealogy aesthetics001_2R......Page 12
genealogy aesthetics003_1L......Page 13
genealogy aesthetics003_2R......Page 14
genealogy aesthetics005_1L......Page 15
genealogy aesthetics005_2R......Page 16
genealogy aesthetics007_1L......Page 17
genealogy aesthetics007_2R......Page 18
genealogy aesthetics009_1L......Page 19
genealogy aesthetics009_2R......Page 20
genealogy aesthetics011_1L......Page 21
genealogy aesthetics011_2R......Page 22
genealogy aesthetics013_1L......Page 23
genealogy aesthetics013_2R......Page 24
genealogy aesthetics015_1L......Page 25
genealogy aesthetics015_2R......Page 26
genealogy aesthetics017_1L......Page 27
genealogy aesthetics017_2R......Page 28
genealogy aesthetics019_1L......Page 29
genealogy aesthetics019_2R......Page 30
genealogy aesthetics021_1L......Page 31
genealogy aesthetics021_2R......Page 32
genealogy aesthetics023_1L......Page 33
genealogy aesthetics023_2R......Page 34
genealogy aesthetics025_1L......Page 35
genealogy aesthetics025_2R......Page 36
genealogy aesthetics027 here_1L......Page 37
genealogy aesthetics027 here_2R......Page 38
hgg_0001_1L......Page 39
hgg_0001_2R......Page 40
hgg_0002_1L......Page 41
hgg_0002_2R......Page 42
hgg_0003_1L......Page 43
hgg_0003_2R......Page 44
hgg_0004_1L......Page 45
hgg_0004_2R......Page 46
hgg_0005_1L......Page 47
hgg_0005_2R......Page 48
hgg_0006 38_1L......Page 49
hgg_0006 38_2R......Page 50
hgg_0007_1L......Page 51
hgg_0007_2R......Page 52
hgg_0008 42_1L......Page 53
hgg_0008 42_2R......Page 54
hgg_0009 44_1L......Page 55
hgg_0009 44_2R......Page 56
hgg_0010_1L......Page 57
hgg_0010_2R......Page 58
hgg_0011_1L......Page 59
hgg_0011_2R......Page 60
hgg_0012_1L......Page 61
hgg_0012_2R......Page 62
hgg_0013_1L......Page 63
hgg_0013_2R......Page 64
hgg_0014 54_1L......Page 65
hgg_0014 54_2R......Page 66
hgg_0015_1L......Page 67
hgg_0015_2R......Page 68
hgg_0016_1L......Page 69
hgg_0016_2R......Page 70
hgg_0017 60_1L......Page 71
hgg_0017 60_2R......Page 72
hgg_0018 62_1L......Page 73
hgg_0018 62_2R......Page 74
hgg_0019_1L......Page 75
hgg_0019_2R......Page 76
hgg_0020_1L......Page 77
hgg_0020_2R......Page 78
hgg_0021_1L......Page 79
hgg_0021_2R......Page 80
hgg_0022_1L......Page 81
hgg_0022_2R......Page 82
hgg_0023_1L......Page 83
hgg_0023_2R......Page 84
hgg_0024_1L......Page 85
hgg_0024_2R......Page 86
hgg_0025 77 pics_2R......Page 87
hgg_0025 77_1L......Page 88
hgg_0026 79 pic_1L......Page 89
hgg_0026 79 pic_2R......Page 90
hgg_0027 81 pic_1L......Page 91
hgg_0027 81_2R......Page 92
hgg_0028 pic_1L......Page 93
hgg_0028 pic_2R......Page 94
hgg_0029 pic_1L......Page 95
hgg_0029_2R......Page 96
hgg_0030 pic_1L......Page 97
hgg_0030_2R......Page 98
hgg_0031 pic_1L......Page 99
hgg_0031_2R......Page 100
hgg_0032 90 pic_2R......Page 101
hgg_0032 90_1L......Page 102
hgg_0033 92_1L......Page 103
hgg_0033 92_2R......Page 104
hgg_0034 94_1L......Page 105
hgg_0034 94_2R......Page 106
hgg_0035 96_1L......Page 107
hgg_0035 96_2R......Page 108
hgg_0036 98_1L......Page 109
hgg_0036 98_2R......Page 110
hgg_0037 pic 100_2R......Page 111
hgg_0037_1L......Page 112
hgg_0038 xx_1L......Page 113
hgg_0038_2R......Page 114
hgg_0039 pic here_1L......Page 115
hgg_0039_2R......Page 116
hgg_0040_1L......Page 117
hgg_0040_2R......Page 118
hgg_0041_1L......Page 119
hgg_0041_2R......Page 120
hgg_0042_1L......Page 121
hgg_0042_2R......Page 122
hgg_0043 112_1L......Page 123
hgg_0043 112_2R......Page 124
hgg_0044_1L......Page 125
hgg_0044_2R......Page 126
hgg_0045_1L......Page 127
hgg_0045_2R......Page 128
hgg_0046_1L......Page 129
hgg_0046_2R......Page 130
hgg_0047_1L......Page 131
hgg_0047_2R......Page 132
hgg_0048_1L......Page 133
hgg_0048_2R......Page 134
hgg_0049_1L......Page 135
hgg_0049_2R......Page 136
hgg_0050_1L......Page 137
hgg_0050_2R......Page 138
hgg_0051_1L......Page 139
hgg_0051_2R......Page 140
hgg_0052_1L......Page 141
hgg_0052_2R......Page 142
hgg_0053_1L......Page 143
hgg_0053_2R......Page 144
hgg_0054_1L......Page 145
hgg_0054_2R......Page 146
hgg_0055_1L......Page 147
hgg_0055_2R......Page 148
hgg_0056_1L......Page 149
hgg_0056_2R......Page 150
hgg_0057_1L......Page 151
hgg_0057_2R......Page 152
hgg_0058_1L......Page 153
hgg_0058_2R......Page 154
hgg_0059_1L......Page 155
hgg_0059_2R......Page 156
hgg_0060_1L......Page 157
hgg_0060_2R......Page 158
hgg_0061 148_1L......Page 159
hgg_0061 148_2R......Page 160
hgg_0062_1L......Page 161
hgg_0062_2R......Page 162
hgg_0063_1L......Page 163
hgg_0063_2R......Page 164
hgg_0064_1L......Page 165
hgg_0064_2R......Page 166
hgg_0065_1L......Page 167
hgg_0065_2R......Page 168
hgg_0066_1L......Page 169
hgg_0066_2R......Page 170
hgg_0067_1L......Page 171
hgg_0067_2R......Page 172
hgg_0068_1L......Page 173
hgg_0068_2R......Page 174
hgg_0069_1L......Page 175
hgg_0069_2R......Page 176
hgg_0070_1L......Page 177
hgg_0070_2R......Page 178
hgg_0071_1L......Page 179
hgg_0071_2R......Page 180
hgg_0072_1L......Page 181
hgg_0072_2R......Page 182
hgg_0073_1L......Page 183
hgg_0073_2R......Page 184
hgg_0074_1L......Page 185
hgg_0074_2R......Page 186
hgg_0075_1L......Page 187
hgg_0075_2R......Page 188
hgg_0076_1L......Page 189
hgg_0076_2R......Page 190
hgg_0077_1L......Page 191
hgg_0077_2R......Page 192
hgg_0078_1L......Page 193
hgg_0078_2R......Page 194
hgg_0079_1L......Page 195
hgg_0079_2R......Page 196
hgg_0080_1L......Page 197
hgg_0080_2R......Page 198
hgg_0081_1L......Page 199
hgg_0081_2R......Page 200
hgg_0082_1L......Page 201
hgg_0082_2R......Page 202
hgg_0083_1L......Page 203
hgg_0083_2R......Page 204
hgg_0084_1L......Page 205
hgg_0084_2R......Page 206
hgg_0085_1L......Page 207
hgg_0085_2R......Page 208
hgg_0086_1L......Page 209
hgg_0086_2R......Page 210
hgg_0087_1L......Page 211
hgg_0087_2R......Page 212
hgg_0088 202_1L......Page 213
hgg_0088 202_2R......Page 214
hgg_0089 204_1L......Page 215
hgg_0089 204_2R......Page 216
hgg_0090_1L......Page 217
hgg_0090_2R......Page 218
hgg_0091_1L......Page 219
hgg_0091_2R......Page 220
hgg_0092_1L......Page 221
hgg_0092_2R......Page 222
hgg_0093_1L......Page 223
hgg_0093_2R......Page 224
hgg_0094_1L......Page 0
hgg_0094_2R......Page 226
hgg_0095 216_1L......Page 227
hgg_0095 216_2R......Page 228
hgg_0096_1L......Page 229
hgg_0096_2R......Page 230
hgg_0097_1L......Page 231
hgg_0097_2R......Page 232
hgg_0098_1L......Page 233
hgg_0098_2R......Page 234
hgg_0099_1L......Page 235
hgg_0099_2R......Page 236
hgg_0100_1L......Page 237
hgg_0100_2R......Page 238
hgg_0101_1L......Page 239
hgg_0101_2R......Page 240
hgg_0102_1L......Page 241
hgg_0102_2R......Page 242
hgg_0103_1L......Page 243
hgg_0103_2R......Page 244
hgg_0104_1L......Page 245
hgg_0104_2R......Page 246
hgg_0105_1L......Page 247
hgg_0105_2R......Page 248
hgg_0106_1L......Page 249
hgg_0106_2R......Page 250
hgg_0107_1L......Page 251
hgg_0107_2R......Page 252
hgg_0108_1L......Page 253
hgg_0108_2R......Page 254
hgg_0109_1L......Page 255
hgg_0109_2R......Page 256
hgg_0110_1L......Page 257
hgg_0110_2R......Page 258
hgg_0111_1L......Page 259
hgg_0111_2R......Page 260
hgg_0112_1L......Page 261
hgg_0112_2R......Page 262
hgg_0113_1L......Page 263
hgg_0113_2R......Page 264
hgg_0114_1L......Page 265
hgg_0114_2R......Page 266
hgg_0115_1L......Page 267
hgg_0115_2R......Page 268
hgg_0116_1L......Page 269
hgg_0116_2R......Page 270
hgg_0117_1L......Page 271
hgg_0117_2R......Page 272
hgg_0118_1L......Page 273
hgg_0118_2R......Page 274
hgg_0119_1L......Page 275
hgg_0119_2R......Page 276
hgg_0120_1L......Page 277
hgg_0120_2R......Page 278
hgg_0121_1L......Page 279
hgg_0121_2R......Page 280
hgg_0122_1L......Page 281
hgg_0122_2R......Page 282
hgg_0123_1L......Page 283
hgg_0123_2R......Page 284
hgg_0124_1L......Page 285
hgg_0124_2R......Page 286
hgg_0125_1L......Page 287
hgg_0125_2R......Page 288
hgg_0126_1L......Page 289
hgg_0126_2R......Page 290
hgg_0127 280_1L......Page 291
hgg_0127 280_2R......Page 292
hgg_0128_1L......Page 293
hgg_0128_2R......Page 294
hgg_0129_1L......Page 295
hgg_0129_2R......Page 296
hgg_0130_1L......Page 297
hgg_0130_2R......Page 298
hgg_0131_1L......Page 299
hgg_0131_2R......Page 300
hgg_0132 290_1L......Page 301
hgg_0132 290_2R......Page 302
hgg_0133_1L......Page 303
hgg_0133_2R......Page 304
hgg_0134_1L......Page 305
hgg_0134_2R......Page 306
hgg_0135_1L......Page 307
hgg_0135_2R......Page 308
hgg_0136_1L......Page 309
hgg_0136_2R......Page 310
hgg_0137_1L......Page 311
hgg_0137_2R......Page 312
hgg_0138_1L......Page 313
hgg_0138_2R......Page 314
hgg_0139_1L......Page 315
hgg_0139_2R......Page 316
hgg_0140 306_1L......Page 317
hgg_0140 306_2R......Page 318
hgg_0141_1L......Page 319
hgg_0141_2R......Page 320
hgg_0142_1L......Page 321
hgg_0142_2R......Page 322
hgg_0143_1L......Page 323
hgg_0143_2R......Page 324
hgg_0144_1L......Page 325
hgg_0144_2R......Page 326
hgg_0145 316_1L......Page 327
hgg_0145 316_2R......Page 328
hgg_0146_1L......Page 329
hgg_0146_2R......Page 330
hgg_0147_1L......Page 331
hgg_0147_2R......Page 332
hgg_0148_1L......Page 333
hgg_0148_2R......Page 334
hgg_0149_1L......Page 335
hgg_0149_2R......Page 336
hgg_0150_1L......Page 337
hgg_0150_2R......Page 338
hgg_0151_1L......Page 339
hgg_0151_2R......Page 340
hgg_0152_1L......Page 341
hgg_0152_2R......Page 342
hgg_0153_1L......Page 343
hgg_0153_2R......Page 344
hgg_0154_1L......Page 345
hgg_0154_2R......Page 346
hgg_0155_1L......Page 347
hgg_0155_2R......Page 348
hgg_0156_1L......Page 349
hgg_0156_2R......Page 350
hgg_0157_1L......Page 351
hgg_0157_2R......Page 352
hgg_0158_1L......Page 353
hgg_0158_2R......Page 354
hgg_0159_1L......Page 355
hgg_0159_2R......Page 356
hgg_0160_1L......Page 357
hgg_0160_2R......Page 358
hgg_0161_1L......Page 359
hgg_0161_2R......Page 360
hgg_0162_1L......Page 361
hgg_0162_2R......Page 362
hgg_0163_1L......Page 363
hgg_0163_2R......Page 364
hgg_0164_1L......Page 365
hgg_0164_2R......Page 366
hgg_0165_1L......Page 367
hgg_0165_2R......Page 368
hgg_0166_1L......Page 369
hgg_0166_2R......Page 370
hgg_0167_1L......Page 371
hgg_0167_2R......Page 372
hgg_0168_1L......Page 373
hgg_0168_2R......Page 374
hgg_0169_1L......Page 375
hgg_0169_2R......Page 376
hgg_0170_1L......Page 377
hgg_0170_2R......Page 378
hgg_0171_1L......Page 379
hgg_0171_2R......Page 380
hgg_0172_1L......Page 381
hgg_0172_2R......Page 382
hgg_0173_1L......Page 383
hgg_0173_2R......Page 384
hgg_0174_1L......Page 385
hgg_0174_2R......Page 386
hgg_0175_1L......Page 387
hgg_0175_2R......Page 388
hgg_0176_1L......Page 389
hgg_0176_2R......Page 390
hgg_0177_1L......Page 391
hgg_0177_2R......Page 392
hgg_0178_1L......Page 393
hgg_0178_2R......Page 394
hgg_0179_1L......Page 395
hgg_0179_2R......Page 396
hgg_0180_1L......Page 397
hgg_0180_2R......Page 398
hgg_0181_1L......Page 399
hgg_0181_2R......Page 400
hgg_0182_1L......Page 401
hgg_0182_2R......Page 402
hgg_0183_1L......Page 403
hgg_0183_2R......Page 404
hgg_0184_1L......Page 405
hgg_0184_2R......Page 406
hgg_0185_1L......Page 407
hgg_0185_2R......Page 408
hgg_0186_1L......Page 409
hgg_0186_2R......Page 410
hgg_0187_1L......Page 411
hgg_0187_2R......Page 412
hgg_0188_1L......Page 413
hgg_0188_2R......Page 414
hgg_0189_1L......Page 415
hgg_0189_2R......Page 416
hgg_0190_1L......Page 417
hgg_0190_2R......Page 418
hgg_0191_1L......Page 419
hgg_0191_2R......Page 420
hgg_0192_1L......Page 421
hgg_0192_2R......Page 422
hgg_0193_1L......Page 423
hgg_0193_2R......Page 424
hgg_0194_1L......Page 425
hgg_0194_2R......Page 426
hgg_0195_1L......Page 427
hgg_0195_2R......Page 428
hgg_0196_1L......Page 429
hgg_0196_2R......Page 430
hgg_0197_1L......Page 431
hgg_0197_2R......Page 432
hgg_0198_1L......Page 433
hgg_0198_2R......Page 434
hgg_0199_1L......Page 435
hgg_0199_2R......Page 436
hgg_0200_1L......Page 437
hgg_0200_2R......Page 438
hgg_0201_1L......Page 439
hgg_0201_2R......Page 440
hgg_0202_1L......Page 441
hgg_0202_2R......Page 442
hgg_0203_1L......Page 443
hgg_0203_2R......Page 444
hgg_0204_1L......Page 445
hgg_0204_2R......Page 446
hgg_0205_1L......Page 447
hgg_0205_2R......Page 448
hgg_0206_1L......Page 449
hgg_0206_2R......Page 450
hgg_0208......Page 451

Citation preview

The Genealogy . of Aesthetics - ,'

Ekbert Faas

The Genealogy of Aesthetics Ekbert Faas

.... :~ . . CAMBRIDGE ::~

UNIVERSITY PRESS

PUBLISHED BY THE PRESS SYNDICATE OF THE UNIVERSITY OF CAMBRIDGE

The Pitt Building, Trumpington Street, Cambridge, United Kingdom CAMBRIDGE UNIVERSITY PRESS

The Edinburgh Building, Cambridge CB2 2RU, UK 40 West 20th Street, New York, NY 10011-4211, USA 477 Williamstown Road, Port Melbourne, VIC 3207, Australia Ruiz de Alarcon 13,28014 Madrid, Spain Dock House, The Waterfront, Cape Town 800 I, South Africa http://www.cambridge.org © Ekbert Faas, 2002 This book is in copyright. Subject to statutory exception and to the provisions of relevant collective licensing agreements, no reproduction of any part may take place without the written permission of Cambridge University Press. First published 2002 Printed in the United Kingdom at the University Press, Cambridge JYpeface Plantin 10il2 pt.

System I5fEX2 c

[TB]

A caralogue record for this book is available from the British Library Library of Congress Cataloguing in Publicaticn data

Faas, Ekbert, 1938The genealogy of aesthetics I by Ekbert Faas. p. cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 0 521 81182 I I. Aesthetics - History. I. Title. BH81 .F33 2002 111'.85 - dc21 2001043619 ISBN 0521 81182 I hardback

For Bangus, Maria, and Marilyn

Contents

List of illustrations Acknowledgments

page ix xu

Introduction

1

1 Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

15

2 Proto-Nietzschean opponents to Plato

28

3 Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

40

4 Augustine's Platonopolis

52

5 The Middle Ages

64

6 The Renaissance

75

7 The Renaissance Academy, Fieino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

93

8 Hobbes and Shaftesbury

110

9 Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

121

10 Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

138

11

Kant's midlife conversion

155

12 Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

169

13 Marx's Nietzschean moment

182

14 Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

199

15 Heidegger contra Nietzsche

214

16 Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida

229

17 Differance, Freud, Nietzsche, and Artaud

241

18 Derrida's megatranscendentalist mimesis

257 vii

Contents

viii

19 Postmodern or pre-Nietzschean? Derrida, Lyotard, and de Man

272

20 The postmodern revival of the aesthetic ideal

286

Afterword Notes References

Index

298 318 388 413

Illustrations

1. Giotto, The Last Judgment. Arena Chapel frescoes in Padua. Giuseppe Basile, Giotto. The Arena Chapel Frescoes (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993 [1992]), following 287. 2. Giotto, The LastJudgment. Arena Chapel frescoes in Padua. Giuseppe Basile, Giotto. The A rena Chapel Frescoes (London: Thames and Hudson, 1993 [1992]), following 287. 3. Standing Rotting Pair. Panel made in Germany, ca. 1470. Musee de l'Oeuvre Notre-Dame de Strasbourg. Michael Camille, The Medieval Art of Love. Objects and Subjects of Desire (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998), 161, illustrati~l~.

4. Sebastiano del Piombo, The Martyrdom of Saint Agatha. Palazzo Pitti, Florence. Michael Hirst, Sebastiano del Piombo (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1981), illustration 106. 5. Albrecht Diirer, Perspectivist Sketching a Lady. Albrecht Diirer, The Painter's Manual (1525). Translated and with a Commentary by Walter L. Strauss (New York: Abaris Books, 1977), 434. 6. Albrecht Diirer, Self-Portrait, Nude, 1503/18. Weimar, Schlossmuseum, from the Griinling Collection. Walter L. Strauss, The Complete Drawings of Albrecht Durer, vol. II, 1500--1509,688-89 (New York: Abaris Books, 1974). 7. Titian, ~nus with an Organist, ca. 1550. Madrid, Museo del Prado. Erwin Panofsky, Problems in Titian: Mostly Iconographic (London: Phaidon Press, 1969), illustration 137. 8. Giorgione, The Sleeping Venus. Dresden, Gemaldegalerie. Paolo Lecaldano (ed), The Complete Paintings of Giorgione. Introduction by Cecil Gould, notes and catalogue by Pietro Zampetti (London: Weidenfeld and Nicolson, 1970 [1968]), plates UI-UII. 9. Albrecht Altdorfer, Lot and his Daughter, 1537. Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna. Christopher S. Wood, Albrecht

77

78

~

80

82

83

84

86

ix

x

10.

11.

12.

13.

14.

List of illustrations

Altdoifer and the Origins of Landscape (London: Reaktion Books, 1993), 268, illustration 193. Pietro Aretino, Sonetti lussoriosi (i Modi) e dubbi amorosi. Nuova edizione integra Ie a cura di Riccardo Reim (Rome: Tascabili Economici Newton, 1993 [1974]),36-37. "The Artistic Idea. Allegory." Engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard, in Freart de Chambray, ParalWe de l'architecture antique et moderne, 1702. Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz, History of Aesthetics (3 vols.), ed. J. Harrell, C. Barrett, and D. Petsch, trans. Adam and Ann Czerniawski, R. M. Montgomery, C. A. Kisiel, and J. F. Besemeres (Warsaw: PWN - Polish Scientific Publishers; The Hague, Paris: Mouton, 1970-74), III, following 220, illustration XXXV. Gravettian female ivory figurines from Avdeevo, Russia, ca. 21,000-19,000 BC. Denis Via lou, Prehistoric Art and Civilization (New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1998 [1996]), 74: "A perforation made at ankle level enabled them to be hung head downward around the neck of the wearer. Only the wearers could see them the right way up, on their chests. Several of these naked female statuettes, as usual dating from the Palaeolithic period, were themselves adorned with bracelets, belts and necklaces engraved on their skin. The female body, idealized for the first time by three-dimensional sculpture in ivory or stone, was glorified a second time by being adorned as if it were, once again, an authentic living being. Finally, this symbolic expression centred on the body was enriched a third time through the use of the carved and adorned body as living jewellery on real human beings." Love-making. Case mirror from Corinth, ca. 320-300 BC. Museum of Fine Arts, Boston. Andrew Stewart, Art, Desire, and the Body in Ancient Greece (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1997), 178, illustration 114. Cf. ibid., 177: "What makes [this scene] interesting is not merely [its] explicit eroticism, but the fact that the woman is represented as an equal partner to the man, even as taking the initiative ... she turns frontally to the viewer, prominently displaying her breasts, belly, and labia; largely eclipsing her lover, she pulls his head forward to kiss him as he enters her, looking straight into his eyes." Temple frieze at Khajuraho, west of Allahabad in northern India, tenth century CEo Photograph by Ekbert Faas. Cf. Hugo Munsterberg, The Art of India and Southeast Asia

88

89

91

101

102

List of illustrations

(New York: Harry N. Abrams, 1970), 98: "Many of the scenes portrayed in the sculptures at Khajuraho are frankly erotic, showing lovers performing the sex act in various positions, many of which are described in the famous Hindu manual of love, the Kama Sutra. To the Westerner, imbued with the puritan ethics of the Christian tradition, such subjects seem highly unsuitable for a sanctuary designed for religious worship, but to the Hindu no such objections exist, since every aspect of life is looked upon as a revelation of the god who may often manifest himself as a lingam and is frequently thought of as being accompanied by his female counterpart, or shakti."

Xl

104

Acknowledgments

Driving from Naumburg to Salzwedel about a year ago, I unexpectedly noticed an old, washed-down sign pointing me off the road to a school mainly remembered for a handful of famous pupils like Fichte, Novalis, the Schlegel brothers, and, most notably, Friedrich Nietzsche. Schulpforta! It took only a matter of minutes to become absorbed in its medieval setting, where time has stood still. I visited the chapel and graveyard, ambled around the cloister, explored study halls, refectories, and dormitories - then suddenly he came walking toward me from the far end of a low-vaulted passageway lined with oblong lead-frame windows; stooped over as if searching the ground, a tall figure alternately lit by the sharp sunlight or swallowed by the deep, late afternoon shadows. As he came closer to address me, I could see the colossal forehead, thick mane of brown hair, shaggy eyebrows, and moustache as well as the large, deepset, somehow unfocused eyes, as of a blind man. Would I please direct him to the Cistercian Chapel? The manner, meticulously self-effacing and polite, the voice low, almost inaudible, but of an intensity as if his life depended on the right answer. Thunderstruck I replied, through the cloister, there, up the stone steps to the left; then I realized we were being filmed for a television programme to commemorate the 100th anniversary of Nietzsche's death in 1900. The irony of being cast in the role of someone responding to a question by the man who, more than anyone else, has helped me answer (or if need be give up on) innumerable questions I have asked myself throughout life! It is a far-reaching and long indebtedness traceable through at least three previous books (like my Ted Hughes, Tragedy and After, and Shakespeare's Poetics), but only made fully explicit in the present one. So it is time to acknowledge it here. For all that, my more systematic reading of Nietzsche's complete works has been of relatively recent date. One reason for this was my looking for further support regarding the first half-dozen chapters I had written from a broadly Nietzschean perspective, drawing on my lifelong, yet casual perusal of some of his major works. The search brought several welcome xii

Acknowledgments

xiii

confirmations (such as Nietzsche's preference, like mine, for Xenophon's over Plato's Socrates), as well as some disappointments, like his obvious failure to comment on the centerpiece of Plato's transvaluation of pagan values, the Socrates-Callicles debate in Gorgias, so aptly mined for its proto-Nietzschean arguments by the great E. R. Dodds. A second reason for these intensified Nietzsche studies stemmed from my trying to resolve a growing unease with the uses and abuses Nietzsche has been put to by Heidegger, Derrida, Foucault, Paul de Man, and postmodernist critics at large. In the same endeavor I began researching recent cognitive science and particularly neo-Darwinian evolutionary psychology, which promised a more future-oriented way out of postmodernism's megatranscendentalist impasse, its ill-conceived and certainly misnamed "deconstructive" maneuvers, as well as its concomitant misappropriations of Nietzsche. Yet here again seemingly new ideas and perspectives accrued to me around earlier ones, proposed by the philosopher himself. It has been some dozen years since I started work on this book with a talk about the "Genealogy of Beauty" given at the invitation of Concordia University's English department in Montreal. Since then I have greatly benefited from the (privately funded) labors of a small number of former students, research assistants, and friends who, I hope, remember things with some of my own fondness, or at least humor: Michael Holmes, our oversized index charts of Plato, Plotinus and Augustine; Maria Trombacco, our numerous conversations, and her typing up some early drafts; Shawn Thomson, his checking some 3,000 odd references, paraphrases and citations; Derek Smith, his word processing of early versions of the introduction and afterword; Adam Chalmers, his helping me with revising, coordinating, and finalizing the typescript complete with mottoes, notes, illustrations and bibliography; and Monika Makiel as well as Sandra Morelli for helping me with the index and with seeing the book through the press. To me it was fun throughout, and if it was less so to those who helped me so generously, I would like to not only give them my heartfelt thanks, but also ask their kind forgiveness. The author and publisher gratefully acknowledge the assistance of the following institutions in the provision of illustrative material, and their kind permission to reproduce same: Museum of Fine Arts, Boston; Archivi Alinari, Firenze; Musee de l'ffiuvre Notre-Dame de Strasbourg; Schlossmuseum Weimar; Museo Nacional del Prado; Staatliche Kunstsammlungen Dresden, Gemaldegalerie Alte Meister; Kunsthistorisches Museum, Vienna.

Introduction

Apropos the origin of the beautiful and the ugly. Humankind's oldest experience has proven that what repels us instinctually, i.e. aesthetically, is harmful, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion. The aesthetic instinct, suddenly become articulate (for instance, in revulsion), contains ajudgment. The beautiful is thus grounded in the general category of the biological values of what is useful, beneficent, life-enhancing; but in such a way that an abundance of stimuli only remotely reminiscent of useful things and states gives us the feeling of the beautiful, i.e., of an increased feeling of power ... Thus the beautiful and the ugly are recognized as dependent upon our most basic values of self-preservation: it is meaningless to posit anything like beauty and ugliness apart from this. The beautiful exists as little as the good, the true. XII, 554/ The Will to Power, 804

To say: The good and the beautiful are one, is a disgrace for a philosopher: Ifhe adds: "the true as well," one ought to thrash him. The truth is ugly: we have art so we don't perish of the truth. XIII, 500 / The Will to Power, 822

Apropos the genesis of art. The making perfect, seeing as perfect typical of the cerebral system overcharged with sexual energy ... on the other hand, every perfection and beauty providing an unconscious reminder of that enamoured condition and of its manner of seeing - every perfection, all the beauty of things reawakens through contiguity [durch contiguity] the aphrodisiac bliss. Physiologically: the creative instict of the artist and the spreading of semen through the blood ... [sic] The craving for art and beauty is an indirect craving for the ecstasies of the sexual instinct, as it communicates itself to the cerebrum. The world become perfect through "love." XlI, 325-26 / The Will to Power, 805*

The following narrative explores a single Nietzschean theme that is best introduced in the philosopher's own words. It is about our traditionally "ascetic" misconception of beauty, which Nietzsche blamed on the "diabolization of Eros," 1 sex, sensuality, sensuousness. That happened when

2

The genealogy of aesthetics

Christianity "fed Eros poison,"2 and earlier in Plato who, via a general transvaluation of values, reversed the pagan concept of reality. 3 Nietzsche planned to trace this genealogy of ascetic beauty in greater detail at some point. Several times he speaks of a chapter on the hitherto unexplained physiology of aesthetics and/or art4 that was to form part of his major work, The Will to Power. Art which he hoped "to discuss more fully at another time," he writes in The Genealogy ofMorals, was "far more radically opposed to the ascetic ideal than ... science." Plato, "the greatest enemy of art Europe has thus far produced ... felt this instinctively: ... Plato vs. Homer: here we have the whole, authentic antagonism; on the one hand the deliberate transcendentalist and detractor of life, on the other, life's involuntary panegyrist."s Nietzsche repeatedly returned to these plans. He draws up tables of content where the "Physiology of Art" appears, now under the subsection "The Criterion of Truth," 6 then under "The Battle Over Values.,,7 He collects notes under titles like "Aesthetics," Aesthetica, 8 or, "The CounterMovement: Art.,,9 He attempts an eighteen-point summary towards the physiology of art, 10 or gives a brief, preliminary account of how aesthetics is indissolubly tied to "biological presuppositions": "there is an aesthetics of decadence, and there is a classical aesthetics - the 'beautiful in itself' is a figment of the imagination, like all idealism."ll Nietzsche even sketched some of the major stages of the genealogy of ascetic beauty from Plato through St. Paul, Augustine, the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, Montaigne, Shakespeare, and Kant to his own lifetime. Here Plato once again is the key figure, and in a triple sense. It is Plato who destroys paganism by transvaluating its values; it is Plato who thereby creates the moral ground on which Christianity alone could prevail;12 and once more it is Plato who provides the "great intermediary bridge of corruption [die groj3e Zwischenbriicke der ~rderbnij3]"13 leading from one to the other, somehow enabling even the erudite and well-to-do to embrace Christianity. "In the great fatality of Christianity, Plato provided that ambiguity and fascination called 'the Ideal,' which allowed the nobler natures of antiquity to misjudge themselves and step onto the bridge that lead to the 'Cross.",14 The pathway from Plato to Christianity leads through figures like St. Paul, with his unconscious Platonism,IS and, above all, through Augustine, with his explicit, yet "vulgarized Platonism ... dressed up for slave types.,,16 It was due to men like these, then, that Greek and Roman antiquity, before succumbing to foreign invaders, was corrupted, demoralized, and brought down from the inside. Not struck down, "but debased and destroyed by cunning, secretive, invisible, bloodless vampires! Not defeated, - only sucked dry! ... [sic] Hidden vindictiveness, petty

Introduction

3

envy become master . .. To realize, to smell, what unsavoury fellows had therewith come out on top, one only has to read any of the Christian agitators, for instance, St. Augustine. 17 As we know, Nietzsche neither completed The Will to Power, nor ever wrote the physiology of art or aesthetics that was to form part of it, and his scattered notes regarding a post-Platonic genealogy of aesthetics remain even sketchier than the above. In his view, Platonism, via Augustine, lead in a straight line to the Middle Ages and beyond. Its "contempt for the body, for beauty, etc .... is a prelude to the Middle Ages.,,18 Following these comes a brief reemergence of the pagan ideal in the Renaissance, as, for instance, in Montaigne and his "best reader,,19 Shakespeare, who adopted the French philosopher's nonconformism2o and explored the Christian diabolization of Eros in his sonnets. 21 But due to Luther and the Reformation it all came to nothing. "The Renaissance - an episode without sense, a great in vain!,,22 The Enlightenment's thrust toward a reversal of the originary Platonic-Christian transvaluation of values suffered a similar fate at the hands of Kant and his followers - Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, even Schopenhauer - all secularized latter-day ascetic priests in disguise, all semiconscious counterfeiters (" 'unbewuj3te' Falschmunzer"), "all mere veil-makers [Schleiermacher] ,,23 like the theologian of that name. Most of Nietzsche's diatribes here focus on the author of the Critique of Judgment, and particularly on his doctrine of disinterested pleasure. At the same time, Kant serves Nietzsche as a touchstone for developing his own physiological aesthetics: Kant, the philosopher crippled by and idolizing his abstruse jargon;24 Kant, who, via his "dangerous old, conceptual confabulations"25 and his "back door philosophy,,26 sent everyone after him crawling along "the secret path [back] to the old ideal [Schleichweg zum alten Jdeal]";27 Kant who, "as it turned out," was a "deceitful Christian in the end.,,28 Kant's aesthetics of "disinterested contemplation,"29 to Nietzsche, is an absurdity ultimately rooted in Plato's puritanical condemnation of art. At best, Nietzsche might grant that the beautiful, if considered historically, is an expression of what is worthy of veneration, of what is apparent in the most revered persons of a given time. 3o Otherwise, it strikes him as self-evident that "an interest connects [us] with the beautiful which pleases [us] ," even though this may not always be immediately apparent. "The expression of happiness, perfection, quiet, even the silence of the work of art, its willing submission to our judgment - it all talks to our instincts [Trieben] ."31 No wonder Nietzsche found that, since Kant, "all talk about art, beauty, understanding, wisdom [has been] made a mess of [vermanscht] and besmudged [beschmutzt] by the notion 'without interest.' ,,32

4

The genealogy of aesthetics

Paradoxically, an extreme case of such confused aesthetic thinking in the wake of Kant, to Nietzsche, is the l'art pour l'art doctrine. For did not its adherents try to banish the kind of moralizing that caused Plato to corrupt philosophy and to condemn art? Even so, l'art pour l'art continues, and in a way reinforces, the post-Platonic denaturalization of aesthetics and art. Ultimately, it was analogous to the doctrine of morality for the sake of morality, an important step in that transvaluation of pagan values evident, as we shall see, in Plato's redefinition of sophrosyne or self-control as sophrosyne for it own sake. 33 Art for the sake of art, like its trinitarian analogues, to him, is merely one of "three forms of the evil eye for the real," which by detaching an ideal from it, pushes down, impoverishes and bad-mouths the real. 34 In other words, there is no real art "without 'affect,' without 'purpose,' without extra-aesthetic needs ... 'To mirror,' 'to imitate': alright, but how? all art praises, glorifies, extrapolates, transfigures - it strengthens certain valuations."35 In sum, Nietzsche, to speak with Montaigne, tried to "naturalize art" where others "artif[ied] nature,,;36 or, as he put it himself, attempted to rescue aesthetics from its post-Platonic denaturalization (Entnatiirlichung)37 by renaturalizing (vernatiirlichen) it. 38 Was he successful? Understandably Nietzsche occasionally wondered so himself. Considering the triumphant revival of the ascetic ideal in the wake of Kant, 39 his answers were predominantly pessimistic. Even more discouraging to him was the popularity of Richard Wagner, most sublime advocate in later times of a new kind of "counterfeit transcendence" flattering "everything Christian, every religious expression of decadence.,,4o Wagner, along with others like Augustine and Kant before him, is one of the figures in whom the turn toward the ascetic ideal unfolded within a lifetime. Mindful of how Nietzsche had celebrated the composer's seemingly Dionysian art in The Birth of Tragedy, he recalls how enthusiastically the young Wagner had walked in the footsteps of the Feuerbach advocating a return to a "healthy sensuality." "Did he eventually relearn his lesson about that? [dariiber umgelernt] ... Did the hatred of life become master in him?" Nietzsche's answer is an empathic yes. "For Parsifal is a work of malice, of vindictiveness, of a secret brewing of poison against the essentials of life ... Richard Wagner, seemingly the most victorious one, but in truth a desperate decadent gone rotten, suddenly, helpless and shattered, broke down before the Christian cross.,,41 Since it involved the greatest disillusionment in Nietzsche's life, the case of Wagner more than all else sharpened his sense of the formidable powers of the ascetic ideal, especially in its secular disguises - "all the idealistic deceitfulness [Liignere£] and weakening of conscience,,42 - as it defeats the most courageous. For all that, his response to Wagner's music

Introduction

5

was strictly physiological. It would not let him breathe easily, as he put it; it caused his foot to get angry and revolt against it: his foot that was in need of rhythm, dance, marching. "Or my stomach, my heart, my blood flow? Don't they all protest as well?,,43 What, in short, was aesthetics other than "applied physiology"?44 True art, unlike Wagner's, then, is the "great stimulus of and toward life.,,45 As such, it is our quintessential "metaphysical activity," the "proper task of life.,,46 All art impacts "the muscles and senses ... it talks ... to the delicate excitability of the body.,,47 The beautiful inflames our "feeling of sensual delight [LustgejUhl] ."48 Art, above all, appeals to our "animal vigour." On the one hand, it constitutes "an excess and overflowing of blossoming corp orality into the world of images and desires," on the other, it provides a "stimulation of the animal function through images and desires of intensified life.,,49 What he needed personally, wrote Nietzsche, was the kind of music to deify "the animal life" in him, "to make it triumph, to make [him] want to dance.,,5o Art generally had to appeal to the sensual instincts,51 including the urge to eat, even one's penchant towards frenzy [Rausch] and cruelty. Rather than a zombielike state of disinterested contemplation, the "aesthetic disposition" is a "a blend of ... very delicate shades of animal delights [WbhlgejUhlen] and appetencies [Begierden] ."52

This is not to say that our experience of the beautiful remains limited to such animalistic impulses. Viewed from an either phylo- or ontogenetic perspective, "the most habitual beauty affirmations," after a while, "mutually stimulate and incite each other. Once the aesthetic drive [Trieb] is at work, a host of other perfections, originating from elsewhere, crystallize around the 'particular instance of beauty.' " However, what Plato radicalized into an antisensualist idealization of beauty should be seen as only a partial spiritualization grounded in physiological necessities, "in such a way that an abundance of stimuli only remotely reminiscent of useful things and states gives us the feeling of the beautiful, i.e., of an increase of the feeling of power." In sum, our aesthetic sense is "grounded in the general category of the biological values of what is useful, beneficent, life-enhancing."53 Nietzsche repeatedly traces our culturally refined sense of beauty to more primordial responses which we continue to share with primitive forms of life, just as, in line with present-day evolutionary epistemology, he traces human cognition to an originary "'positing as equal,' or, earlier still, a 'making equal'" analogous to the "incorporation of appropriated materials into the amoeba.',54 The sense of the beautiful, especially as formed in contrast to the ugly, revolting, or disgusting, goes back to a similarly instinct-driven, and eventually innate or rather inherited (angeerbt)55

6

The genealogy of aesthetics

creatureliness, that originally has nothing to do with anything specifically human, let alone rational. Like the contrast between "good and evil," that between "beautiful and ugly" thus "reveal[s] certain conditions of existence and enhancement, not only of man but of any kind of firm and enduring complex which separates itself from its adversary."56 Here the sense of the repugnant, derived from what may, for instance, have proven to be nutritiously noxious or poisonous, probably was the evolutionarily more originary, more sharply contoured, because stronger sense, just as pain is potentially stronger than pleasure. Nietzsche suggests that much in his note "Apropos the origin of the beautiful and ugly," arguing that man's "oldest experience has proven that what repels us instinctually, [i.e.] aesthetically, is harmful, dangerous, and worthy of suspicion." Similarly, our feeling for the beautiful originally functions within "the general category of the biological values of what is ... life-enhancing.,,57 Even at the most culturally refined and hence learned, "the beautiful and the ugly are recognized as dependent upon our most fundamental values of selj-preservation."58 What is more, they are, for the greater part, biologically innate. Neither authority nor instruction will teach children that a certain melody is beautiful. Contrary to Locke and Kant, such valuations, to Nietzsche, were innate in the sense of being biologically or, as we would now say, genetically inherited. At the same time, he by no means failed to acknowledge the educational or learning processes that might help trigger certain, as the now fashionable term goes, "hardwired" affects. Thus our genetically endowed "aff'ect-programs,,59 can unfold more easily when the persons who love and care for children, are in tune with their charges' naturally endowed propensities. 6o A cautionary remark is called for at this point. Though Nietzschean in orientation, this study is intended neither as a novel summary of the philosopher's aesthetics,61 nor as a reconstruction of what he may have thought about, say, Plato's or Kant's aesthetics in detail. Given the scarcity of such comments, most of which have been referred to already, an endeavor of the kind would be presumptuous and ill-conceived. What is more, several of the authors, with their either ascetic or alternatively antiascetic, even proto-Nietzschean agendas dealt with below, were barely discussed by Nietzsche in an aesthetic context (e.g., Augustine, Erigena, Boethius, Aquinas, Hegel versus Aretino, Montaigne, Hobbes, Mandeville) or, for whatever reasons, not mentioned by him at all (e.g., Ficino, Shaftesbury versus Aretino, Burke, Erasmus Darwin, Marx-Engels). Nor does this study make an attempt to define matters such as art versus nature and beauty vis-a.-vis sublimity, or to streamline the theorizing of

Introduction

7

others according to traditional categories like the mimetic, the expressive, the formal, or the "naturalistic."62 To have done so simply would have duplicated arguments already made elsewhere, that is, been tantamount to demonstrating that even, say, expressive and naturalistic aestheticians either explicitly embrace, tacitly endorse, or leave uncriticized the various ascetic and neo-ascetic agendas under attack here. Thus Coleridgean expressive theorizing, for example, goes back to an aesthetician who insisted on the unbridgeable "chasm" separating our aesthetic senses of sight and hearing from the nonaesthetic or "lower" ones of "feeling, smell, and taste."63 Similarly, a naturalistic aesthetics ala Zola, in making art subservient to scientific truth, remains caught in a new variant of the ascetic ideal which Nietzsche, for one, attacked both in general 64 and in the novelist himself. 65 Zola's 1880 manifesto The Experimental Novel certainly bears out Nietzsche's verdict. Here Zola describes the "experimental novelist" as one "who points out in man and in society the mechanism of the phenomena over which science is mistress"; or he defines "the experimental method in letters, as in the sciences" as "the way to explain the natural phenomena, both individual and social, of which metaphysics, until now, has given only irrational and supernatural explanations."66 Is not this belief in science precisely what Nietzsche, in spite of Zola's protests to the contrary, describes as an essentially metaphysical faith? "Even we students of today, who are atheists and anti-metaphysicians," as he puts it, "light our torches at the flame of a millennial faith: the Christian faith, which was also the faith of Plato, that God is truth, and truth divine."67 Nietzsche's words incidentally serve as a warning against slotting his physiology of aesthetics in with a simple-minded naturalism, as well as against associating him, or worse, holding him responsible for, the strongly antiscientific bias of twentieth-century continental philosophy to this day. Such sentiments became fashionable ever since first Husserl and then Heidegger proposed to "bracket" the physical and/or scientific picture of the world as obstacles toward their, as they thought, more appropriate understanding of reality in terms of either Husserl's neotranscendentalist phenomenology or Heidegger's unprecedented mega transcendentalism. 68 Nietzsche himself was neither inclined toward such "bracketing" nor opposed to science as such. For it is one thing to take certain scientists or artists to task for their semireligious idolatry of a nonexistent absolute, scientific truth, which Nietzsche did; but it is quite another to impute such simple-mindedness to scientists and science at large, which he did not; and it is yet another thing, even more alien to Nietzsche, to scream scientism or reduction whenever science-inspired philosophical hypotheses threaten one's Christian or transcendentalist beliefs, a marked habit with Heidegger, Derrida, and their followers.

8

The genealogy of aesthetics

Another caveat, as what not to look for in the following chapters, is called for at this point. What is attempted in them, and especially in those on Plato, Augustine, Ficino, Shaftesbury, Kant, Marx-Engels, Heidegger, and Derrida, is a radically antitraditional or at least innovative rereading of these authors' aesthetics in the context of their philosophies as a whole. Polemical as it is and tries to be, my argument, so as not to risk being dismissed as dogmatic out of hand, has had to be articulated in the respective authors' own terminologies, ways of reasoning, and general systems. Hence, the detailed and sometimes nit-picking analyses (as of Heidegger's and/or Derrida's readings of Nietzsche and Plato or of Lyotard's misappropriation of Kant), and the length of the book as it stands. To engage in dialogues with academic astheticians would only have further increased that bulk, while adding little to what is articulated in my discussions of the major authors I deal with. Now as much as since the early eighteenth century, when aesthetics emerged as a new cultural industry, there are several such eminent theorists, some of whom I have benefited from even where it is not so acknowledged in the notes. 69 Rather than to A. C. Damo,7o J. Margolis,71 M. Mothersill,72 R. Scruton,73 and F. N. Sibley74 with their largely neoconservative agendas, let us briefly turn to three more controversial theorists, E. H. J. Gombrich, N. Goodman, and G. Dickie as our examples. Among these, Gombrich and Goodman share a strongly intellectual sense of both artistic creativity and aesthetic appreciation. Gombrich, prompted by Popper's theory of science as a deductive process of conjecture and falsification,75 argues that art functions via similar stages of "schema and correction.,,76 Thus both artistic creation and the appreciation of art essentially encode and/or decode symbols. 77 Similarly, aesthetic vision, both creatively and receptively, to Nelson Goodman is a cognizing "interpretation" of reality. Art does not mirror an object, but provides a "version or construal of the object,,78 by encoding it within a structure of symbolic denotations with semantic and syntactic properties. To argue that such an understanding of art and aesthetics remains caught in a one-sided intellectualization of both is not to minimize the complexity of either Gombrich's or Goodman's insights, to which I can hardly do justice here. However, what this bias fails to address, let alone to do justice to, is what in Nietzsche's and this author's view constitutes the emotional, instinctual, or genetically innate predispositions around which such more ethereal aspects of the aesthetic sense tend to accrue. Taking issue with Gombrich's and especially Goodman's aesthetic theorizing, Diana Raffman points to the new body of data provided by cognitive science. Thus, some of our core aesthetic responses, for instance, to

Introduction

9

"the shapes, colours, pitches, and timbers of objects" may be "informationally encapsulated," that is "largely impermeable to the influence of cognitive systems like belief, memory, and decision making.,,79 Moreover, our listening to or viewing of art works is neurobiologically compartmentalized. Thus it has been shown how different perspectives in the seeing, understanding, and appreciating (or evaluating) of, for instance, a painting or kinetic sculpture are domain specifically empowered by clearly circumscribed brain modules so that lesions to, say, V4 (which codes for color) and/or V5 (which codes for motion) impair or extinguish the aesthetic appreciation of color and/or motion, while leaving all other aesthetic propensities intact. Neurobiologically, as Semir Zeki puts it, "there is not one visual aesthetic sense but many, each one tied to the activity of a functionally specialized processing system" in the visual brain. 8o This "modularity of visual aesthetics" becomes even more compartmentalized vis-a-vis portrait painting, whose full appreciation depends on at least two further, separately functioning brain features, one responsible for recognizing familiar faces or faces as such, the other for perceiving the expression on a face. 81 Traditional aestheticians' lack of concern for such nonrational propensities, curiously enough, may have resulted in an overintellectualization of art itself. The obvious failure of Schoenberg's twelve-tone music to secure large audiences is a possible case in point here. According to experimental studies of the existence of a genetically endowed universal grammar of music, this failure may have to do with the fact that such music violates our "instinctually," that is, innately programed aesthetic inclinations 82 - which does not mean that twelve-tone music is bad, let alone uninteresting music: given our progressive overintellectualization as human beings, it could speak to us precisely because it flouts these basic emotional propensities. Should it founder on these propensities, however, then large parts of modern music may come to fullfil Hegel's prophecy of the end of art, though ironically for reasons which are the exact reverse of those proposed by the philosopher. Thus more recent music and art in general83 may spell out an end of art, not because they are, as Hegel thought, unavoidably "infected by the immediate sensous element,,84 and hence of no further use in their essential task of "bringing to utterance the Divine Nature,,,85 but, on the contrary, because art itself has finally been contaminated by a denaturalized art theory propounded by philosophers from Plato through Augustine, Kant, and Hegel to the present. This brings us to George Dickie's "artworld," a concept he borrowed from Arthur Danto. "A work of art," he defines, "is an artefact of a kind created to be presented to an artworld public.,,86 What does such a definition, or even its fourfold enlargement, separately defining "artist,"

10

The genealogy of aesthetics

"public," "artworld," and "artworld system,,,87 amount to? If "artworld public" stands for the status quo conglomerate of old time misconceived aesthetics, snobbery, and speculative art collecting, as in large part it does, might one not argue with greater plausibility that a great artist often creates a work of art, not as something to be presented to the artworld, but rather as one that deliberately ignores, offends and sometimes reverses the standards of that artworld? What, after all, does the definition of any given word like Dickie's "artworld" suggest to us except the need to further define each of its words, then proceed in the same manner with the words in the subdefinitions until, by exhausting the dictionary, we corne back to the original word?88 Otherwise, we all use or imply working definitions of concepts to be falsified by factual evidence or invalidated by the unpersuasive role they play in an overall argument. Anything else like a free-standing definition such as "art or beauty is," even if conceived in strictly heuristic terms, seems to me ill-conceived, at least for now. Recent evolutionary, environmental, and neurological reassessments of aesthetics, of which more in my afterword below, have revealed just about enough to make us realize that we need to know a great deal more before making such attempts. The same, as this book tries to document, is true of traditional aesthetic theorizing starting with Plato and continuing to this day. For if Nietzsche is correct, then that traditionally denaturalized understanding of art and beauty has to be subjected to a complex process of renaturalization before such definitions might become possible. I stress the word complex, for such a renaturalization will not work by simple reversal, as sometimes erroneously attributed to Nietzsche. Neither will it work via a Heideggerian Destruktion or Derridean deconstruction which, as we shall see in detail later, have only led to a revival of the ascetic ideal. Nietzsche himself speaks of a general shifting of the ground (Grundverschiebung)89 or of processes of relearning (Umlernen)9o or backward translation (zurUckiibersetzen).91 How such practices might have to be implemented in detail would be the task, not of this, but of a future study. The ongoing overintellectualization of aesthetic issues which I spoke of is the more surprising since talk about a revaluation of the body, sensuality, and sex has become a by now hackneyed fad propagated by self-help gurus, psychologists, feminists, philosophers, and even aestheticians. 92 There are books entitled Thinking Through the Body,93 The Making of the Modern Body 94 and The Semantics of the Body 95 as well as related feminist studies like Bodies That Matter,96 Imaginary Bodies,97 or The Resurrection of the Body.98 Like other postmodern catchphrases such as text, ecriture, power, dijferance, or language garnes, the mere mention of "body" in a piece of critical discourse carries an aura of profundity to the initiate taken for granted as much as the supposedly vital relevance

Introduction

11

of thinkers like Foucault, Derrida, and Deleuze, whose philosophical systems 100m behind it. However, most of this discourse ironically is less about the human body than about what is inflicted upon it by technoscientific, "phallocentric," capitalist society; it is not so much about what various scientific disciplines from neurology to molecular biology, physiology, and cognitive science have revealed about the body, but rather about how the concomitant compartmentalization of science has served the powers that be in "inscribing," segregating, and enslaving human bodies in unprecedentedly insidious yet effective ways. Needless to say, such abuse of science for the demagogic manufacture of consent has been and continues to be a deplorable fact; and to have drawn attention to and analyzed its dynamics as have, say, Marcuse, Althusser, Foucault, Chomsky, and numerous feminist thinkers, constitutes one of the most fruitful endeavors of recent decades. Yet the tendencies, sometimes implicit in such criticisms, of diminishing science for allegedly being "constructed" by the same powers, of dismissing it for being "linear," "reductionist," "deterministic," and "scientistic" in oversimplistic fashion, has landed much of it in an unnecessary dead end of its own making. The theories about the body proposed by several feminists working in the wake of Foucault and Derrida offer typical examples. "While recent feminist work insists on cultural contingencies in describing bodies as marked, as signifiers of culture," writes Lynda Birke in a recent Companion to Feminist Philosophy, "it rarely goes beyond bodily surfaces."99 The complaint is by no means an isolated one. Tina Chanter, in the same Companion, notes "the reluctant absence of bodies from the feminist rhetoric of the gendered 1970s to the 1980s" which "effectively obliterat[ed] not only the specificity of bodies, but almost incidentally render[ed] invisible bodies themselves." Since then there allegedly has been "a reaction that tried to rehabilitate the spurned bodies of feminist theory,,100 manifest in some of the titles referred to above, but the consequent change seems to be margina1. Thus Judith Butler's Gender Trouble remains, at least to Sandra Lee Bartky, "perhaps the most thoroughly postmodern treatment of the body in the feminist philosophical literature," and that for "pull[ing] the rug from under biology, 'natural kinds,' the 'natural' body,,,101 as well as for arguing under the influence of "Foucault and deconstructionists," so Nancy Holmstrom adds, "that there is no body prior to its construction by phallocentric significations." 102 In sum, apart from a few "studies of the discourses of immunology, there is rather little consideration of bodies as biologica1." And why? Birke spells out the cause, and whole-heartedly identifies with it: biology tout court "tends to be troublesome for feminism," since its arguments all

12

The genealogy of aesthetics

too often "buttress gender divisions." "Politically, then, feminists have tended to oppose biological determinism and to insist on some form of social constructionism of gender, or of other social categories (such as sexuality).,,103 Does this mean that scientific data, before being scrutinized for their validity, should be swept under the carpet for not suiting a political agenda? Seemingly unperturbed by such questions, Birke draws "on the work of [other] feminists challenging the philosophical and theoretical underpinnings of biological ideas."104 And needless to say, there is an abundance of studies one can draw on in such endeavors. Science and Gender: A Critique of Biology and its Theories on WOmen,105 Myths of Gender: Biological Theories About WOmen and Men, 106 The DNA Mystique: The Gene as Icon,107 and Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Feminist Transformation of the Sciences108 names the titles of only a few of them. Lynda Birke's favorite is Science as Social Knowledge by Helen Longino,

and that for exploring science's "linear model" and in assuming "the brain to be a black box, positioned between hormones and behavior, and assum [ing] that the organism lacks agency; behavior result [ing] from hormones acting on the box's hard wiring."109 Judging by such comments, it seems that the perusal of these works, instead of enlightening readers about possible new scientific discoveries, mainly confirms them in the illusion that the easiest way of resolving one's unease vis-a-vis biology is to adhere to the central dogma of the social construction, not only of the body, but also of biology and science at large, which also exempts one from having to tackle the irksome complexity of the respective discipline. 110 Nothing could be further from the prosensualist and scientifically grounded understanding of the body proposed by Nietzsche. Yet ironically, it was he who, via a few remarks in the Genealogy ofMorals, prompted the Foucauldian notion, so influential with feminists and postmodern critics at large, of the human body as a tabula rasa inscribed by the disciplines and punishments inflicted by those in power. 1 said "prompted" rather than "inspired" because the influence at work here amounts to one of several postmodern misappropriations of Nietzschean thought of which others, primarily at the hands ofHeidegger and Derrida, will be discussed later. To Nietzsche, the primordial method "of breeding an animal entitled to make promises" via punishment, torture and mutilation, this whole gruesome process of teaching the individual "to remember five or six 'I wont's' ... entitl [ing] him to participate in the benefits of society," 111 is a genealogical one in which all "virtues" are seen as gradually evolving "physiological conditions." 112 Notions of the body as an "inscribed surface of events" or of a "volume in perpetual disintegration," as proposed in Foucault's "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," simply make no sense in this preliterate and largely physiological process. Conversely, Foucault's own peculiar "genealogy of values, morality, asceticism and knowledge," as

Introduction

13

he stresses, "will never confuse itself with a quest for their 'origins'" and certainly "does not resemble the evolution ofa species" 113 (as Nietzsche's own, despite his ill-conceived anti-Darwinist diatribes, certainly does I14 ). Similarly radical is the difference between the two philosophers' basic understanding of the body, as aptly summarized by feminist critic Elizabeth Grosz: Nietzsche's bodies, like Foucault's, are inscribed by power, branded to create a memory, but this is precisely because the body's forces, the forces offorgetfulness, are so strong. For Nietzsche the body's forces are the site for resistance because of their impetus and energy, not simply because of their location or recalcitrance. I 15

In sum, "Nietzsche's conception of the body ... is considerably more positive and productive than Foucault's" who, like much postmodern and particularly feminist criticism following him, "seems to strip corporeality itself of its multiplicity of forces." 116 Ifwe use the word body in the following pages, then, it is in this originally Nietzschean rather than Foucauldian or otherwise postmodern sense. In doing so we should also heed Nietzsche's numerous warnings against a simplistic misuse of the word in terms of substituting a one-sidedly body-oriented epistemology, morality, or aesthetics for their traditionally overintellectualized counterparts. To him, the body, in any case, was an inseparable and integral part of a body-brain-mind complex or "communality" with a "tremendous multiplicity" 117 of interrelated forces as described by biology, physiology, and morphology, all of which held his intense interest. It was in this sense also that he insisted on a genealogical/evolutionary priority of body over mind as well as on the "hegemony of physiology over theology, moralism, economics ... politics," and, as we may add, aesthetics. Contrary to traditional philosophy, though not to Darwin or present-day evolutionary psychology, one had to "start from the body and employ it as guide,,118 to the so-called higher phenomena of mind and spirit. The body and physiology the starting point: why? - We gain the correct idea of the nature of our subject-unity, namely as regents at the head of a communality (not as "souls" or "life forces"), also of the dependence of these regents upon the ruled and of an order of rank and division of labor as the conditions that make possible the whole and its parts ... The most important thing, however, is: that we understand that the ruler and his subjects are of the same kind, all feeling, willing, thinking - and that, wherever we see or divine movement in a body, we learn to conclude that there is a subjective, invisible life appertaining to it. 119

Similarly Darwinian was a second conviction that Nietzsche insisted on even more frequently. As borne out by the existence of, say, a bat's echolocation lacking in humans, "we have senses for only a selection of

14

The genealogy of aesthetics

perceptions," namely "those with which we have to concern ourselves in order to preserve ourselves,,120 or, as we now know, developed by natural selection. Nietzsche, who apparently knew Darwin only through the distorting lense of popularizers like Herbert Spencer, put it somewhat differently. "Morphology," he writes, "shows us how the senses and the nerves, as well as the brain, develop in proportion to the difficulty of finding nourishment.,,121 What we perceive, know, and think about is dictated by environmental constraints rather then by transcendentalist givens; it is a vision of an instinctually or genetically preprogramed, apparent rather than real world. "One should not understand this compulsion to construct concepts, species, forms, purposes, laws ... as if they enabled us to fix the real world; but as a compulsion to arrange a world for ourselves in which our existence is made possible." What has "made our senses so precise that the 'same apparent world' always reappears and has thus acquired the semblance of reality" 122 are specific biological needs that are different for each species. Our aesthetic responses to nature, to each other, as well as to the works of our hands and brains are allowed no exemption from these evolutionary constraints. As in the case of knowledge, the meaning of the "good" and the "beautiful," "is to be regarded in a strict and narrow anthropocentric and biological sense" which in turn is constrained by the urge of "a particular species to maintain itself and increase its power." As an instance of how "all sense perceptions are [thus] permeated with value judgments (useful and harmful- consequently pleasant or unpleasant)," 123 ugly or beautiful, Nietzsche discusses a topic that since B. Berlin's and P. Kay's pioneering explorations of our basic color terms,124 has held center stage in cognitive science's epistemological speculations. "Each individual color," he writes, "is also for us an expression of value (although we seldom admit it, or do so only after a protracted impression of exclusively the same color ... ). Thus insects also react differently to different colors.,,125 In sketching such ideas, Nietzsche went wrong here and there, and so did Darwin. But with the exception of the latter, no major thinker, including Nietzsche's would-be postmodern heirs from Heidegger to Foucault and Derrida, anticipated contemporary cognitive science in the wake of Darwin to the extent that he did. What is more, only Nietzsche provided a general framework for a yet to be formulated new aesthetics as it is emerging from the efforts made by contemporary scientists, and critics like myself indebted to their findings. As one of the former proposes after describing Kant's "ideal beauty" as a figment of the philosopher's "celibate imagination": "If you want a philosopher who understood the biology functions of beauty, read Nietzsche instead.,,126 My afterword will try to trace these affinities in more detail.

1

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

[Platonism] reversed the concept "reality" and said: "What you take to be real is an error, and the closer we come to the "idea," the closer to "the truth." - Is that understood? This was the greatest rechristening: and since it was adopted by Christianity, this astounding fact passes unnoticed by us. XII, 253 / The Will co Power, 572

Though we know little about pre-Platonic aesthetics, there is evidence to suggest that Plato accomplished a major reorientation in the area. Where, before him, had artistic imitation been denounced as essentially a misrepresentation of reality? Where the embodiment of its subject matter in diverse concrete media been decried as "shadowy simulacra" or "toys with little real substance?"1 Where its pleasurable appeal to the senses been either condemned out of hand or surrounded by grave suspicions? To be sure, Plato's strictures are mostly leveled at the imitative arts. But, in a sense, which art is not mimetic? Even music, as Plato keeps reminding us, can be so, to some extent. As one would expect, Plato's pronouncements on this least imitative and most mathematical of the arts owe most to previous theoreticians. According to the Pythagoreans, music, like the "austere, classical"2 type favored by Plato, is "modelled after numbers,,,3 achieves a "harmonization of opposites,,,4 has powers to "purge"S and is able to sooth the passions. 6 But even regarding music, Plato's pronouncements take on a specific edge. Music can induce sobriety. 7 It is indispensable in the education of the young. 8 It can help indoctrinate people by its soothing spell. 9 Also, there is much to be shunned, such as the merely "lascivious pleasing of the flute" 10 or a playing, "not by measurement but by the lucky shots of a practiced finger." I I After the fall of Athens in 404 Be there had been a reaction against the "austere, classical" type of music that Plato favored. Accordingly, classical music, in his view, suffered a "universal confusion of forms," 12 degenerating into melodies, rhythms, free forms and "unmusicallicense."13 "Possessed by a frantic and unhallowed lust for pleasure," newfangled, upstart musicians in their ignorance "of what 15

16

The genealogy of aesthetics

is right and legitimate in the realm of the Muses ... contaminated laments with hymns and paeans with dithyrambs."14 To prevent such confusion, a specially appointed "director of music" 15 ought to "distinguish a good musical imitation of a soul under the stress of its emotions" from a bad one. 16 He should separate what is merely appealing to men's senses from what is imbued with serious purpose 17 and safeguard "public standards of song.,,18 Optimal to Plato was a kind of music that eliminates melody and rhythm as potentially passion-arousing elements to the point of producing "a single series of pure notes" with "smooth and clear" sounds. 19 Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic theorizing becomes more pronounced in his comments on the fine arts. A sculptor like Polyclitus may stress that such works should be modeled on golden means, symmetries, and proportions 20 thus prefiguring Plato in stressing elements of measuring and numbering as underlying the arts in general. 21 But here the main precedents end. Polyclitus, in observing numerical ratios, did not attempt to diminish, let alone transcend or obliterate, the sensuousness of his medium or subject matter. On the contrary, whatever airy, mathematical nothings there were, had to be given a local habitation, mostly in the form of naked human bodies, displaying, except for the obvious differences, all the sensuous appeal of live ones. It was by a paradoxical inversion of the same premises that Plato wanted painters to use ratios as a means of transcending art's concrete sensuousness to the point where their pictures would become abstract configurations foreshadowing twentieth-century minimalists like Piet Mondrian - "something straight, or round, and the surfaces and solids which a lathe, or a carpenter's rule and square, produces from the straight and the round.,,22 His own age's plastic and pictorial arts struck him as correspondingly inferior. There was too much in them of a striving for illusionist effects and too little of a truthful mirroring of reality, too much "appearance imitating mimesis based on opinion" instead of a "scientific mimesis based on knowledge.,,23 In creating largesize paintings and sculptures, for instance, artists falsified the proportions of the human body so as to offset the optical shrinkage of those of its parts seen from a distance. "So artists, leaving the truth to take care of itself, do in fact put into the images they make, not the real proportions, but those that will appear beautiful.,,24 Plato also disapproved of skiagraphia, which availed itself of effects analogous to the way in which straight or convex objects are made to look bent or concave by being immersed in water. "And so scene painting in its exploitation of this weakness of our nature falls nothing short of witchcraft,,,25 he warns. The dangers such degenerate forms of music, sculpture, and painting present to his citizens, however, are minimal when compared with those

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

17

caused by poetry and other forms of writing. To begin with, literature shares its sister arts' corruptive potential for inciting the passions, for misrepresenting reality, and for catering to the mob's greed for pleasure instead of appealing to the regulated taste of the judicious few. What is more, it poses a threat to philosophy by using the same, verbal medium. There was no question in Plato's mind as to who must have the upper hand in this "old quarrel between philosophy and poetry.,,26 Who among Plato's predecessors voiced similar misgivings? Granted, poets like Pindar and Hesiod admitted that their "fables [were] embellished with colourful fictions" and went against or "beyond the truth" in trYing to make "the unbelievable thing to be believed."27 But even Solon's complaint that "minstrels tell many falsehoods"28 by no means amounted to a wholesale condemnation of mimetic art for telling lies in principle. For the most part, the poet's lies were seen as pardonable necessities, or even as praiseworthy ones, depending on his skills in manipulating the listeners' willing suspension of disbelief. "Tragedy, by means oflegends and emotions," the Sophist Gorgias claimed, "creates a deception in which the deceiver is more honest than the non-deceiver, and the deceived is wiser than the non-deceived."29 Apart from Aristophanes, who made a few tongue-in-cheek comments to the effect that poets ought to teach,30 nobody wanted to press the arts into educational schemes or to condemn them for gratuitously appealing to people's appetite for pleasure as did Plato. Even the defensiveness of certain Sophists, who explained that "poets write their works not for the sake of truth but in order to give pleasure to men,,,3l or that statues "are imitations of real bodies ... [giving] joy to the beholder, but [serving] no useful purpose,,,32 would have struck most pre-Platonic artists as quite uncalled for. That art was meant to please, delight, or distract humans from their worries, in other words, was simply taken for granted. 33 Even the restriction that such pleasurable appeals should be directed primarily to eyes and ears,34 rather than addressed to all of a person's emotional and instinctual sensibilities, seems to be a later addition to such theorizing. Homer clearly meant his listeners to enjoy his poetry in much the same way in which they relished their banquets, "the dance, and changes of raiment and the warm bath, and love and sleep.,,35 The association of poetry with meat and drink - when people sit "at the feast in the halls and listen to the singer,,35 eating and carousing - or even with sex, was commonplace enough to become an oral formulaic cliche: "What art is this, what charm against the threat of cares? What a path of song: For verily here is choice of all three things, joy, love and sweet sleep.,,36

18

The genealogy of aesthetics

Plato's reformulation of such aesthetic concepts, as we know, involved a complete, albeit utopian, recasting of society and its laws. Thus a "universal art" of statesmanship should hold sway over all the others,37 a supremacy Plato defined in ever more stringent forms as he grew older. "Society's law book," he writes, "should, in right and reason, prove, when we open it, by far the best and finest work of its whole literature; other men's compositions should either conform to it, or, if they strike a different note, excite our contempt.,,38 By virtue of knowing more than all the poets together,39 the legislator should protect us from being "gulled by the fictions" of men like Homer who try to make us believe, for instance, that the Olympians are thieves and liars. Altogether, poesy with its eulogies, satires, and other forms of discourse, is deemed to be full of contentious disagreements and unmeaning admissions. "The one certain touchstone of all is the text of the legislator. The good judge will possess the text within his own breast as an antidote against other discourse.,,40 When tested by the touchstone of the lawbook, there are few poets Plato does not find wanting. Hesiod, Homer, Musaeus, Orpheus, Pindar, Simonides41 - to Plato, their reputation as wise and knowledgeable educators of mankind is a dangerous and demonstrable lie. This is particularly true ofHesiod and Homer, the two fountainheads of Greek state religion. Had not Socrates, his great teacher, been sentenced for allegedly criticizing that religion? To Plato, the charges should have been reversed: Homer and Hesiod should have been accused of giving false accounts of the gods as well as of corrupting the young. 42 Had they not spread stories of recurrent parricide in their genealogy of the gods?43 Or how about "Theseus, the son of Poseidon, and Pirithous, the son of Zeus, attempt[ing] such dreadful rapes,,?44 Or Zeus himself being overcome by sexual desire for Hera, or worse, by an even "fiercer desire than when they first consorted with one another, 'deceiving their dear parents,,'?45 Even if true, these and other false stories about the gods told by Hesiod and Homer ought not to be passed on to "thoughtless young persons.,,46 Plato may allow for the telling of bowdlerized myths for the purpose of shaping the souls of the young,47 or for the reciting of "hymns to the gods and the praises of good men,,48 to the rest of the citizens. But whatever else of poetry or the sister arts is permitted to play a role in the educational schemes of the state, is hedged in by such grudging reservations or condemnations as to make their general banishment from Plato's utopia appear well-nigh total. In sum, poets like Hesiod and Homer, far from being educators of mankind, misrepresent facts, heroes, and the gods. 49 More often than not, they corrupt their listeners' minds, 50 frequently by inciting the wrong emotions. 51 Hence poetry's bewitching "magic" is to be deeply

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

19

distrusted. 52 Unless one holds "a countercharm to [this] spell,,,53 such magic is not to be admitted. In other words, classical literature had to be either expurgated, rewritten, or done away with entirely. Plato's early instances of what ought to be bowdlerized in this fashion concern multiple forms of divine or heroic misdemeanor as well as diverse points of religious doctrine. The gods neither plot nor war against each other;54 they are not to be thought of as bursting with laughter;55 Zeus himself, who is "altogether simple and true in deed and word," is not to be seen as changing identity or deceiving others;56 to portray him as the "dispenser alike of good and of evil to mortals,,57 is a sign of egregious folly. For how could this "most excellent and just among the gods"S8 be blamed for the evils of this world? We must look for their cause "in other things and not in God.,,59 Plato's negative attitude toward literature is most pronounced in the Republic. "Poetry, and in general the mimetic art," as he states there, "produces a product that is far removed from the truth ... and associates with the part in us that is remote from intelligence."6o Enough has been written about his reasons for saying so to allow us to sum up matters briefly here: about his defining imitation as a mirroring of reality at a double remove from the truth 61 by presenting "appearance as it appears"62 or about his refusal to admit any poetry except "hymns to the gods and the praises of good men" to his republic: for if you grant admission to the lyric or epic, "pleasure and pain will be lords of your city instead oflaw.,,63 Plato's comments on poetry and the arts sound an even more negative note in book X than in the earlier ones. It is here, at the end of the Republic that Plato, perhaps in response to discussions about what he had said earlier, decided to measure the mimetic potential of the arts against the transcendent world of ideas. The arts, he concluded, are incapable of representing these ultimate realities, and, worse, pose a dangerous obstacle in their pursuit. 64 The argument that artistic imitation operates at a double remove from the truth vanished from Plato's philosophical concerns as quickly as it arose. There is no further mention of it (let alone of his instance of the couch in relation to God, the cabinet maker, and the painter), in any of his later works. In the Sophist, he instead ponders the difference between "the making oflikenesses" and "the making ofsemblances";65 or he tries out a quadruple subdivision instead of the triple one in the Republic: art is either divine or human, the "products of divine workmanship" being either "the original" or "the image," those of human art either manufactured objects or their mimetic mirrorings: "Must we not say that in building it produces an actual house, and in painting a house of a different sort, as it were a man-made dream for waking eyes?,,66 From here until the

20

The genealogy of aesthetics

Laws, discussions of artistic imitation are conspicuous primarily for their absence. When they are resumed, Plato's main attention is devoted to determining how artistic imitation can be used most efficiently in trying to put a charm on youthful minds so as to make them pursue "virtue by means of these same imitations."67 One way is to make sure that the artist chooses the right subject matters; a second, to ensure that these will be truthfully rendered along the lines of a scientific mimesis as previously worked out in the Sophist;68 a third, to enforce the proper use of the devices that engender the arts' concomitant charm or pleasure - with the proviso that such pleasure be morally harmless and not become the standard whereby to judge the artist's performance. 69 Even when Plato for a fleeting moment resumes his previous critique of artistic imitation as producing "shadowy simulacra," he is mainly concerned with the arts' ever-present potential of promoting "epidemics of youthful irreligion."7o Obviously, Plato has become preoccupied with, if not obsessed by, other problems. E. R. Dodds calls it his "underlying despair,,71 subsequent to the collapse of his hopes offounding a republic ruled by "an elite of purified men.,,72 Plato himself speaks of a "malady of doubt" against which his spokesman prescribes a quick "prophylactic.,,73 One wonders how far this remedy managed to silence that omnipresent, ventriloquist voice of contradiction74 that plagued Plato during this period. Granted there is "a form of rightness or of beauty or of goodness.,,75 But is there one of "hair or mud or dirt" as well?76 His first answering in the negative, but then questioning this denial is anything but reassuring: "I have sometimes been troubled by a doubt whether what is true in one case may not be true in all. Then, when I have reached that point, I am driven to retreat, for fear of tumbling into a bottomless pit of nonsense.,,77 To have Plato articulate such powerful arguments against himself is one of the hallmarks of his greatness; and probably there is no more impressive instance of this magnanimity than Parmenides' tour de force disquisition on the "one [that] is both all things and nothing whatsoever,,78 immediately following his debate with Socrates. But from about the Sophist onward, Plato's tone turns somber and defensive. A large part of that dialogue is taken up with trying to "hunt down,,79 those "sham philosophers,"so "Hydra-headed Sophist[s],,,S1 and "creators of error"S2 who reduce every argument to "a tug of war"S3 in order to "to rob us of discourse" and hence "philosophy."s4 Simultaneously, Plato fights yet another rhetorical battle with a tribe of philosophers to whom "whatever they cannot squeeze between their hands is just nothing at all."S5 It takes the form of a Hesiod-like war in heaven between the Olympian "friends offorms,,86 or idealists, and the "earthborn

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

21

giants about reality,,87 or materialists. Even the "reverend and awful" Parmenides,88 to whom Plato feels indebted like a son, is not to be spared in such internecine warfare. Plato resolves his anxieties of influence toward "father Parmenides" in maneuvers of "self-defense" just stopping short of Oedipal "parricide.,,89 Letting "no scruple hinder" him from laying "unfilial hands" on Parmenides' pronouncements,90 he uses a "mild degree of torture,,91 in cross-examining them. The Socratic irony still evident in these polemics evaporates in the Statesman wherever Plato resumes pondering his future utopia. Abandoning the idea of a republic run by saintly guardians, he now opts for a second best "science of shepherding mankind."92 Legal measures toward that end would include mass deportation and/or extermination. Thus an entire city may have to be purged "for its better health by putting some of the citizens to death or banishing others.,,93 All this, we are told, is to be done on the basis of "a reasoned scientific principle following essential justice.,,94 Other "arts of herd tendance,,95 include racial breeding through arranged marriages96 as well as a universal censorship code controlling such individual arts as rhetoric and public speaking. 97 No aspect of the citizens' spiritual lives are left unmonitored. The ancient myths are to be dismissed "without more ado" since they offer nothing but "primitive stories.,,98 Severer measures are to be taken against "the theories of our modern men of enlightenment,,,99 prose writers and poets alike, who are spreading "epidemics of youthful irreligion."loo Plato's vehemence in refuting these "awful creed[s),,,IOI which have caused a "general corruption of the young people of whole cities and private households," 102 speaks for itself. One such creed, he tells us, teaches "the non-existence of gods"; a second that, even if the gods do exist, "they are indifferent to human conduct"; a third that, "though not indifferent, they are lightly placated by sacrifice and prayers.,,103 More generally speaking, these theories, which have been broadcast "throughout all mankind,"104 claim that matter is prior to mind, thus reducing the divine cosmos to a conglomerate of "earth and stones" 105 in permanent flux. 106 Looming behind them, then, is the full range of pre-Socratic philosophy including Heraclitus, Empedocles, Democritus, Anaxagoras, Anaximander, and Archelaus, as well as those Sophists who proclaim man to be the measure of all things, declare the gods to "have no real and natural, but only an artificial being, in virtue oflegal conventions," 107 and propagate what they call "the 'really and naturally right life,' that is, the life of real domination over others, not of conventional service to them." 108 In Plato's view, most of the respective philosophers err in declaring the soul to be secondary to the body, an error which "wrecked the whole scheme, or, to speak more accurately, wrecked themselves." It also involved them

22

The genealogy of aesthetics

in "many charges of infidelity" and, as Plato adds - probably thinking of Socrates' followers including himself - "inspired poets to denounce students of philosophy by comparing them with dogs baying the moon.,,109 Several of Plato's arguments against these "irreligious doctrines" I 10 assume the form of admonitions to an imaginary young person corrupted by them. III But Plato does not let things rest here. There ought to be "laws against impiety"112 governed by a threefold catechism: (a) that the gods exist, (b) that they are concerned for mankind, and (c) that they cannot be bribed. These are to be enforced with the utmost severity, especially when compared with what Plato's penal code provided for "regular" crimes like murder and theft. Offenders, by either speech or act, against the three tenets are to be reported to the authorities, and, if convicted, to be sentenced to no less than five years solitary confinement in a house of correction where they are to benefit from the religious propaganda administered by the Nocturnal Council. If they do not benefit, they are to be executed. 113 With this system hypothetically put in place, Plato can allow himself somewhat more tolerance toward poets and artists - that is as long as they abide by the rules of their heresy-proof community, and work within the educational schemes of the state. Only thus will the "man of poetic gifts" be allowed "to compose as he ought.,,114 What is more, older poetry, even if of the oral kind, is to be sifted and, if "pronounced satisfactory, [to] be accepted, while any that are judged to be defective ... shall ... be revised and corrected."115 Though the legislators have the final word in this process, they will take "advice from experts in poetry and music." 116 Hence, there will be separate censorship boards for every kind of art and poetry, be it panegyric,117 lyrical,1I8 comical, or satirical. 119 Even the utterances of the inspired poet, in spite of their often contradictory nature,120 are to be handled in the same dictatorially benevolent way. Never mind if the words uttered after the poet's "judgment [has taken] leave of him"121 should sound irrational. The censors will separate the wheat from the chaff. For it is not the poet's task to determine "whether his representation is a good one or not." 122 His responsibility is toward his medium, not the content. It is only concerning matters such as "scale and rhythm" that his judgment "cannot be dispensed with."123 As for subject matter, the poet ought to rely on the legislators who might tell him how to compose prayers to the gods 124 or how to explain the spirit of his laws. To give an instance, a legislator might tell his poet that it is virtually impossible for "wicked men [to] have a pleasant life," or that those asserting the opposite ought to suffer a "penalty little short of the capital." 125 The main task of the poet as defined in the Laws, then, is "to employ his noble and fine-filed phrases to represent by their rhythms the bearing,

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

23

and by their melodies the strains, of men who are pure, valiant, and, in a word, goOd."126 Hence, even the bewitching charm of the poet's medium, so dangerous if left unrestrained, is harnessed to the worthy purpose of constraining his perhaps less good, pure, and valiant listeners or readers into virtue. 127 Plato's recasting of the age's art theories within the framework of his utopian republic goes hand in hand with a radical transvaluation of earlier senses of the true, the good, and the beautiful. Of these, the beautiful naturally is most closely related to the arts even though Plato rarely speaks of it in this context. The proverbial exception is his complaint about the "lovers of sounds and sights ... [who] delight in beautiful tones and colors and shapes and in everything that art fashions out of these," but are "incapable of apprehending and taking delight in the nature of the beautiful in itself.,,128 This comment is characteristic of Plato's general deprecation of art, but untypical of his normally more abstract use of the concept. The beautiful, to him, is either an eternal form in the transcendent realm of ideas or an attribute of persons or objects that are beautiful insofar as they partake of "absolute beauty.,,129 Needless to say, only the initiated are able to appreciate this ultimately "unknowable" beauty. 130 For it can neither be seen with our eyes nor apprehended "with any other bodily sense.,,131 Socrates' answer to the question as to whether or not "the multitude [can] possibly tolerate or believe in the reality of the beautiful in itself as opposed to the multiplicity of beautiful things"132 is decidedly negative. Meanwhile, Plato had reason to complain that there were many "who view many beautiful things but do not see the beautiful itself." Worse, there were those who were "unable to follow another's guidance to it,,,133 or even refused to do so. To the more enlightened, there were at least two ways of entering that realm full of "visions of a beauty beyond words."134 In both, the questor takes his initial impulse from the contemplation of "the beauty of one individual body." 135 Diotima in the Symposium has a reverential appreciation of this potentially sexual impulse or "breeding instinct" quite unlike Plato himself. There is "a divinity in human propagation," she explains, "an immortal something in the midst of man's mortality" presided over by Beauty, "the goddess of both fate and travail." 136 Like Schopenhauer's Will or August Weismann's germ plasm, this "longing for propagation," to her, "is the one deathless and eternal element in our mortality.,,137 Through this procreative instinct alone the body "and all else that is temporal partakes of the eternal."138 Plato's spokesman Socrates, while acknowledging Diotima's "most impressive argument," wonders if she is right, ironically commenting on her "air of authority that was almost

24

The genealogy of aesthetics

professorial.,,139 There is more than that to call her praise of sexuality in question. Thus she is made to expound another more strictly Platonic mode of procreating offspring of a spiritual rather than fleshly kind. 140 This, of course, is the celebrated account of how the questor, via a "heavenly ladder,,,141 makes his gradual ascent from the contemplation of "the beauty of one individual body,,142 toward a "vision of the very soul of beauty." 143 As we know, this "wondrous vision" 144 involves a knowledge of something ultimately unattainable by the senses. For the beautiful itself does not take the form of any face, body, or object to be seen, heard, felt, or measured. "It will be neither words, nor knowledge, nor a something that exists in something else, such as a living creature, or the earth, or the heavens, or anything that is." 145 Hence, the beautiful, to use the more philosophically penetrating arguments about being in Parmenides, is not just "unknowable to US.,,146 In an ultimate sense, it is a nothingness. For as something which, in Diotima's words, subsists "of itself and by itself in an eternal oneness," 147 the beautiful is subject to the reductio ad absurdum to which the "reverend and awful,,148 Parmenides reduces the one. 149 No wonder if the votary lost in the contemplation of this nothingness of "beauty's very self" 150 should be viewed as "demented.,,151 Inversely, he looks down on all the sexually or otherwise beautiful things that "used to take [his] breath away,,152 with mere indifference. This is as far as Diotima is made to go. Apart from calling the beautiful "unsullied, unalloyed, and freed from the mortal taint that haunts the frailer loveliness of flesh and blood,,,153 she nowhere voices the contempt for earthly beauty manifest elsewhere in Plato's dialogues, or the disgust with the "disgraceful and repulsive sight" of people involved in "sexual intercourse.,,154 Even the beauty lovers in Phaedrus who consummate their love in a sexual union thereby achieving that full desire which the ignorant "multitude account blissful,,,155 are still treated with relative tolerance. Since they took "the first steps on the celestial highway [they] shall no more return to the dark pathways beneath the earth, but shall walk together in a life of shining bliss." 156 But otherwise, this second major account of the soul's ascent toward pure beauty as conveyed via the image of the soul as "a team of winged steeds and their winged charioteer,,,157 is marked by Plato's distaste for sexuality throughout. The questor who fails to appreciate "beauty'S self yonder" and hence has eyes only for "that which is called beautiful here," is equated with a "four-footed beast" which, in begetting offspring of the flesh, consorts with wantonness and "has no fear nor shame in running after unnatural pleasure."158 The main reason for this protopuritanical attitude seems to be psychological. For the soul, in Phaedrus, is split into two mutually antagonistic

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

25

principles represented by the two steeds: one good, noble, reverend, heedful, and temperate; the other evil, wicked, unruly, hot-blooded, and eager for the "delights of love's commerce" as well as for "monstrous and forbidden act[s] ."159 The strife between the two, which repeatedly thwarts, confounds, even threatens to derail the charioteer's pursuit of "true beauty," 160 results from the fact that the soul is chained down in the "prison house" of the body,161 a concept already dwelt upon in the earlier Phaedo. 162 New is the violence with which the charioteer enforces his ultimately triumphant rule of "self-mastery" on the "wanton horse.,,163 Being sidetracked one more time in the direction of "the delights of love's commerce," the driver suddenly remembers true beauty "enthroned by the side of temperance," and hence coerces the evil horse into groveling submission: "with resentment even stronger than before ... [he] jerks back the bit in the mouth of the wanton horse with an even stronger pull, bespatters his railing tongue and his jaws with blood, and forcing him down on legs and haunches delivers him over to anguish.,,164 At the same time one can see how the essential nothingness of universal beauty dazzling the beholder with its untainted invisibility is filling up with concrete, theological notions. These accrue around how the pursuit of beauty is progressively turning into a battle between good and evil for the conquest of the soul. Intruding upon the rarified realms of "true being ... without color or shape,,,165 there is the punitive eschatology, newly locked into distinct notions of time and eternity, of the various kinds of "chastisement beneath the earth" or rewards to be enjoyed in "a certain region of the heavens.,,166 Punishments and/or rewards are to be meted out to those who either fail or succeed in their quest for universal beauty existing outside time. Simultaneously, Plato continues to expatiate upon the beauty of ultimate nothingness in ever more glowing terms. His account in the Republic rightly makes Socrates' listeners protest that "hyperbole can no further go" in trying to captivate that ultimately "inconceivable beauty.,,167 Socrates compares the good or the beautiful with the sun; he expounds on how the questor makes his ascent via "geometry and the kindred arts" as well as the "power of dialectic"; 168 he links his previous analogy of the sun with the good to the notion of the soul's imprisonment in the body169 in his allegory of the cave; he also explains how the cave dwellers, who so far have only seen shadowy projections of true reality, are blinded by the sun of universal beauty as they turn around and gradually make their way up the long, sloping cave into plain daylight. None of these accounts of "the soul's ascension to the intelligible region,,170 returns to the inner struggle, familiar from Phaedrus, between the forces of good and those of evil, with irrational and carnal ones pulling

26

The genealogy of aesthetics

the questor back from trying "to scale that ascent."171 Yet it is in the Republic where Plato, more frequently than ever before, returns to the

discussion of the "double man"l72 ruled by "opposite impulses";173 and where he developes an almost Everyman-like allegorical account of how these forces fight it out in and around the "citadel of the young man's soul."174 After the Republic, Plato's spokesmen rarely, if ever, gaze, "so to say, direct at the sun"175 of universal beauty. Instead, they scan things close to the ground. They anxiously watch people succumb to the "dangerous seductive blandishments"176 of pleasure, that "greatest incitement to evil," 177 or they note with particular revulsion how human beings, driven by "the mad frenzy of sex," 178 behave worse than animals. The breeding instinct which, to Diotima, represented the one "deathless and eternal element in our mortality,,,179 has become the "lust of procreation with its blaze of wanton appetite.,,180 What the vulgar call "this 'heaven of bliss' ,,181 has become a very hell. In Phaedrus, questors for the beautiful who consummate their love in sex will still be allowed to "walk together in a life ofshiningbliss"182 one day. But by the time of Philebus, the beautiful is talked about in direct opposition to such vulgar sensual pleasure: "when we see someone, no matter whom, experiencing pleasures - and I think this is true especially of the greatest pleasures - we detect in them an element either of the ridiculous or of extreme ugliness, so that we ourselves feel ashamed, and do our best to cover it up and hide it away.,,183 In the Laws, we finally find Plato casting about for what will arouse the "universal dread" by which "the minds of all will be subjugated" into abstaining from homosexuality, lesbianism, and all sexual activities except procreative intercourse. 184 Other measures toward enforcing sexual abstinence involve, first, the kind of hard work capable of "checking the development of the full violence of these lusts" by way of redirecting their "rising current into some other physical channel"; second, the instilling of "a sense of shame" to attend "sexual indulgence[s)"; and third, the establishment of a code of honor whereby sexual overindulgers would be noted as "slaves to their vices." 185 In addition to all these means of trying to suppress "the mad frenzyofsex,,,186 he recommends "the development of the passion for a beauty which is spiritual, not physical." 187 Meanwhile, Plato had long declared the ascent to "inconceivable beauty" to be eo ipso unattainable to the ignorant mob. The latter simply cannot appreciate "the reality of the beautiful in itself as opposed to the multiplicity of beautiful things.,,188 Appreciation of "the beautiful in itself" has become the prerogative of an elite of initiates who, unlike their lesser brethren wallowing pig-like in "the mud of ignorance,"189 will scale heights whence "the petty miseries ofmen,,19o appear as matters of

Plato's transvaluation of aesthetic values

27

supreme indifference. What allows these "lover[s] of wisdom" to associate with the "divine order,,191 is a "conversion of the soul,,,192 a complete turning inside out of themselves, resulting in an inversion of all traditionally held beliefs - light becoming darkness, the real unreal, the good bad, and the beautiful ugly. Plato convinced himself over the years that such a conversion cannot be taught. At best, an education may prod the initiate to the point where it happens spontaneously - "suddenly, like a blaze kindled by a leaping spark," until the mind "is flooded with light."193 The wheel has come full circle. Everything once called beautiful for causing natural pleasure has been debunked as a misrepresentation of reality, denounced as an inducement to evil, or reviled as plain ugly or shameful; what is called beautiful is a nothingness beyond reality. Meanwhile, this ultimately nihilistic conception of beauty has become part of a manipulative theology designed to brainwash the common man into accepting Plato's new doctrines. "Men's beliefs about gods have changed, and so the law must be changed too," 194 Plato remarks categorically. "The youthful mind," he stands convinced, "will be persuaded of anything, if one will take the trouble to persuade it.,,195 And should his doctrines be false, they would still amount to the most "useful fiction" ever told. 196

2

Proto-Nietzschean opponents to Plato

The Platonic Socrates is, properly speaking, a caricature; for he is weighed down with more attributes than can ever be united in a single person. Plato is not enough of a dramatist to capture the image of Socrates in a single dialogue. It is even a variable [ftressende] caricature. Xenophon's Memorabilia, by contrast, draw a truly faithful image; however, one has to be able to read this book. VUl,327.

Another glance at earlier notions of the beautiful further highlights the radicalness of the Platonic project. No pre-Platonic artist or philosopher, as far as we know, ever seems to have defined the beautiful in opposition to the sexual, physical, and sensually delightful. The beautiful, like a beautiful body or dwelling, is what pleases. In that sense, the concept is associated with other qualities such as "goodness," "proportion," and "fitness" which please as well. An exception like Democritus, who points out that "physical beauty is [merely] animal unless intelligence be present,"1 is not condemning animal or physical beauty as such. Physical beauty is merely enhanced by uniting itself with the intellectual. Painters and sculptors speak of the symmetries and proportions underlying their sensuously concrete representations in similarly pragmatic fashion. They idealize nature by selecting from and multiplying nature's beauties. Zeuxis, according [0 a well-known anecdote reponed by Cicero, chose five of the most beautiful women of Croton as models for a painting of Helen, "because he did not think all the qualities which he sought to combine in a ponrayal of beauty could be found in one person."2 But given the paucity of pre-Platonic discussions of the beautiful in either art or nature, it is difficult to document how Plato modified and/or inverted these in detail. The possible exceptions are the pronouncements by the historical Socrates, none of which were recorded by himself. But in addition to Plato's works, we have another major source for them in the Memorabilia and Symposium by Xenophon, who paints a radically different picture of Plato's main spokesman. None of what Xenophon's Socrates has to say about the arts has the negative ring marking the 28

Proto-Nietzschean opponents to Plato

29

statements by his Platonic counterpart. Unlike the latter, Xenophon's Socrates is portrayed as engaging actual artists and craftsmen 3 in conversations while bustling around their houses and workshops. Yet another source tells us that Socrates never missed going to the theater when there was a new play by Euripides. 4 This is strange behavior for a person equipped with all the contrary traits by Plato, who evidently invested an art and theater-loving Socrates with his own distaste for the arts and put the appropriate arguments against them into his mouth at a time when the master could no longer contradict him. Is this the "embellished and modernized,,5 Socrates' Plato speaks of in a letter? To start with, Xenophon's Socrates nowhere searches for "absolute beauty" or "beauty by itself";6 he never pronounces himself to the effect that the purposeful, fitting, or appropriate cannot be included in this concept of beauty; 7 nor does he disapprove of those who equate the beautiful with the pleasant as experienced "through sight and hearing."s Least of all does he feel the humorless derision and disgust which Plato's Socrates entertains for those who extend the concept to such matters as smells, food, or sex, arguing that sexual intercourse, for instance, represents "a disgraceful and repulsive sight" that ought to be practiced only where there is none to see. Q The scope of what strikes the Xenophonian Socrates as beautiful is altogether more catholic and earthbound. It definitely includes sexual beauty like Theodote's, a courtesan whom he charms with his goodhumored banter,10 or of the flute girl who, together with "a very attractive boy," 11 performs aphrodisiacal dances for him and his fellow guests at a banquet. 12 Xenophon's Socrates never takes issue with Critoboulus' claim that beauty is not only found in humans, but also "in horses and cattle and in many inanimate objects.,,13 He may stress the more intellectual aspects of the beautiful, but not by speaking of these in opposition to the physically appealing ones. "After ... the boy performed a dance ... Socrates said, 'Did you see how, beautiful as the boy is, he nevertheless looks even more beautiful in the figures of the dance than when he is keeping still?",14 It is fully in tune with these sentiments when another dinner guest by the name of Charmides adds the Homeric comment that this "combination of youthful beauty and music allays one's cares and awakens thoughts of love." 15 Such discussions of beauty and the arts occasionally seem to directly engage the Platonic standpoint. Thus, the Socrates of Xenophon's Memorabilia takes up some of the points discussed in the Greater Hippias and, according to at least one critic, he does so by way of inverting the theories proposed in that dialogue. 16 What the Platonic Socrates denies is categorically affirmed by his namesake; all things - whether it be a

30

The genealogy of aesthetics

house, food, or physical prowess - "are good and beautiful in relation to those purposes for which they are well adapted, bad and ugly in relation to those for which they are ill adapted." 17 Instead of relating to an ideational absttact, such purposiveness as well as the underlying proportions it may involve, have to serve a concrete purpose. Hence, a breastplate or shield will be called well proportioned and beautiful if it fits the man for whom it was made. 18 A painter like Zeuxis with his five women creates perfect beauty, not in relation to some geometric configuration or, worse, nothingness, but by drawing on what is most beautiful in each of his models; as Socrates tells the painter Parrhasius: "when you are painting beautiful figures ... you combine the best features of a number of people, and so convey the appearance of bodies which are entirely beautiful!' 19 Here and elsewhere, Xenophon's Socrates is groping toward a theory of the arts which his Platonic counterpart is forever busy dismissing, vilifying, or banning from his republic. Characteristically, the artists he frequents and talks to are said to have benefited from his comments. All of these, once again, are in diametric opposition to comparable ones entertained by Plato's Socrates. While the latter condemns the representation of human passions in poetry, music, and the theater out of hand, Xenophon's Socrates tells a surprised Parrhasius that painters, in depicting human beings, should capture their emotions as well. People, he suggests, "look radiant at their joys, downcast at their sorrows ... Moreover, nobility and dignity, self-abasement and servility, prudence and understanding, insolence and vulgarity, are reflected in the face and in the attitudes of the body whether still or in motion."20 In sum, Xenophon's Socrates advocates an illusionistically faithful rendering of reality totally at odds with Plato's condemnation of such techniques. A major part of the beauty he perceives in Cleiton's sculptures of "runners, wrestlers, boxers and fighters" derives from their creating "that illusion oflife which is their most alluring charm to the beholder.,,21 In addition, the two namesakes uphold diametrically opposite views as to whether an artist should render reality in minute detail or in ideationally determined, general outline. According to Xenophon's Socrates, a painter, in ttying to render his subject's appearance and emotion, should "accurately represent the different parts of the body as they are affected by the pose - the flesh wrinkled or tense, the limbs compressed or outstretched, the muscles taut or 100se."22 Plato's Socrates, by contrast, condemns the imitation of these petty minutia of life - "the noise of wind and hail and axles and pulleys, and the notes of trumpets and flutes and Panpipes, and ... the cries of dogs, sheep, and birds!m In doing so, he launched western art theory on to that greasy slide of absttaction which has remained its mainstteam bias ever since.

Proto-Nietzschean opponents to Plato

31

Given Plato's equation of the beautiful with the good, one feels tempted to describe his inversion of more traditional aesthetic concepts as a transvaluation of values. And indeed there is much, at least in Plato's notions of the good versus the evil (and how these affect his view of the arts), that appears to agree with certain ideas Nietzsche sketched in his Genealogy of Morals. Put in the briefest possible terms, this genealogy takes its starting point from a master morality which calls good (agatlws) everything that appeals to the aristocracy - such as fortitude, valor, and "triumphant self-affirmation"24 - and bad (kakos and dews) all the contrary qualities associated with the slaves. Their feeling "pitiable" and "unhappy" (Nietzsche invokes the Greek words "deilos, deilaios, poneros, mochtheros, the last two of which properly characterize the common man as a drudge and beast ofburden,,25) are essentially conditioned reflex-type behavior panerns, developed by the slaves after having been penalized, tortured, and terrorized into defraying the obligations imposed upon them by the masters. Since all human beings, whether slave or master, are driven by the will to power, the main factor in this largely unconscious process is a repressing and interiorizing of the life impulse, breeding resentment, binerness, vindictiveness, and a delight in being punished. At a later point, these perverted responses engender their own moral tenets. "The slave revolt in morals begins by rancor turning creative and giving birth to values - the rancor of beings who, deprived of the direct outlet of action, compensate by an imaginary vengeance.,,26 The bad is redefined by being identified with what the nobles called good; the good by being equated with all the pseudovalues bred by enslavement. As we have seen, Plato's works testify to the fact that his moral system with its strongly antisensuous bias amounted, at least in theory, to a general transvaluation of a more traditional value system current at his time. On the one hand, there is his demand that the passions, appetites, and pleasures of the body - which by enslaving, imprisoning, and entombing the soul 2i constitute the main source of evil28 - must be controlled, restrained, repressed, or best, negated altogether; on the other hand, he invokes diverse opposing doctrines that either negate the possibility of such restraint, defend an Hedonistic sensualism, or advocate the strong man's right for triumphant self-affinnation29 at the expense of his weaker brethren. Obviously, Plato had reasons for complaining that most people did not believe in the power of the mind to rule the body. "They just think of knowledge as a slave, pushed around by all the other afIections.,,30 There are thinkers who, like several Sophists, advocate an unabashed pursuit of pleasure, or worse, "prose writers and poets" who, claiming that "there is absolutely no such thing as a real and natural right ...

32

The genealogy of aesthetics

profess that indefeasible right means whatever a man can carry with the high hand."31 One of these, allowed to speak in Plato's dialogues, is Thrasymachus, who explains to the "simple-minded Socrates,,32 that so-called justice is, at best, "the advantage of the superior,,,33 and that "injustice on a sufficiently large scale is a stronger, freer, and more masterful thing than justice.,,34 Apparently, Plato's Socrates has heard it all before, complaining about "innumerable" persons who have dinned his ears full of arguments like these. 35 Yet naturally there are differences as well. Unlike the unconscious process described by Nietzsche, the transvaluation of values proposed by Plato resembles a proselytizing campaign which a more or less isolated prophet fights against overwhelming odds. Even toward the end of his life, Plato still thought of himself as a "pioneer,,36 for his peculiar brand of philosophy. He ruefully recalls his various ill-fated attempts to expound "in theory [his] ideals for mankind" to diverse persons in and close to power so as to make these ideals "effective in practice.,,37 Even Plato's main spokesman is depicted throughout as a pioneer figure known for his idiosyncrasies of appearance, behavior, and teaching. Some may revile Socrates as a "pestilential busybody,"38 a "stinging fly,"39 or as a "corrupter and evil genius";40 others praise him as a magician or "wizard."41 But friends and foes alike agree that he is "absolutely unique.,,42 And so he is, by any standards - a man "as quick as a Spartan hound to pick up the scent and follow the trail of [an] argument,"4~ but also one subject to fits of abstraction 44 and to hearing strange voices:" Socrates, or rather the "embellished and modernized,,46 version of him that Plato presents, is the wisest and justest man on earth.47 He is someone who, convinced of his mission,48 eventually dies as an innocent martyr for upholding his convictions. As peculiar as Socrates himself, is the numbing and confusing effect he has on his listeners. 49 To some he simply appears confused. "Even before I met you," Meno tells him, "they told me that in plain truth you are a perplexed man yourself and reduce others to perplexity.,,5o Meno's actual experience of Socrates is worse than he expects. A skilled orator who had often held fonh on the nature of virtue to huge audiences, Meno finds himself reduced to the point where "he can't even say what [virtue] is": At this moment I feel you are exercising magic and witchcraft upon me and positively laying me under your spell until 1 am just a mass of helplessness ... I think that not only in outward appearance but in other respects as well you are exactly like the flat sting ray that one meets in the sea. Whenever anyone comes into contact with it, it numbs him, and that is the son of thing that you seem to be doing to me now. My mind and my limbs are literally numb, and I have nothing to reply to yoU.~1

Proto-Niewchean opponents to Plato

33

Alcibiades, although thoroughly sympathetic toward Socrates, still finds himself reduced to feeling like "the lowest of the low"s2 by his friend. Socrates, he confesses, is the only person in the world that can make him feel ashamed. S3 There is something positively odd about his philosophy: it affects you just as if you had "been bitten in the heart, or the mind." It "clings like an adder to any young and gifted mind it can get hold of, and does exactly what it likes with it."s4 Worse, it makes Alcibiades feel as if his "whole soul [had been turned] upside down."" Alcibiades' description of Socrates coincides with Plato's self-estimate as a person who literally "preach[ed]" a new "way oflife,,';6 and who secured the most "genuine converts to [his] philosophy"S7 among young men of special talent. 5K It also agrees with Plato's sense that such a conversion requires the initiate to turn himself inside out until his mind, "as it exerts all its powers to the limit of human capacity, is flooded with Iight.,,59 It is an all or nothing process, a traveling along "a path of enchantment, which he must at once strain every nerve to follow, or die in the attempt.,,60 What, precisely, was involved in such a complete "change ofhean,,?61 For one, the initiate had to completely change his attitude toward the body. As E. R. Dodds informs us, the word psyche had no flavor whatsoever of puritanism or any suggestion of metaphysical status to the ordinary fifth-century Athenian. "The 'soul' was no reluctant prisoner of the body; it was the life or spirit of the body, and perfectly at home there.,,62 But gradually adherents of diverse early Pythagorean and Orphic doctrines began to credit man with an occult self of divine origin at odds with the body. Techniques of dissociating one from the other were meant to expiate the sins which would otherwise bring the culprit severe punishments in the hereafter. But even during Plato's lifetime, these new ascetic creeds, which Rohde appropriately termed "a drop of alien blood in the veins of the Greeks,,,63 remained marginal to the general belief system of the people; no one before Plato ever united the disparate strands of this life-negating conglomerate into a coherent philosophical system, let alone propagated it with Plato's zeal. No wonder that later Christian writers like Augustine, in looking for predecessors with their own disgust for the body, could draw directly on Plato. Particularly irksome to both, for instance, was the peculiar unruliness with which the sexual organs defied attempts to be controlled by the will. The genitals, as Augustine puts it, have become "the private property of lust, which has brought them so completely under its sway that they have no power of movement if this passion fails, if it has not arisen spontaneously OT in response to a stimulus.,,64 Plato's precedent, when compared with this almost clinical statement, clearly strikes the more

34

The genealogy of aesthetics

strident note: "like an animal disobedient to reason, and maddened with the sting of lust," he writes, the male "organ of generation ... seeks to gain absolute sway, and the same is the case with the so-called womb or matrix of women.,,65 Plato, as he teUs us, derived some of his basic notions about the body as a prison - the soul being held prisoner until its penalty for the sins committed in a person's lifetime is paid otT - from "Orphic poets" and other sources. 66 But the vehemence with which he inveighs against "the desires and evils of the body" that "flustered and maddened" the soul 67 seems entirely his own. So are the didactic urgency and allegorical elaborateness with which he expands on the cliches possibly borrowed from others. Socrates' miniature sermon about the philosopher trying to liberate himself from the prison of the body in Phaedo is a typical example. 68 Characteristically, the art of "separating the soul as much as possible from the body,"69 amounts to a "science,..7o upon which Plato lavishes the superlatives usually reserved for his most high-ranking ideas like the beautiful and good. It is the "science of science" and, by virtue of being a "science of itself," the "science of the absence of science,,71 similar to the "kind of hearing which hears no sound at aU.'072 Given these paradoxical hyperboles, it comes as an anticlimax to find Plato equate this superscience with simple temperance or sophrosyne, a concept with a history reaching back to the heroic and archaic periods. But there is obviously more to it than meets the eye at first. Especially regarding "unknowable" beauty (itself closely related of this self-eliminating "science ofscience,,73), Plato proposes his own brand of temperance. While using the old word, he fills it with new meaning. Or as Plato would have it, he is unearthing the original meaning of the term's "immutable essence,,74 from underneath its more recent encrustations. For in many cases, "the fine fashionable language of modem times has twisted and disguised [or] entirely altered the original meaning,,75 of words. Given Helen North's magisterial study of sophrosyne from Homer and Hesiod through to patristic literature, there is no need to document this transvaluation in detail. 76 Let it suffice to point out that Plato's Socrates, in what he has to say about this and related concepts, once again finds himself in opposition to the majority of his contemporaries and, more specifically, to his Xenophonian counterpart. The latter repeatedly insists on a gentleman's need for both self-knowledge and self-control. But such restraint is never practiced for its own sake, let alone as a "science of the absence of science." Instead, it is a means to an end, be it courage, proper husbandry, or the enjoyment oflife. For it is "self-discipline, above

Proto-Nietzsche an opponents to Plato

35

all things, which causes pleasure." "Self-indulgence doesn't allow us to endure hunger or thirst or sexual desire ... which are the only things that make eating and drinking and sexual intercourse pleasurable.,,77 To Plato's Socrates, this kind of "self-control ... as it is understood even in the popular sense,,,78 is simply another form of disreputable hedonism. It is a "simple" sophrosyne practiced out of a special kind of "wantonness [ako/asia]" and "self-indulgence.,,79 The true moral idea of sophrosyne has to be posited in explicit opposition to this "thoroughly vulgar conception" advocated by Xenophon, "which is based on relative emotional values.,,8o No wonder this idea, itself the product of "a kind of purgation from all ... emotions,"81 emulates "unknowable" beauty for its virtual nonexistence. Once again, Plato's notion of purgation, as his Socrates points out, draws on previous theorizing about how the person who "enters the next world uninitiated and unenlightened shall lie in the mire, but he who arrives there purified and enlightened shall dwell among the gods.,,82 Yet even here, Plato goes beyond his predecessors in linking his peculiar notion of sophrosyne to the order of the universe at large. Here Socrates in Gorgias, indulging in one of his customary feats of linguistic juggling, "slides rather too easily, with the treacherous help of Greek usage, from kosmo.~ in the wide sense of taxis,83 to kosmos in the restricted sense of sophron.,,84 Hence, the cosmic order or kosmos psyche is made to encompass an eschatology meant to frighten off those who, by defying temperance, are tempted to commit "heinous" crimes. For they will have to watch those who have committed similar misdeeds in the past "suffering throughout eternity the greatest and most excruciating and terrifying tortures.,,85 Plato's punitive enlargement of sophrosyne also extends to the ideal state. Structured in analogy to the temperate soul, it has the task of safeguarding the observance of temperance amongst its citizens. In this, the secular penal system works in analogy to the celestial counterpart. The primary aim in both, reversing the eye-for-an-eye /ex la/ionis, is to cure and deter. 86 By being punished, offenders "should either be improved and benefited thereby or become a warning to the rest.,,87 Of course, some culprits may turn out to be incurable. As a consequence, they will have to suffer capital punishment in this life88 and eternal damnation in the next. 89 We recall how Plato proposes a kind of halfway house between the two. This "house of correction" gives offenders against the state religion a last chance to reform while doing no less than five years. Throughout this period they shall have no communication with any citizen except the members of the nocturnal council, who shall visit them with a view to

36

The genealogy of aesthetics

admonition and their souls' salvation. When the term of confinement has expired, if the prisoner is deemed to have returned to his right mind, he shall dwell with the right-minded, but if not, and he be condemned a second time on the same charge, he shall suffer the penalty of death."9o

Plato calls this reformatory the sophronisterion. 91 Most crucial in all this is that the culprit develop the proper attitude toward punishment. It is not enough that he submit to it with willingness and humility. He must actually search it out the way a sick man runs to see a doctor and patiently subjects himself to his treatment. Pondering such right-mindedness suggests an analogy to Socrates: just as the doctor will cure bodies, and the punisher the souls of culprits, so Socrates will cure his listeners of faulty reasoning and wrong beliefs. "Submit nobly to [my] argument," he urges, "as you would to a doctor, and say either yes or no to my question[s].,,92 Characteristically, Socrates starts his argument by positing "the beautiful" in opposition to the "shameful" and "evil,"93 before proceeding to determine the "evil of the soul" (i.e., intemperance, injustice, cowardice, and ignorance) as "superlative shamefulness" and "the greatest of all evils."94 Following his customary path of escalating hyperbole, he winds up with a paradox. There is an evil even greater than a soul which is diseased: namely, the attitude of a person who, while so afflicted, avoids being cured. In other words, the "greatest of all evils is to do wrong and escape punishment."95 Hence, the culprit must undergo his punishment just as humbly and blindly as he should submit to being cut and cauterized by the surgeon, "heeding not the pain, but ifhis guilty deeds be worthy of flogging, submitting to the lash; if of imprisonment, to bonds; if of a fine, to the payment thereof; if of exile, to exile; if of death, to death.,,96 Socrates is the first to point out that such claims turn the popular assumptions of his time upside down. 97 But what maner if the entire world, including his present interlocutor Polus, were against him? To be allowed to state his case to Polus, claim him as a wimess, and eventually "puning [him] alone to the vote," is alI he is asking for. 98 But no one is taken in by Socrates' fake modesty. The contention that to do wrong and escape punishment is the greatest of all evils seems "fantastic" to Polus though quite in tune with Socrates' general way of reasoning. Another listener, Callicles, wonders if Socrates is joking or in earnest. 99 More intelligent than Polus, Callicles realizes what Socrates is up to. Tauntingly he wonders whether Socrates has spoken in earnest or in jest. For if Socrates were truly serious and what he says true, Callicles remarks, then we would everywhere be "doing the opposite of what we should" and "the life of us mortals must be turned upside down." 100

Proto-Nietzschean opponents to Plam

37

We have heard similar comments from Alcibiades. But, unlike him, Callicles is not about to deliver a «eulogy of Socrates." What he launches into instead is a refutation of Socrates' doctrine, so passionate, persuasive, and powerful to have convinced more than one scholar that Callicles stands for "an unrealized Plato" who, as Jaeger put it, "lies deeply buried beneath the foundations of the Republic."lOl What is more, Callicles argues in ways foreshadowing crucial ideas later elaborated by Nietzsche. The starting point for both is the assumption of a master morality or law of nature (physis) in which good and bad are defined in terms of the "sovereignty and advantage of the stronger over the weaker.,,102 Its opposite, or law of convention (nomos), simply disguises the impotent resentment of the slaves in their attempts to curb the noble and proud. Callicles views this "slave revolt in morals" as a conspiracy of underdogs rather than as the result of an unconscious process. Those who lay down the rules, he argues, "are the weaker folk, the majority." In doing so, "they frame the laws for themselves and their own advantage, ... to prevent the stronger ... from gaining the advantage over them, they frighten them by saying that to overreach others is shameful and evil." 10.3 Meanwhile, Callicles is aware of the powers of repression to breed envy and resentment, or of the fact that the oppressed, after being forced into harboring such emotions, will end up renaming "shameful" and "evil" what the nobles called "good" and "virtuous." Callicles' word for "repress" is kolazein. Unable to give a free rein to their desires in "triumphant self-affirmation" by way of letting their "appetites grow as large as possible," "they will say that intemperance [akolasia] is actually shameful." "When they haven't the power to find fulfillment for their pleasures, they [will] praise temperance and justice because of their own unmanliness."104 Whatever it is, unconscious process or deliberate conspiracy, the results are similar for both Callicles and Nietzsche: natural morality is "turned upside down"; the previous valuations of good and bad undergo a radical change. The once good becomes shameful and evil (bOse), the formerly bad (schlecht) assumes the qualities of the previous good. Callicles even prefigures Nietzsche's semantic distinction between schlecht and bOse, the former denoting the masters' evaluation of their slaves, the latter the slaves' resentful denunciation of the previous masters. According to E. R. Dodds, bose corresponds to to noma adikon and schlecht to to physei adikon. 105 Before Plato decided that the only sure way of making people conform to his doctrines was by inculcating "shame and fear,,,l06 he considered other means as well. The main one was to give those ordered to search out

38

The genealogy of aesthetics

their punishment a powerful model for such submissiveness. The obvious choice here fell on Socrates, who had been sentenced to death after being found guilty "on the grounds that he did not believe in the gods in whom the city believes but brought in other strange daimonia." L07 By way of adapting the historical model to his doctrinal purposes, Plato has Socrates add another twist to the paradoxical doctrine that the "greatest of all evils is to do wrong and escape punishment."L08 Even if the punishment, which the masochistically eager subject searches out by accusing himself, should be in error, the victim will realize that things are not so bad after all. For it is "much more evil as it is more shameful to do than to suffer wrong."L09 Callic1es reminds Socrates that ifhe should one day be hounded into court by "some utterly mean and vile creature,,,LLO matters might look somewhat different. But Socrates assures him that he would be quite prepared to play the martyr for his conviction. "I am confident you would find me taking my death calmly. For no one who is not utterly irrational and cowardly is afraid of the mere act of dying; it is evil-doing that he fears." LLL At this point Socrates is made to foresee, not only the charges leveled at him during his later trial, but also his refusal to save his own life by "flattering rhetoric."LL2 His subsequent "Vision ofJudgment" - "the shortest and simplest, as it is the earliest, of Plato's eschatological myths"L13 which rounds off this vaticinium ex eventu, suggests one further reason for his eagerness to suffer death as an innocent man. For unlike his evil accusers, who will end up in the "prison of vengeance and punishment which they call Tartarus," Socrates, like the rest of the "godly and righteous," will go directly to "the Isles of the Blessed." LL4 The dialogues dealing with the actual trial further elaborate the image of the innocent martyr. Socrates expresses his willingness to return right for wrong or to die innocently rather than choose the path of civil disobedience. lls And everywhere, whether in Crito, Phaedo, or Apology, such pious sentiments are reinforced by the thought of the reward or punishment awaiting the meek or disobedient in the beyond. In Crito, these either hopeful or dire prospects are articulated by the Guardians of the Law who are comforting Socrates in his final moments of tribulation. LL6 As one would expect, Xenophon's Socrates displays none of these martyr-like traits. In answer to his own question "whether the ruler or the ruled live the pleasanter life," he sounds more like Callic1es than his Platonic counterpart. There will always be those to rule and those to be enslaved. It would be nice if it were otherwise. I presume you can see that the stronger know how to make the weaker suffer both collectively and individually, and to treat them as slaves. Don't you realize that there are people who cut the corn that others have sown, and chop down

Proto-Nietzschean opponents to Plato

39

the trees that others have planted, and put every kind of pressure upon inferiors who refuse them deference, until they finally prevail on them to prefer slavery to war against a stronger power? And in private life too, don't you know that the bold and powerful reduce the timid and powerless to slavery, and then exploit them?ll7

In turn, Xenophon nowhere has Socrates utter paradoxes to the effect that the culprit should search out his punishment, that the greatest of evils is to escape punishment after having done wrong, or that to suffer innocently is less shameful than to do wrong. Least of all does he build up Socrates as a model of such martyrdom or holds out promises ofheavenly bliss to those who may want to follow him along such dubious paths. The Socrates of Xenophon's Apology has no thoughts whatsoever for the beyond. Yet contrary to the claims of some who fault him for not voicing such Platonic sentiments, his attitude toward death is by no means ignoble. He is old, foresees nothing but decrepitude and "being pained by sicknesses,,,118 and hence decides to use the trial as an opportunity for ending his life. 119 Xenophon's opening statement to his Apology suggests that in making Socrates say so, he probably tried to rectify the somewhat too lofty portrayals of Socrates' self-defense found in other "Apologies," including that of Plato: "Now about this others too have written, and all touched on his boastful manner of speaking ... But they did not make quite clear that he already believed death to be preferable to life for himself, so that his boastful speech appears to be rather imprudent."l2o

3

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

Such natures as the aposd~ Paul have an evil eye for the passions; they learn to see in them only what's filthy, disfiguring, and heartrending: Their idealist urge therefore aims at annihilating the passions. They see the divine as completely cleansed of them. Much unlike Paul and the Jews, the Greeks focused their ideal urge precisely upon the passions. They cherished, elevated, emblazoned, and deified them. When seized by passion, they obviously not only felt happier, but also purer and more god1i.ke than otherwise.

m, 488-89 I The Gay SciJince, Ill, 139 Plato knew what was involved: censorship, brainwashing, mass indoctrination, the inculcation of fears regarding the everlasting torments suffered in the hereafter, and, if need be, imprisonment, torture, execution, mass deportation andlor execution. In shon, the complete arsenal of what, in varying combinations, would be deployed, first by the Christian Roman Empire in Augustine's time, then by the medieval theocracy, and finally by the Nineteen Eighty-Pour-type totalitarian regimes of more recent times. How else would people, either individually or en masse, consent to have themselves turned inside out, to have their most cherished beliefs about what is good, desirable, and beautiful changed into their opposites, to grovel before a new law preaching that the greatest of evils is to do wrong and escape punishment, and all this by adopting a super"science of itself" I teaching them to repress their instinctual impulses in completely gratuitous, nonpurposive fashion. People did not. Plato's twofold attempts to implement his political ideals in Sicily failed. Fully aware that his project amounted to a full-scale transvaluation of values, most contemporaries, as Plato's dialogues suggest, saw it as crazy, perverse, even pernicious; they viewed Plato's mouthpiece Socrates as a noxious gadfly out to confuse people while more often than not being confused himself. Unlike Alcibiades in the Symposium, most of Plato's contemporaries categorically refused to have their beliefs turned "upside down."2 Even the symbol of an innocent Socrates glorying in 40

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

41

his unjust punishment, so carefully elaborated through several of Plato's works, failed to lure others into similar martyrdom. Such failure, which beclouded the Platonic mission for several centuries, was due to the spirit of the times. The decades following the philosopher's death in 347 BeE - a period of increasingly imperialist dominion in the Mediterranean - provided scarce breeding ground for his reform plans. The men in power had little cause to appreciate the virtues of self-castigation, while those likely to embrace them found no scope for enacting a "slave revolt in morals" by way of enforcing their values on others. But this was not the end of the story. Thanks to the followers of the God innocently nailed to the cross - the symbol that was to have the power Plato tried to invest in the death of Socrates - the Platonic transvaluation of values achieved its long postponed, yet ultimately triumphant, implementation several centuries later. To be sure, attempts to fuse Platonism with Christianity date back at least as far as Clement of Alexandria (d. ca. 215 eE) and his disciple Origen (185/86-254 eE) in a time when Christians, like Origen himself, were victims of persecutions that continued until emperor Gallienus (d. 268 eE) reversed his father's anti-Christian policies. Yet the ultimate amalgamation of Platonism and Christianity, which would provide the philosophical underpinnings of Christian theology, dates from a period when Christianity, after the Edict of Milan (in 313 CE), gradually rose to become the state religion. Also, it is essentially the achievement of a single man, St. Augustine (354-430 CE), who would hail the Platonists as those who, among pagan philosophers, had naturally come closest to Christianity. This raises an intriguing question about Plato's status as the acknowledged fountainhead of our western philosophical tradition, which, to invoke Whitehead's famous dictum, amounts to no more than footnotes to him. How well would Plato be remembered today without Augustine's mediation? Much better than Speusippus, Xenocrates, Arcesilaus, Carneades, or other successors who taught at his Academy until Emperor Justinian closed its gates in 529 eE? No doubt he would never have played the crucial role in western metaphysical thought attributed to him today. 3 The same might be said of Plotinus (ca. 205-70 eE), to whom we must turn before dealing with Augustine himself. For in expanding upon Plato, this most influential of his successors before the saint, developed several new concepts which, in turn, found their way into Augustine and thence into Christian theology and aesthetics. What is more, his biographer Porphyry tells us of a second instance of a pagan Platonist unsuccessfully trying to implement the Platonic project. This is the more surprising since circumstances for such an endeavor were far more

42

The genealogy of aesthetics

propitious during Plotinus' than during Plato's lifetime. The Roman Empire was disintegrating; its citizens lived in constant anxiety and fear. A church of martyrs opposing the ancient values of Rome was clearly in ascent. Plotinus himself practiced the Christian virtue of charity, making his followers give their wealth to the poor. What is more, he had a wide following in Rome, including Emperor Gallienus and his wife Salonina who, as Porphyry tells us, "greatly honoured and venerated Plotinus.,,4 Meanwhile, Plato's original academy had done little to further the master's mission. Among his followers, Plato's messianic fervor had gotten bogged down in pedantry and quibbling. Genuine Platonism, Plotinus felt, had to be revived outside its walls. Hence, he came up with the plan to found a truly Platonic republic. "In Campania," Porphyry writes, "there had once stood, according to tradition, a City of Philosophers, a ruin now; Plotinus asked the Emperor to rebuild this city and to make over the surrounding district to the new-founded state; the population was to live under Plato's laws: the city was to be called Platonopolis.,,5 But once again, the world decided otherwise. Though Plotinus, according to Porphyry, would have had his way with the emperor "without more ado," there was sudden "opposition at court, prompted by jealousy, spite, or some such paltry motive.,,6 Also, Plotinus made a major tactical mistake. Even under an emperor who had put a definite stop to the persecution of the Christians, the philosopher continued to oppose them. Particularly, he attacked the position of former Platonists turned Christians who claimed that Plato "had failed to penetrate into the depth of Intellectual Being.,,7 The reverse, as we will see in greater detail later, is true of Augustine's attitude vis-a.-vis Plotinus, who, to the saint, was the philosopher who understood Plato "more thoroughly than anyone else, at any rate in modern times."s Augustine had reason to say so. Plotinus, in spite of his anti-Christian stance, in several respects came even closer to Christianity than Plato himself. This was due to an obsession with evil which foreshadows Augustine's anxious questioning about the causes of evil in his Confessions. 9 In an unmistakably Manichaean tone, Plotinus talks about "Primal Evil" and "Evil Absolute,,,l0 locates it in the "Indefiniteness of matter," and in turn describes matter as "the necessity of evil." I 2 In an only half-successful effort, he tries to exorcise his obsession by arguing "Against the Gnostics; or Against Those that Affirm the Creator of the Cosmos and the Cosmos Itself to be Evil.,,13 The Gnostics are accused of blasphemous and impertinent selfassertions (or tolma)14 in professing a twofold heresy. First, they posit a principle of evil in both man and cosmos. Secondly, they indulge in

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

43

unheard of extremes of licentious living while pleading innocence for what they are doing. Their reasoning, according to Plotinus, goes somewhat like this: if there is "Evil Absolute," then their evil deeds are no more than an involuntary enactment of that "Primal Evil." For "if all this be true," they would say, "we are not evil in ourselves; Evil was before we came to be; the Evil which holds men down binds them against their will.,,15 Epicurus' denying providence and advocating pleasure as the only course open to men in a meaningless universe had been bad enough, "but the doctrine under discussion is still more wanton; it carps at Providence and the Lord of Providence; it scorns every law known to us; immemorial virtue and all restraint it makes into a laughing stoCk.,,16 Meanwhile, what order and beauty could there be in a world where "all is war without rest, without truce,,,17 where animals devour and human beings deceive, torture, and murder each other? In groping toward an answer, Plotinus casts the Gnostics in the role of disgruntled malcontents who shortsightedly blaspheme the seeming ugliness of a specific event (e.g., a case of adultery or the rape of a prisoner) where the right-minded recognize the overall, providential design. "In other words: two people inhabit the one stately house; one of them declaims against its plan and against its Architect ... the other makes no complaint, [and] asserts the entire competency of the Architect.,,18 To put it yet another way, the "bandit war of man and beast," 19 which appears ugly to the wicked, seems fair and good to the right-minded. "Thus: from adultery and the violation of prisoners the process of nature will produce fine children, to grow, perhaps, into fine men; and where wicked violence has destroyed cities, other and nobler cities may rise in their place.,,2o Plotinus makes no efforts to reason the Gnostics out of their denial of such beauty. Instead he responds with stunned incredulity and indignant, finger-pointing disapproval: "How can they deny that the Lord of Providence is here?" "Of those that advance these wild pretentions, who is so well ordered, so wise as the Universe?,,21 Man simply has no reason to complain. For whatever may strike us as ugly, painful, and evil in detail, ceases to be so when it is recognized as part of the ensemble. Those complaining about the evils of the universe resemble people with no understanding of art arguing "that the colours are not beautiful everywhere in the picture," whereas in fact "the Artist has laid on the appropriate tint to every spot.,,22 Of all the analogies Plotinus uses to illustrate this theodicy of the aesthetic, none is more vivid than that comparing the world with a play. The playwright, in this particular variant, exhibits life as it is, "tom with struggle," but his finished play "brings the conflicting elements to one final harmony, weaving the entire story of the clashing characters into one thing.,,23

44

The genealogy of aesthetics

Half of the analogy reminds one of Aristotle's demand that the poet mirror life (not as it is, but as it ought to be) by resolving life's random events in neatly motivated dramatic plots complete with beginning, middle, and end. Yet Aristotle nowhere applies this poetical notion to the universe at large by way of exculpating its creator from the evil and suffering that life is heir to. By contrast, this is precisely Plotinus' emphasis. Like the theologians who will follow him, he even extends the analogy to encompass the agonized howls of those who will suffer the torments of hell. "All is just and good in the Universe," he writes with the disconcerting naivete of Augustine or Aquinas, "in which every actor is set in his own quite appropriate place, though it be to utter in the Darkness and in Tartarus the dreadful sounds whose utterance there is well."24 Plotinus' theodicy of the aesthetic also encompasses the suffering which sinners, in this life, are made to go through for having committed evil deeds in a prior one. What "makes man a slave" is not accidental; "no one is a prisoner by chance; every bodily outrage has its due cause. The man once did what he now suffers.,,25 Even this Adrasteia or "Inevadable Retribution" is part of the "marvellous art" of divine providence. 26 So beware! For if you should fail to attain that "vision of the inaccessible Beauty,'>27 you might end up contributing your share to the symphony of God's wonderful wisdom either by bewailing the miseries of your next incarnation or by howling in the darkness of Tartarus. 28 Otherwise, Plotinus has little to say about the beauty of art or the arts per se. Too much has been made of his alleged redefinition of the visual arts, music, and poetry as an active "investment of things with spiritual shape."z9 Little in the Enneads substantiates such a claim, and much in previous philosophers like Aristotle, or even Plato, makes it appear less original than purported. Even in treating art as a "deliberate creation o/beauty," Plotinus thinks of the latter as "inaccessible Beauty,,3o reached by reversing man's "fall, a descent into body, into Matter."31 Similarly, he associates beauty with a strictly Platonic kind of sophrosyne that takes "no part in the pleasures of the body";32 he limits the senses allowed to relish beauty to sight and hearing;33 and he defines its opposite, ugliness, as that which is "deeply infected with the taint of body."34 Thoroughly Platonic too is his dismissal of the "imitative arts" as "largely, earth-based." All of them, "painting, sculpture, dancing, pantomimic gesturing ... follow models found in sense, since they copy forms and movements and reproduce seen symmetries; they cannot therefore be referred to that higher sphere except indirectly, through the Reason-Principle in humanity.,,35 Art, in sum, "is an imitator, producing dim and feeble copies - toys, things of no great worth.,,36

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

45

Probably more original is Plotinus' attempt to define beauty in terms foreshadowing Coleridge's "Multeity in Unity."37 "Only a compound can be beautiful, never anything devoid of parts," Plotinus writes, adding that "the several parts will have beauty, not in themselves, but only as working together to give a comely total.,,38 Plotinus invokes a similar concept of unity in defending artists against those who (like Plato) despise them for imitating natural objects, whereas de facto they "go back to the ReasonPrinciple from which Nature itself derives" by way of adding "where nature is lacking."39 It all sounds remarkably like Aristotle's well-known attempt to salvage art from Plato's attack by way of claiming that art, instead of producing copies twice removed from the ideas behind the imitated objects, grasps the entelechies or dynamic ideas inherent in the objects; in other words, that they imitate reality, not as it is, but, as it ought to be - finishing the job that nature left undone. 4o Yet how is one to reconcile this Aristotelean stance with Plotinus' repeatedly articulated dismissal of the arts as "producing dim and feeble copies,,41 ofreality, or with his repeated warnings against succumbing to the lure of physical bodies, which instead one must recognize as "copies, vestiges, shadows?"42 An anecdote related by his biographer tells us how deeply Plotinus was committed to Plato's dualistic ontology. Plotinus, Porphyry tells us, felt such deeply rooted shame for being in the body that he could never be brought to answer questions about his ancestors, parents, or birthplace. More to the point, he also showed an unconquerable reluctance to sit to a painter or a sculptor, and when Arnelius persisted in urging him to allow of a portrait being made he asked him, "Is it not enough to carry about this image in which nature has enclosed us? Do you really think I must also consent to leave, as a desirable spectacle to posterity, an image of the image?,,43

What Plato and Plotinus failed to achieve was finally accomplished by Augustine. Unlike Plato's republic or Plotinus' Platonopolis, where "the population was to live under Plato's laws,,,44 the saint's city of God remained no mere utopia. A metaphor became historical reality, largely due to Augustine's own efforts. "God's Church,,,45 during his lifetime, increasingly gained in ascendency over the remaining secular powers of the Roman Empire. "The Emperor is in the Church, not above it,,,46 Augustine's mentor St. Ambrose had proclaimed. By 390 eE, he excommunicated Theodosius the Great, and forced that emperor to humble himself in Milan Cathedral before he was allowed to rejoin the fold. Augustine completed his teacher's work. It lies outside our scope to account for the forces that prompted him to pursue his own Platonic transvaluation of values and, more importantly,

46

The genealogy of aesthetics

allowed him to implement this inversion by way of providing the model for a theocracy that would dominate Europe for centuries to come. Be it enough to say that Augustine's double feat, astounding as it is, can hardly be judged in light of the impossible task Plato had set himself eight centuries earlier. Plato's contemporaries saw Socrates, at least as his disciple portrayed both him and them, as a noxious troublemaker trying, unsuccessfully, to tum their traditional values upside down. The lone pioneer of a perverse new doCtrine that seemed to disparage established Greek religion, he was what a later Christian world would call a heretic, and paid the predictable price for his subversive ideas. Things had drastically changed since then. Plato's otherworldly, resentful contempt for the body, which E. R. Dodds has termed "the most far reaching, and perhaps the most questionable of all of [ancient Greece's] gifts,,47 to humanity, still amounted to no more than a "drop of alien blood,,48 in the veins of Greek culture during the philosopher's lifetime. Yet during the "age of anxiety,,49 spanning the slow decline of the Roman Empire, such an attitude had gradually evolved into a widely accepted and philosophically encoded doctrine for which ideologues like Augustine could draw on multiple sources. Plato's transvaluation of values had turned into a consensus zealously propagated by the right-minded and philosophically enlightened as well as eagerly subscribed to by a general populace living in permanent turmoil, insecurity, and fear. As a result, Augustine, in making himself his age's foremost spokesman for integrating this transvaluation into Christian theology and aesthetics, ran few of the risks of Socrates or Plato. Certainly, he felt no reason to conceal his indebtedness to the Platonists. To him, there were "none who come nearer to [the Christian faith] than,,50 they. Theological questions, he determined, "are to be discussed with the Platonists rather than with any other philosophers."';! If only they could "have had this life over again with us," he mused, "they would have become Christians."52 Meanwhile, the Platonic Socrates is praised as the first of a line of thinkers who, by making philosophy subject to a new type of ascetic, antisensualist morality, pointed the way toward Augustine's own kind of Christian theology. According to this new Socratic doctrine, man had to cleanse his soul of the lust of the body so as to be able to "rise up to the sphere of the eternal and behold, thanks to its pure intelligence, the essence of the immaterial and unchangeable light where dwell the causes of all created things."53 Augustine even wondered about the possible sources for Plato's astounding proximity to Christianity. '54 It was because Plato had either read parts of the Bible or learned about them by word of mouth, he concluded. As an instance, Augustine invokes the creation myth from Timaeus as an analogue to

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

47

Genesis, adding that "Plato may have read this passage of Scripture or have learnt of it from those who had read it."s5 Augustine's feat of synthesizing Platonism and Christianity is the more astounding if we consider the long road of intellectual forays, contradictions, and reversals that led up to it: an early exposure to Christianity via his mother Monica; his turn to Manichaeism; and finally his reading of Cicero,s6 Aristotle,57 and "aU the books that [he] could find on the socalled liberal arts,"58 which he would later brand as the worst mistake of his life. So keen was his interest in these pernicious doctrines, he admitted in his Confessions, that it caused him to "upset a great many simple people with [his] casuistry."59 It also determined his main course of reading and research for several years. One product of these endeavors was De pulchro et apto, a lost treatise composed at about twenty-six years of age. 60 Characteristically, Augustine was prompted to write On Beauty alld Proportion by his obsession with physical beauty. His acute sensitivity to whatever might please not only the eyes and ears, but also touch, smell, and taste,61 is talked about throughout the C07ifessions. So is his susceptibility to those "fleeting beaut [ies] "62 promising sexual pleasure. Overflowing as he was with such emotions, De pU/Chro et apw virtually wrote itself. I was in love with beauty of a lower order [pulchra inferiora] and it was dragging me down. I used to ask my friends "Do we love anything unless it is beautiful? What, then, is beauty and in what does it consist? What is it that attracts us and wins us over to the things we love? Unless there were beauty and grace in them, they would be powerless to win our hearts.,,63

His distinction between the beautiful and the proportionate - "pulchrum, quod per se ipsum, aptum autem, quod ad aliquid accommoda-

tum deceret, defeniebam"64 (as I defined them, the beautiful by itself, the proportionate by its functional relation to something else) - is made with the help of concrete examples exclusively drawn from corporeal forms (per formas corporeas).65 Such instances include "the due balance between the whole of the body and any of its limbs, or between the foot and the shoe with which it is shod, and so on."66 Due to this emphasis on the corporeal, considerations of a possible intellectual beauty of the soul are given short shrift. Finding that the soul is inconceivable in terms of either line, color, or shape, Augustine decides that he simply cannot see it (putabam me rwnposse videre animum).67 What, then, could be more absurd than to attribute beauty to this invisible something? Augustine, while writing the treatise, still displayed little interest in a Platonic beauty seen by the "inner eye of the SOul"68 to which he was to give such importance later. Again and again, his account of De pulchro el aplo in the Confessions

48

The genealogy of aesthetics

stresses that its author was blind to such spiritual splendor and, instead, caught up in the world of corporeal forms. 69 The dismissive tone with which Augustine writes about the treatise in the Confessions stems from a time when, as bishop of Hippo, he was embroiled in a long-drawn-out controversy with his one-time Manichaean confreres. Hence, the obsession with evil with which he invests his former self. Again and again, we read about the young Manichaean aspirant "trying to find the origin of evil,,70 or raising questions such as ''Where then does evil come from?" and "Can it be that there was something evil in the matter from which [God] made the universe?,,71 His later, Neoplaronic and/or Christian answers - the only ones he speaks of approvingly in the Confessions - should not blind us to the fact that, for close to a whole decade earlier in his life, he entertained radically different notions regarding good and evil. Instead of positing one Divine Will as creation's sole source, he believed in two primordial principles of good and evil, light and darkness. The latter of these "two substances"n he thought of as some "shapeless, hideous mass,,73 that haunted him like a waking nightmare. Even around the time of his conversion to Platonism and Christianity, Augustine's anguished mind, in trying to imagine this evil substance, was still conjuring up "hideous and horrible shapes. They were perversions of the natural order, but shapes nonetheless. I took 'formless' to mean, not simply something entirely without form, but some shape so monstrous and grotesque that if I were to see it, my senses would recoil and my human frailty quail before it.,,74 To understand the general drift of De pu/Chro et apeo, then, it is best to substitute the older Augustine's condemnatory dismissiveness in writing about that treatise in the Confessions with the young Manichaean's proselytizing casuistry, abstruse erudition and heretical doctrines, all of which vices he stands accused of in the same pages. Such substitution suggests that the ambitious young orator would have defined the beautiful and ugly in relation to his then sense of good and evil, as two equally powerful, coetemal substances. Augustine seems to have had a hard time dissociating himself from his pagan delight in bodily beauty, even after his conversion to Platonism. Contra Actuiemicos, the first of his works, captures this gradual change more convincingly than the Confessions. Speaking of his discovery of quosdam platonicorum libros,75 he compares their effect to Arabian perfumes and drops of a precious ointment sprinkled into the flame of his growing spiritual enlightenment. It was "incredible," he confesses, twice repeating the same word of amazement in remembering the impact of these books: "they at once enkindled in me such a conflagration ... incredible ... truly incredible; and perhaps beyond even your belief in me:

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

49

what more can I say? I could scarcely believe it of myself.,,76 Both Contra Acackmicos and the Confessions suggest that reading these books by the Platonists77 prompted Augustine to study the writings of St. Paul,78 and hence to discover that the Apostle agreed with the Platonists on several major issues. One of these was the recognition that truth is incorporeal or that, as St. Paul had put it, God's nature, as known through his creatures, is invisible. iQ What was more influential, Platonism or St. Paul's Christianity? Even at the time of writing the Confessions, Augustine still counted his blessings for having come to Christianity via Platonism, rather than to Platonism via Christianity. For in the latter case, the Platonic books "might have swept [him) from [his] foothold on the solid ground of piety" or at least convinced him of the possibility that "a man who had read nothing but the Platonist books [could] derive the same [Christian] spirit from them alone.,,80 Concra Acackmicos, De beaUl viUl, and De ordine, all written in late 386 eE,81 that is after Augustine had allegedly turned to Platonism and Christianity, once again paint a somewhat different picture. For one thing, the young convert still shows little devotion to Christian religion. Instead, he engages in largely Platonic arguments and heaps eulogies upon the Platonists, which he had every reason to regret later. In his Retractationum libri duo written, so to speak, contra Augustinum, he takes back "the praise with which [he] extolled Plato or the Platonists or the Academic philosophers beyond what was proper."S2 With equal indignation, Augustine recalls one of the fruits of these misplaced enthusiasms, namely his "utterly inane and senseless,,113 way of speaking of philocalia (or the love of beauty) as a sister of phiJosophia (or the love of wisdom). The Retractions argue paradoxically - in once again characteristically Platonizing fashion - that at the level of supreme, incorporeal reality, philosophia and phi/ocaJia are not sisters, but are the same. 84 More honestly, the author might have pointed out that his concept of beauty at the point of writing Cancra Acackmicos was still far removed from what a self-respecting Platonist, Christian, or pagan would have called spiritual. True enough, Augustine defines the term in opposition to such Roman delights as "the seashore resorts, the beautiful parks, the delightful and elegant banquets, the private theatrical exhibitions."S5 Yet his praise of an inner beauty that radiates forth from a man's "kindliness; hence, the extreme elegance; hence the splendor and the most orderly arrangement of all things - and the charm of a reflected beauty everywhere, adorning everything,,,86 can hardly be said to have disengaged itself from its pagan moorings. Or how about Augustine's following account of a cock fight? As hard as he may try, our newly made convert hardly convinces us that, in watching it, his main delight springs from the contemplation of a rational

50

The genealogy of aesthetics

beauty (pukhritudo rationis) beyond and above the cruel appeal of the actual struggle: - as was to be seen in those fowls: the lowered heads stretched forward, neck plumage distended, the lusty thrusts, and such wary parryings, and, in every motion of the irrational animals, nothing unseemly - precisely because another Reason from on high rules over all things. Finally, the very law of the victor: the proud crowing, the almost perfectly orbed arrangement of the members, as if in haughtiness of supremacy. But the sign of the vanquished: hackles plucked from the neck, in carriage and in cry all bedraggled - and for that very reason, somehow or other [nescio quomodo] beautiful and in harmony with nature's laws [conci,mum er pukhrum].87

Here as elsewhere, Augustine's earliest recorded comments on beauty show his naturally pagan temperament writhing in the constraints of his newly adopted beliefs. By contrast, there was one issue, evil, which the books of the Platonists, and especially Plotinus' Enneads, solved for him instantly. Here, for once, Augustine's account in the Confessions agrees with that given in his earlier writings. Evil, once it had come into being, we read in De ordine, was made a part of God's order ("malum ... cum esset natum, Dei ordine inclusum est"88). As the Confessions put it, "whatever is, is good; and evil, the origin of which I was trying to find, is not a substance, because if it were a substance, it would be good." As a result, it became obvious to Augustine that "each single thing is good and collectively they are very good, for our God made His whole creation very good.,,89 Where the former Manichaean had posited an immutable essence of evil coetemal with God,90 he now convinced himself that even death and decay perform an essentially purposeful function in God's providential design. "It was made clear to me that even those things which are subject to decay are goOd.,,91 His Confessions obscure the fact that Augustine arrived at this transvaluation via a theodicy of the aesthetic rather than a theodicy of the fall. This doctrine, as expounded in his later works, is conspicuously absent from those written shortly after his conversion. Here Augustine's attempt to prove the essential goodness and beauty of the universe draws repeatedly on the realm of art, artisanry, architecture, and general human planning instead. In each case, he argues in good Plotinian fashion that what we call ugly and evil merely strikes us as such because we respond to it from too narrow or selfish a perspective. Ifwe could see such ugliness or evil as part of the whole of creation, it would appear to us beautiful and good. Thus, the person looking at a single tile in a large mosaic is wrong to accuse the artist for lack of order and design;92 someone who, like a statue fixed in its place, can only see part of a large, beautiful building, will be unable to appreciate the beauty of its overall structure; three syllables in a poem,

Late antiquity, Plotinus, and Augustine

51

if allowed to come alive and listen to themselves for the brief duration of their existence in sound, could hardly relish the poem's rhythm and poetic diction as a whole. 93 In turn, if something strikes us as attractive, we would recognize it as being even more so if we could see that of which it forms only a part; if something shocks us, it does so merely because we fail to see that it is a small detail in a larger, harmonious whole. 94 Meanwhile, the previous lover of "the sins of the fiesh,,95 and of earthly beauty in both nature and art, continued to experience difficulties in trying to extricate himself from these snares. That his feet remained "caught in the toils of this world's beauty,,96 is a repeated complaint in the Conjessiot's, Though man may catch sight of God's invisible nature through his crearures,97 "his love of these material things [remained] too great.,,98 Yet gradually the struggle brought the desired results. The harder he tried to suppress his pagan delight in earthly beauty, the more thoroughly he convinced himself that real beauty must be the exact opposite of what he had said about it in De pulchro et apto.

4

Augustine's Platonopolis

Being in God's debt: this thought becomes man's instrument of selftorture. He invests "God" with the ultimate oppositions he can find in his true and inescapable animal instincts. He reinterprets these animal instincts as an indebtedness [Schuld1 to God (as hostility, rebelliousness, insurrection against the "Lord," the "Father," the primordial ancestor and origin of the world). He ties himself into the contradiction "God" and "Devil." He externalizes every No he utters against himself, against the physicality, crearureliness, authenticity of his being, into a Yes, as being, corporeal, real, as God, as God's sanctity, as God the judge, as God the executioner, as transcendence, as eternity, as torment without end, as hell, as an inexhaustibility of punishment and of guilt. Such psychological cruelty spells an insanity of the will without equal: man's win to find himself guilty and damned [verweiflich], even unredeemably SO; his WIll to deem himself punished, without the punishment ever becoming commensurate with his guilt; his will to infect and poison the deepest foundation of things with the problem of punishment and guilt, so as to once and for all cut off his escape from this labyrinth of idees fixes; his will to erect an ideal - that of the "holy God" - so as to give himself ocular proof of his utter worthlessness in its sight. Oh what a mad, sad beast is man! V, 332/ The Ge"eaJogy of Morals,

II,

22

Augustine's claim, made in De beata vita, that he had de/acto read "books of Plato" I suggests the obvious source for what went into the making of this new doctrine. The beauty of the universe (pulchritudo universitatis)2 created by the Deus creator omnium3 is invisible. Though perceivable by the mind, it cannot be seen with bodily eyes (corporei.~ oculis). 4 True beauty "is seen by the inner eye of the soul, not by the eye of the flesh."; Whatever appears beautiful to the senses, is so only by panaking of this invisible prima pulchritudo. 6 The beautiful manifest in the material realm may be in the body, but can never be 0/ the body. 7 Due to his growing horror of bodily pollution, Augustine also came to share Plato's suspicion of the arts for embodying the spiritual in the concrete and for primarily appealing to the senses. Like the Greek philosopher before him, he prefers music to the other arts because it 52

Augustine's Platonopolis

53

is the least sensuous in both its medium and address. Like Plato, he draws on Pythagorean numerology in determining what underlies the true beauty of music and the other atts. 8 Otherwise, we would not lay as much store by the products of art, particularly of the mimetic type, Augustine argues. 9 He also echoes Plato's critique of mimetic art for mirroring true reality at a double remove - though with a difference. Unlike the Greek, he nowhere posits an actual split between noumenon and phenomenon on the one hand and between phenomenon and mimetic representation on the other. To him, this tripartite division is a maner of fluent gradation rather than strict separation. For everything, including art, is of God's making, and whatever God made, must be good like Himself. Hence, Augustine, for all his later abhorrence of carnal pollution, never seems to condemn the body out of hand. Nor does he speak of the soul's fall inra maner or describe the body as its prison. Instead, he devotes a whole chapter of De civicare de; to refuting the "Platonic theory of body and soul" which "makes the nature of the flesh responsible for all moral faults." 10 For analogous reasons, he exempts the mimetic arts from Plato's wholesale condemnation. On the one hand, he warns against their power to detraCt us from our search for the highest wisdom; on the other, he points out that artists merely reenact the art of the omnipotent God (Ars i/Ja summa omnipotentis Dei). For it is the Lord who guides the artist's hands in "produc[ing] things of beauty and proportion." The selfsame harmonious configurations which artists, by their bodily action, imprint on what they create (quae per corpus carpori imprimunt), are instilled by God's wisdom. I I For some of his aesthetic theorizing, Augustine turns to Plotinus whom he credits with "having understood Plato more thoroughly than anyone else,,12 and whose Enneads seems to have been amongst those quosdam Platonicarum Libros ll which turned him into a Platonist. In The City of God, Augustine evokes a specific passage from Plotinus' tractate on "Beauty,"14 arguing that someone who is unable to achieve the vision of Supreme beauty is altogether unfortunate, no maner how richly endowed he may be with other kinds of goods. 15 He also paraphrases Plotinus' treatise on "Providence" to the effect of proving, by the example of the beauty of flowers and leaves, that "providence extends from the supreme God, whose beauty is intelligible and ineffable, as far as those lowly things on earth": "All those castaways, so to speak, doomed to perish so swiftly, could not, [Plotinus] maintains, display such perfection of graceful harmony in their shapes, were it not that they received their form from the eternal abode of the intelligible and changeless 'form' which contains

54

The genealogy of aesthetics

them all together in itself.,,16 Here as elsewhere, the "great Platonist's" 17 ideas are invoked as being on near equal footing with scriptural revelation. As for Plotinus' notion of the beauty of God's providential order in creation, it is Christ himself who is quoted as delivering the parallel message. Consider the lilies of the field: they do not work, or spin. Yet I tell you, Solomon in all his splendour was not clothed like one of those. Now if this is how God dresses the grass of the countryside, which is here today and tomorrow is put in the stove; how much more will he clothe you, you men of small faith [Matt. 6:28 ff.]?18

As elsewhere, of course, one is impressed, not so much by the cogency of the parallel, as by the coerciveness with which Augustine tries to make the Scriptures bear out his Platonic persuasions. For some of these he has so little biblical support that we find him reiterate over and over again the same handful of isolated phrases such as St. Paul's "I caught sight of your invisible nature, as it is known through your creatures" (Rom. 1:20).19 For others, which he nonetheless makes his own and hence part of Christian theology and aesthetics, he has next to no support at all. His adoption of Plotinus' perspective on evil is an instance. Nowhere in the Scriptures do we find the elaborate theodicy of the aesthetic which allowed Augustine to "disgorge" his previous Manichaean beliefs "like vomit from [his] over-laden system," as he puts it in the Confessions. 2o Instead, he borrowed almost every detail of his argument, including several analogies to expound it, from the Enneads. The urgency with which he embraced the new creed hardly allowed him to explore its internal contradictions. Would not someone with his Platonic suspicion of the arts hesitate before erupting into eulogies of the universe as a perfect work of art? Not so Augustine. The beauty of the universe (pulchritudo universitatis),21 to him, is like that of a painting or play. The one may feature dark spots, the other mirror the deadly battle of life. But only the ignorant would accuse their creators for including such seemingly ugly details in their works. The colour black in a picture may very well be beautiful if you take the picture as a whole, so the entire contest of human life is fittingly conducted by the unchanging providence of God who allots different roles to the vanquished and the victorious, the contestants, the spectators, and the tranquil who contemplate God alone ... All have their offices and limits laid down so as to ensure the beauty of the universe. That which we abhor in any part of it gives us the greatest pleasure when we consider the universe as a whole. 22

Augustine's fondness for this painterly analogy made it one of the loci classici of Christian theology: "A picture may be beautiful when

it has touches of black in appropriate places; in the same way the

Augustine's Platonopolis

55

whole universe is beautiful, if one could see it as a whole, even with its sinners, though their ugliness is disgusting when they are viewed in themselves.,,23 Abelard, to quote one of many later instances, expressly invokes Augustine's precedent. For as a picture is often more beautiful and worthy of commendation if some colours in themselves ugly are included in it, than it would be if it were uniform and of a single colour, so from an admixture of evils the universe is rendered more beautiful and worthy of commendation. 24

Just as Augustine ignores the contradictions between Plato's suspicion of the arts and Plotinus' theodicy of the aesthetic, he conveniently overlooks the paradoxality of a best of all possible worlds which, as in Plotinus, encompasses the torments of the damned. If anything, he compounds such absurdities even further. While adopting Plotinus' general theodicy of the aesthetic, Augustine finds the Neoplatonist's understanding of divine retribution both too lenient and limited. Man must not only carry the burden of his own guilt but he also must shoulder the guilt for all cosmic evil and decay. Plotinus' theodicy of the aesthetic is supplemented by the theodicy of the fall. The dark spots in the "great Artificer's" cosmic painting are justified in terms, not only of the overall design, but also of man's first disobedience. "The effect of that sin was to subject human nature to all the process of decay which we see and feel, and consequently to death.,,25 Yet punishment in this life is not sufficient either. As a result of the fall, all mankind is rightly deserving of damnation. Only by the sheer grace of God will a few of the elect avoid an eternal life of torment in the hereafter. In upholding such dire prospects for humanity, Augustine deviates not only from Plotinus, but also from some of his Christian forebears. Origen, a major precursor in attempting to synthesize Christianity and Platonism, for instance, accepted the pagan notion of a divine retribution meted out through successive reincarnations. To him, as to Plotinus, such punishment is primarily remedial. God's justice serves the purpose of purification, not that of revenge, and hence is incompatible with eternal damnation. 26 Augustine takes issue with both Origen and Plotinus. He pours scorn on the idea of a metempsychosis which would make it possible that "a mother might come back as a mule and be ridden by her son,,,27 and he reprimands those advocates of a "perverse compassion"28 who, out of a misconceived "tenderness of heart,,,29 would like to put a time limit on the suffering of the damned. The ultimate justification for such punitive rigor, as Augustine tells us in a nonchalant aside, "may be inscrutable.,,3o So is the righteousness with which the "Almighty Artist,,31 bestows his

56

The genealogy of aesthetics

"gift of grace" upon the elect "without regard to merits.,,32 Finally, such gratuitous cruelty is even renamed kindness. "It is in this righteousness that the abundant kindness of God is found; hence the psalm says, 'Taste and see how sweet the Lord is' [ps. 34:8] ..>33 Those who still have doubts about this kindness are rebuked for their limited vision: "the reason why eternal punishment appears harsh and unjust to human sensibilities, is that in this feeble condition ... man lacks the sensibility of the highest and purest wisdom, the sense which should enable him to feel the gravity of the wickedness in the first act of disobedience ..•3.1 To the religiously enlightened, by contrast, even the fires tormenting the damned in all eternity can be seen as part of the "whole design, in which these small parts, which are to us so disagreeable, fit together to make a scheme of ordered beauty": "Thus the nature of the eternal fire is without doubt a subject for praise, although to the wicked after their condemnation it will be the fire of punishment. For what is more beautiful than a fire, with all the vigour of its flames and the splendours of its light?,,35 Christian interpreters tend to extol Augustine for defending the human body against Plato's notion that it is a prison of the soul. But Augustine's reasons for this are doctrinal rather than prompted by a liking for the object of his defense. While sharing Plato's phobic distaste for everything corporeal, Augustine still has to uphold, against the Platonic critics of Christianity - foremost amongst them Plotinus' literary executor, biographer, and disciple, the "renowned philosopher,,36 Porphyry - both the bodily incarnation of Christ and the resurrection of the body prior to the Last Judgment. However, Augustine's logic here merely gives Plato's contempt for the body a new twist. First of all, there are the saved who, given the exigencies of a life in the spirit, will resemble zombies rather than creatures of flesh and blood in spite of being resurrected in the body. As one would expect, they will function without the sexual urges and instinctive appetencies of normal bodies. What is more, they will be blind and deaf. For their sole concern is to contemplate their creator which, as Augustine points out invoking the obvious Platonic precedent, is a matter of "the mind's vision" rather than of the "bodily senses.,,37 "As for the Apostle's phrase, 'face to face,' (1 Cor. 13: 12) that does not compel us to believe that we shall see God by means of this corporeal face, with its corporeal eyes. We shall see God by the spirit.,,38 Whatever genuine bodily functions these walking phantasms retain will (in ways "quite beyond [Augustine's] power of imagination"39) "kindle our rational minds to praise the great Artist by the delight afforded by a beauty that satisfies the reason.,,40 The only ones allowed to retain their real bodies are the damned. The reason for this is simple: for otherwise, as Augustine observes with

Augustine's Platonopolis

57

disarming maner-of-factness, they "cannot feel the bodily torments which are to follow the resurrection."41 When it comes to discussing issues such as these, Augustine is nothing if not circumstantial in trying to prove his point by any means of documentation, pseudologic, or appeal to the marvels of divine creation. People may claim, he argues, that real bodies will not be able to survive eternal torments by fire. But do not certain natural historians tell us how the salamander lives amidst the flames? Had not Augustine himself, after once being served a roast peacock in Carthage, been able to observe how "the Creator of all things gave to [that creature] the power of resisting putrefaction after death?,,42 And surely, the Almighty will come up with further, unthought of marvels (which once again defy Augustine's powers of imagination)43 to make sure that those damned from time immemorial according to His inscrutable providence may come to feel in full the anguish of their everlasting torment. "I have sufficiently argued," he writes, that it is possible for living creatures to remain alive in the fire, being burnt without being consumed, feeling pain without incurring death; and this by means of a miracle of the omnipotent Creator. Anyone who says that this is impossible for the Creator docs not realize who is responsible for whatever marvels he finds in the whole of the world of nature. 44

There is a final, voyeuristic twist to this enlarged version of the Plotinian theodicy of the aesthetic. The anguish of the damned will not only enhance the overall beauty of God's creation, but will also redound to the beatitude of the saved in enabling them to observe the damned's everlasting torments. Augustine, of course, was not the first Christian theologian to say so. Less philosophically conscientious than he, his predecessor Tertullian did not bother to determine whether the elect would enjoy this edifying spectacle with eyes of the flesh or of the spirit. His unabashed gloating at the thought of the Last Judgment left no room for such niceties: What sight shall wake my wonder, what my laughter, my joy and exultation as I see all those kings, those great kings, welcomed (we are told) in heaven, along with Jove, along with those who told of their ascent, groaning in the depths of darkn.:ss!45

Once again, the general idea became part of medieval theology, most notably through Aquinas. To him, the enjoyment which the blessed derive from watching the torments of the damned has become a point of doctrine. "Beati in regno coelesti," as he puts it in his Summa Theologiae, "videbunt poenas damnatorum, ut beatitudo illis magis complaceat." (The blessed in the heavenly realm will watch the torments of the damned so that their beatitude will please them all the more).46 Here the idea of the blessed gleefully watching the torments of the damned, which in

58

The genealogy of aesthetics

Tenullian could be explained as a reaction to the suffering inflicted upon the Christian martyrs, becomes all the more gratuitous and perverse. One of the first to quote Tenullian's lines and to respond to them with the appropriate distaste was the author of The Decline and Fall of the Roman Empire. 47 Another was Gibbon's admirer Nietzsche, to whom Tertullian's words, along with those by Thomas Aquinas, are examples of an ultimate perversion of human values. The same, to Nietzsche, applies to the inscription above the entrance to Dante's Inferno. "It seems to me," we read in the Genealogy of Morals, "that Dante committed a grave blunder when, with disconcerting naivete, he put over the gate of hell the inscription: 'Me, too, eternal love created: At any rate, the inscription over the gate of the Christian paradise, with its 'eternal bliss,' would read more fittingly, 'Me too, eternal hate created' - provided that it is fitting to place a truth above the gateway to a lie."4R The fires tormenting the damned as a spectacle redounding to the beauty of God's creation: such theorizing gives one a sense of Augustine as a preacher. For herein lay his strongest power: his ability to deepen people's sense of degradation so as to make them eagerly shoulder life's miseries as their guilt; to cause them to try to expiate what was inexpiable, even to make them glory in the possibility of their eternal torments as part of God's inscrutable wisdom; in short, in his talent to play to perfection what Nietzsche describes as the role of the ascetic priest who "in order to cure ... must first create patients.,,49 "Every suffering sheep says to himself, 'I suffer; it must be somebody's fault.' But his shepherd, the ascetic priest, says to him, 'You are quite right, my sheep, somebody must be at fault here, but that somebody is yourself.' ,,'50 Augustine's sermons bear witness to the emotional turmoil he was capable of stirring up in his congregation. Groans and shouts were common as people stood listening to him as he sat back in the cathedra of the densely packed basilica. At its far end hovered "the solid, immovable mass of the paenitenw" whom punitive discipline excluded from communion, while the dedicated virgins were lined up behind a "balustrade of pure white marble.,,51 Yet even these purest of the pure were refused a clean bill of spiritual health. Every Christian, although supposedly redeemed from sin through baptism, Augustine would tell his flock, remained throughout life an invalid and convalescent in the "Inn" of the church. 52 Man's hereditary guilt was inexpungible except by God's grace. Every so often the saint would remind his groaning sheep of the horrors of eternal torment which their Lord held in store for most of them. In all of this, Augustine had public opinion on his side, while also striking the ideological keynote for the centuries to come. "A mentality of dependence; an emphasis on the absolute necessity of humility, on the idea of a 'general collapse' of

Augustine's Platonopolis

59

the human race above which no man might dare to claim to raise himself by his own merits; these are the ideas that will dominate the early Middle Ages."53 There was resistance, but none that could withstand his Church's increasingly inquisitorial methods. Here again, Augustine put into successful practice what his great predecessor had to content himself with in mere theory. Much like Plato, Augustine engages in extensive arguments about how to suppress the diverse enemies of the right faith. As the "first theorist of the Inquisition,"54 he was the only apologist of the early Church to fully justify the state in its right to suppress non-Catholics. One of his anti-Donatist treatises urges the emperor to punish such heresies for the following reasons: "The mass of men keep their heart in their eyes, not in their heart. If blood comes spurting out of the flesh of a mortal man, anyone who sees it is disgusted; but if souls lopped off from the peace of Christ die in this sacrilege of schism or heresy ... it is laughed at.,,55 Augustine not only dominated the spiritual climate ofms age with his doctrines, but increasingly used the strong-arm techniques of the imperial administration to enforce them. The story of Julian of Eclanum provides an instance of what happened to those who attempted to oppose him. Julian, a Catholic bishop with his see in present-day Benevento, was perhaps the "most gifted and consistent champion of Pelagianism,"56 a heresy which preoccupied Augustine during the final decades of his life. Pelagius himself had more than just questioned Augustine's concept of grace and predestination. His denial of hereditary sin and his championing of free will, that is, of man's ability to work out his salvation, struck directly at Augustine's doctrine of the Catholic Church as the sole guarantor of the Christian faith. His insisting on the innocence of little children also rendered meaningless the right of infant baptism for the remission of their sins, thereby threatening to deprive Augustine of the "trump-card ... of his sinister demagogy."57 Similarly annoying to him was the fact that Julian launched his attack after the Pelagian faction had already suffered a crushing defeat, mainly due to Augustine's lobbying at the emperor's court. The ostracizing of Pelagius, initiated by imperial edict and by Rome's Bishop Zosimo's Epistula tractatoria, had been temporarily halted by Zosimo's death. Hence, the Italian Pelagians under Julian's leadership had tried to reopen the controversy. But Augustine, his bosom friend Alypius, and their agents managed to block the Pelagians' endeavors to have their case heard at court. On one of his lobbying missions, Alypius, as Peter Brown reports, "had carried with him the promise of eighty Numidian stallions, fattened on the estates of the church, as douceurs for the cavalry-officers, whose views on grace had proved decisive."58

60

The genealogy of aesthetics

As a result, Julian (along with seventeen other bishops) was expelled from his see and banished from Italy to spend the remainder of his life on the run. It was at this point that Julian launched a barrage of attacks on Augustine that was to preoccupy the latter during his final dozen years. Julian's first major effort was a four-volume critique of Augustine's De nuptiis et concupiscentia entitled Ad Turbantium. It prompted Augustine to write a second volume about marriage and concupiscence, and this Julian in turn attacked in his eight-volume Ad fiorum contra Augustine librorum secundum de nuptiis. Augustine, after completing ContraJulianum, his six-volume endeavor to "execrate, condemn and anathematize" his opponent, died while writing a second major work against Julian known to us as his Opus imperjectum contra Julianum. Julian's actual treatises are lost, but what Augustine quotes from them shows that this most formidable of his doctrinal adversaries had more at heart than to refute him on a few hair-splitting theological issues. What his polemics amounted to was a retransvaluation of the Christian-Platonic conglomerate. Nominally, Julian died a Christian whose tombstone read, "Here lies Julian, the Catholic bishop.,,59 De facto, the peculiar brand of Pelagian Catholicism of which he was the most fiery advocate "rested firmly on a bedrock of the old ethical ideals of Paganism.,,6o Realizing that Julian was trying to reverse what he had spent half his life turning upside down, Augustine repeatedly speaks of his opponent's polemics as precisely such an endeavor. To him, the focal point of the debate is sexual lust, "this evil," which Julian called his "natural goOd."61 Similarly, he denounces Julian as a Manichee or, worse, a dissolute pagan "supervisor of nocturnals,,62 and "champion of lust,,63 who, on the strength of his personal experience, would seduce others into practicing his debaucheries: "Is this your experience of it? Is, then, this evil (your good) not restrained by the married? Indeed, since it is very pleasant, let the married effusively and impetuously seek each other whenever it titillates; let not this appetite be denied or put off until the proper time for such commerce: let the union of bodies be legitimate whenever this, your natural good, spontaneously acts.,,64 Julian had a way of hitting at Augustine's most vulnerable spots with proto-Nietzsche an indignation. In refuting the doctrine of double predestination, he describes the Augustinian God as the creator of a hell filled with babies and children. "Tell me then, tell me: who is this person who inflicts punishment on innocent creatures? ... You answer: God. God, you say! God! He Who commended His love to us, Who has loved us ... He it is, you say, Who judges us in this way; He is the persecutor of newborn children; He it is who sends tiny babies to eternal flames.,,65

Augustine's Platonopolis

61

Though he denounced Augustine "as beneath argument,,66 for entertaining such opinions, Julian kept up the barrage. By claiming that children are of necessity born under condemnation, Augustine, so he argues, puts parents on an equal footing with child murderers. 67 More generally speaking, Augustine's doctrines, in Julian's view, amount to the absurd assertion that man was "made by God for the purpose of being subject by legitimate right to the Devil.,,68 In the same vein, Julian pours sarcasm on Augustine's Neoplatonist theodicy of the aesthetic. If God's providential order encompasses evil and the Devil, "then it is good to be subject to the Devil, for thus the order God instituted is observed.,,69 For similarly absurd reasons, "it must be evil to rebel against the Devil for this disturbs the [same providential] order?,,70 But most pointedly, Julian aimed his scorn at Augustine's prurient obsession with sexuality. How very "devotedly" this old man, who could have been Julian's father, concerned himself with the "movement of the reproductive members!,,71 How preoccupied he was with trying to prove that procreation in paradise "occurred without the shame of lust"n or that the genitals, after the fall, had been given a will of their own and made "the private property of lust!,,73 Julian could not care less: "If the male member had also been active before sin, then the offense introduced nothing new.,,74 To him, the entire issue was, at best, a matter of ridicule. Thus he draws parallels between Augustine's views on sexuality and the even more lurid ones held by the members of two obscure Manichaean sects. Not unlike Augustine, these Paternians and Venustians describe the pubic region as "covered with filth and all kinds of impurity"; they argue that "the Devil made man's body from the loins to the feet, but God placed the upper part upon this as on a kind of pedestal.,,75 Yet underneath such sarcasm, Julian harbors strong convictions of his own. Let Augustine call him a champion of lust! There is nothing wrong with lust, except that man might indulge in it to excess. To Julian, sexuality was like a sixth sense, a neutral energy,76 and one that the blessed would continue to enjoy in paradise. 77 "Its genus," he proclaims with protoLawrentian fervor, "is in the vital fire; its species is in the genital action."78 Augustine remained unmoved except to execrate, "condemn and anathematize.,,79 Julian's passionate outbursts merely bring out the cold fury of the all-powerful Inquisitor. Augustine is paternalistically condescending, pretends concern out oflove for the lost young man, bursts out in self-righteous anger, fumes, is heavy-handedly ironical, "detest[s], refute[s] and condemn[s] ,"80 but never smiles. Julian's humorous sallies are answered with circumspect solemnity. They are dismissed from the enviable position of one who considers himself to be 100 percent in the right.

62

The genealogy of aesthetics

If anything, Julian drove his opponent to a considerable hardening and doctrinal revision of his earlier ideas. There had been a time when Augustine had pondered the possibility of how sexual intercourse might be transformed, without being suppressed, by the friendship between man and wife. 81 But now sexual lust, in his mind, has turned into the sin of sins. It is as if he were answering anew all the questions he thought he had resolved already. "Unde est malum? Quae radix ejus et quod semen ejus?" (Where then does evil come from? What is the root or seed from which it grew?)82 In the Confessions, he had diffused these questions in Plotinus' theodicy of the aesthetic. Now he points to the genitals as the true root and seed of evil. "Ecce unde. That's the place! That's the place from which the first sin is passed on.,,83 It is the ultimate paradox. In the very act of fulfilling God's behest to be fruitful and multiply, man must incur and spread evil. For "not even honourable procreation can exist without lust.,,84 And because "no one is seminated without it, no one is born without it.,,85 "By a kind of contagion,,,86 sexual intercourse connects every member of the human species with every other, past, present, and future. As the royal road of evil through the generations of mankind, it is "that disease whence original sin is contracted.,,87 It marks the inescapable path toward damnation for all, regardless of whether or not they indulge in its sinful excitements. For even the child who cannot possibly do so is deserving of damnation for having been spawned in the heat of its damnable pleasures. 88 Unfortunately, the excerpts from Julian's anti-Augustinian writings that have survived in Augustine's transcription, tell us little about his views on beauty and the arts. However, it is easy enough to imagine how the heretic, here and there in these writings, would have spoken approvingly of the sensually, or even erotically, stimulative effect of both with the same frankness with which he eulogized the body and its pleasures. This is suggested by Augustine who in talking about such matters to Julian assumes a particularly negative stance toward beauty and the arts. At julian's instigation, he distinguishes between "the stirring of lust, which must be restrained by reason," and the "consideration of beauty, even corporeal beauty, whether visible as in colours and shapes, or audible as in songs and melodies, a consideration proper only to the rational mind.,,89 Similarly, Augustine feels called upon to exhort Julian to "praise the heavens and earth ... in consideration of their beauty, not through ardent lust"; or he warns that even divine music can incite sinful emotions. "The soul may indeed be moved to sentiments of piety upon hearing a divine hymn, yet even in this, if it is lust for the sound and not for the meaning, it cannot be approved; how much less, if delight is found in empty or

Augustine's Platonopolis

63

even objectionable ditties?,,9o Had Julian praised the latter? Or had he spoken of the delights he experienced in smelling incense? To the tired old bishop, all of them, even if they merely lingered in our memories, are potential lures toward damnation: "What man, however carefully he disciplines carnal concupiscence, can, upon entering a room filled with the odour of incense prevent it from smelling sweetly to him?,,91

5

The Middle Ages

Not the "moral corruption" of antiquity, but precisely its owrmoralization [J-&rmoralisierung] is the condition under which alone Christianity could overpower it. The moral fanaticism (in short: Plato) destroyed paganism, insofar as it traDsvaluated its values [seine mnhe umwerthete] and fed its innocence poison.

xm, 487 I The WrlI to lWer, 438

For good reason, the last two chapters read like a history of religious coercion rather than of aesthetics. Pre-medieval and medieval aesthetics, in other words, is best understood as part and parcel of the ascetic system which, following the Augustinian model, was reified in the medieval theocracy. Needless to say, this by no means occurred in a line of unbroken continuity. Augustine died while his city was besieged by the Vandals who, some 80,000 strong, had crossed the Straits of Gibraltar in order to conquer the hitherto untouched north African dominions of the Roman Empire. Mer his death, Hippo went up in flames. Yet Augustine's library, as ifby some miracle symbolically suggestive of the powers it was to wield over the centuries to come, seems to have escaped unharmed. 1 For the time being, the web through which Augustine had tried to weave the old strands of the western Church into a doctrinal and political unity, was tom to shreds by the turmoils accompanying the collapse of the Roman Empire. With minor exceptions, philosophy, and even more so aesthetics, went dormant during the following centuries. Meanwhile, Muslim conquest redrew the boundaries of Judeo-Christian GrecoRoman cultural influence by gradually subjecting north Africa, as well as large parts of the Middle East and Spain, to its religiopolitical dominion. Unlike the Muslims, the northern invaders of the Roman Empire sooner or later succumbed to Christianity. However, for several centuries following Augustine's death, they were toO deeply involved in power struggles to pay much anention to cultural endeavors. The far-flung network with which Augustine and his supporters had managed to draw together the sprawling affiliations of the Roman Catholic Church throughout the Mediterranean began to disintegrate. 64

The Middle Ages

65

An opportunity for an at least partial regrouping arose with the ascendance of the Carolingians. Under Charlemagne, they came to rule most of central Europe after having allied their spreading empire with the surviving ecclesiastical and monastic power structures of the Church. The decisive step in that direction had been taken by Charlemagne's father Pepin the Shon when he usurped the crOWD. In return for being recognized king by the Pope, Pepin defended the papacy against the Lombards. The lands conquered in these campaigns were ceded to the Pope, which layed the foundation for the papal states. Charlemagne continued similar policies and was finally crowned emperor by the Pope, who thus legitimized his stewardship over the former Roman Empire in western Europe. The Carolingians derived clear political advantages from allying themselves with a priesthood reaching back into late antiquity, in which it had been created. Priests were the only people capable of tapping the older cultural resources by being able to read and write. Another, largely unexpected result of this alliance acquired more and more imponance in the future relations between the papacy and the diverse secular rulers of Europe at large. These rulers increasingly appointed bishops as their officials, thus giving the Church growing power in secular decisions. It is well known that under Innocent ill this led to a predominance of the papacy over nearly every European power. Ambrose's dictum that secular rulers should be in, but not above the Church, came true in a way even Augustine could only have dreamt of. The Church itself turned into a secular power playing the role of political arbiter in the west. Simultaneously, it strengthened its hold over people at large. For a long time, the bishops wielded power to investigate and prosecute heresy. But to the popes of the high Middle Ages, such individualistically haphazard measures no longer seemed adequate for enforcing the right faith throughout Europe. Something more centralized was required, and the resurgence of an old heresy - Manichaeism, now renamed Albigensianism - provided the immediate occasion for such centralization. While Innocent III launched the Albigensian Crusade, thereby starting a war that was to last over two decades, his successor Gregory IX established a system of legal investigation, attacking what was left of the heretics, and in the process founded the Inquisition. Within a few decades, it drastically radicalized its procedures. The accused were stripped of their original right to counsel. The systematic use of torture was permitted by Innocent Iv. Denounced by persons who were allowed to remain anonymous, most so-called heretics were proven guilty, fined, imprisoned, or burnt. Their property was confiscated by the civil authorities, who might yield a share of it to the Church. Secular rulers, thus tempted to use the

66

The genealogy of aesthetics

Inquisition for their enrichment, also availed themselves of its powers for the suppression of specific opponents like the Knights Templars. Even a few facts such as these suggest the extent to which the medieval theocracy controlled most aspects of life. Not until the Spanish Inquisition would improve on the original Roman model had there ever been a more thorough implementation of Plato's mind-controlling utopia. The arts and what people thought about them, were allowed no exceptions from such control. Under Charlemagne and his immediate successors, the Church repeatedly pronounced its respective directives at numerous synods: this was largely regarding iconoclasm, ~ then hotly debated issue, which left some leeway for different opinions and allowed the Church to assume a seemingly liberal stance. But looked at more closely, such apparent permissiveness amounted to a barrage of detailed prohibitions and didactic rationales which, in principle, would have gained the full approval of a censor of the arts as zealous as Plato. While opposing the willful destruction of images, the Synod of Frankfurt (794 CE) condemned their actual veneration, while the Synod of Arras (1025 CE) determined that "illiterate men can contemplate in the lines of a picture what they cannot learn by means of the written word.,,2 Surrounding such directives, we find a conglomerate of notions familiar from Augustine and Plato. Thus the Synod of Tours (813) warned "priests of God" against succumbing to the "temptation for the ears and eyes" in the contemplation of art works which might otherwise pollute their souls. 3 To avoid the same ocular and auditory concupiscense, according to Charlemagne's court philosopher Alcuin, was a question of self-discipline or "order of the soul.,,4 Hence, one should "choose what is higher, that is, God, and rule what is lower, that is, the body"; one should love "eternal beauty [aeterna pu/chritudo]," and resist its "lower" counterpart (infima pulchritudo). 5 Decades later, Johannes Scotus Erigena composed a commentary on Boethius, wrote philosophical works of his own, and, in doing so, drew on the Greek fathers as well as Augustine. He also translated the writings of the Pseudo-Dionysius, then believed to be Dionysius the Areopagite. As a result, Erigena was more adept than his contemporaries at absorbing diverse antisensualist loci communes from premedieval aesthetics. For instance, he astutely traced the concupiscence of the eyes to the sexual instinct. For the sense of sight, he argued, "can be misused by those who pursue the beauty of visible forms with lustful concupiscence, as Our Lord says in the Gospel: 'Whoso looketh on a woman to lust after her [libidinoso appetitu] has already committed adultery with her in his heart,'

The Middle Ages

67

where the word 'woman' is employed to signify the beauty of the whole sensible creation in general.,,6 Hence, the proper way of contemplating an an object, to him, must be devoid of all such appetencies as avidity, greed, and, of course, sexual lust (nul1a libido contaminaz).7 Erigena's superlatives in talking about the super-beauty of the divines and about the traces or echoes9 of it manifest in its earthly counterpans, point to Pseudo-Dionysius. However, they just as well could stem from Augustine or from the latter's Neoplatonic and Platonic sources. The same applies to Erigena's sense that what we call ugly can turn out to be beautiful once it is recognized as part of the "beauty of the whole established universe [pulchritudo lonus universitatis conditae].,,1o What he may have borrowed from St. Basil's pankalia concept (of a teleologically purposeful structure of the world), which in turn draws on Genesis and Stoic philosophy, 1 I might as easily have come to him via the Neoplatonic theodicy of the aesthetic. 12 As for the works of Plato - the indirect wellspring of medieval aesthetics via Augustine - they remained unknown except for the fragmentary Timaeus. To speak with E. R. Curtius, Platonism was everywhere, but the actual Plato nowhere. 13 The point here, however, is not to trace specific derivations, but to suggest the interchangeable derivativeness of early medieval aesthetics in general. Gradually, its core concepts shed all traces of their origin in Plato's transvaluation of values. In other words, they are more and more taken for granted; their increasingly extremist formulas are traded like coins, juggled in a spirit of ingenue fa 'Va sans dire self-evidence. Once the iconoclasm debate is settled, there is little further discussion. In talking about beauty and the arts, orthodox theologians by and large reiterate established concepts. Up to Thomas of Aquinas, they might work out different shades of meaning, set new nuances, or even ease up on some excessively severe, antisensualist restrictions. But they offer no new alternatives. The notion of invisible beauty provides an instance. To Erigena, "visible forms are not produced and shown to us for their own sake, but are notions of invisible beauty, by means of which Divine Providence recalls human minds into the pure and invisible beauty of truth itself.,,14 To Hugh of St.Victor, such invisible forms are the only means through which we can access invisible beauty. Our mind cannot ascend to the truth of invisible things, unless instructed by the consideration of visible things ... There is, however, a certain similarity between visible and invisible beauty by virtue of the emulation set up between them by the invisible creator, in which, as it were, the glimmers of their diverse proportions form one image. Because of this, the human mind, properly aroused, ascends from visible to invisible beauty. IS

68

The genealogy of aesthetics

To Richard of St. Victor, to whom all forms of visible things are "but images of the invisible,"16 this ascent from visible to invisible follows six different modes beginning with imagination and, via reason, ending up "outside the reason" in a mental state "apparently contrary to" reasonjl7 the objects to be contemplated through these diverse mental states analogously start with matter, and via form, nature, the works of nature, works of art, and human institutions culminate in divine institutions. III One finds similar variations as to how such beauty which "neither eye has seen nor ear heard,,19 is to be perceived. To Bonaventure, it is seen via vims spiritualis, as distinct from visus corporalis. 2o William of Auvergne distinguishes our external sight (the witness of outward beauty) from internal sight. 21 Through the latter we perceive "inner and intellectually cognizable beauty," otherwise named the "essentially beautiful [essentialiter pulchrum] ."22 With characteristic thoroughness, Thomas Aquinas will differentiate between half a dozen such forms of nonsensory vision, called wio imellectiva, mentalis, imaginativa, supernaturalis, beata, and per essentiam. 23 Every so often, the jungle of self-defeating terminological sophistry becomes impenetrable. To a mystic like Richard of St. Victor, for instance, the vision of the highest, divine, and invisible beauty is attainable only through "mental alienation [mentis alienatio]" of a bizarre complexity. Complementing six modes and seven objects of contemplation, there are three ways in which the mind, before it attains this ultimate vision, may be estranged from itself: greatness of devotion, of admiration, and of ecstasy. Thus, "irradiated with divine light and suspended in admiration of the highest beauty, it ascends into the height, as though snatched out ofitself.,,2·1 Though medieval aestheticians produced little that was new, they managed the seemingly impossible of taking the Platonic impulse to its ne plus ultra by devising a totally disembodied art form. Music, to them, was essentially a science dealing with numbers. For this understanding they drew on Boethius, who had praised Pythagoras for discussing a kind of music perceivable without the sense of hearing (relicto aun'um iudicio).25 As the mind surpasses the body, Boethius had argued in De institutione musica, so the knowledge of music based on rational cognition is much more splendid than that based on workmanship and effectj 2b and as all art and science are by nature more venerable than manual craft,27 so the philosopher-theorist of music, not the composer, let alone the practitioner of the art, is the real musician. What is more, this "real" musician engages "in the science of music, not in order to practice it, but from speculative interest.,,28 His art has nothing whatever to do with the "lascivious" sounds which only depraved minds delight in. 29 It is a

The Middle Ages

69

science of harmony affording pleasures resulting from number (quidquid in modulacione suave esc, numerus operacur).30 The proportions it reflects correspond to analogous ones in the soul and hence give pleasure to the mind (iucunditacem mentibus intonat).31 Medieval theorists rarely tired of repeating Boethius' tripartite division of music. Accordingly, there is cosmic, human, and instrumental music of which only the last one could, but need not, embody its inaudible beauty in real sound. Yet all three, and particularly cosmic and human music, were claimed to have an ideal existence outside sensory perception. For just as no one could actually hear the music of the spheres, nobody was able to de facto listen to the inner harmony of the soul. The mind alone could perceive both, and that either by trying to discern "those things which are observed in heaven," or by "penetrat[ing) into his own self."32 Once again, we find terminological nuances, but no real alternatives to such theorizing. To Jacob of liege, music, in the general sense of the word, applies "in a way to everything, to God and His creations, spiritual and physical, heavenly and human, and to the theoretical and practical sciences."33 Aurelianus ofMoutiers-St. Jean redivides Boethius' tripartite division into macrocosmic versus microcosmic. 3.\ Others, like Regino of Priim and Adam of Fulda, subsume cosmic and human music under the common denominator of a natural music, which they contrast with artistic music. 35 But all of them agree that the former is the wellspring of the latter, or that "heavenly music," as "the principle of all the music of the world," is the source of both human and instrumental music. 36 During the early and high Middle Ages, there is equal agreement as to the essentially spiritual and hence transsensory nature of instrumental music, which merely echoes the strictly transcendental nature of its human and cosmic counterparts. A musician is, as he was to Boethius, an investigator and connoisseur of numerical proportions. "And here is a strange thing," writes Erigena, "and hard for the mind alone to understand: that it is not the different sounds produced ... that produce the sweetness of the harmony, but the proportions of the sounds and the proportionalities between them, the relation of which is received within the mind alone, and appreciated by the interior sense.'037 Such official "musicology" was supplemented by practice-oriented regulations. Medieval Church music, as actually performed, was governed by carefully layed out liturgical patterns. The Benedictine rules prescribed the appropriate hymns for each particular hour of worship in the monastery.38 A similar spirit of regimentation inspired the antiphonary, prescribing music for the diverse religious offices and ceremonies. It also codified the syllabic rhythms of the official music to be adopted throughout the Catholic world,39 a codification now known as Gregorian Chant

70

The genealogy of aesthetics

or plainsong. A special school, the Scola Cantorum in Rome, saw to it that such music would be preserved in its severe austerity and purity. Gregorian chant was propagated by clerical and secular rulers alike, both considering it as a means of strengthening the unity of the various peoples subject to their rule. 4o Its Latin, the common language of the erudite and powerful, provided a strong bond between linguistically and ethnically divided lands. Its Latin words set to music according to universal rules furnished another, emotionally even more powerful tie. "By the regular and precise proportion of numbers," Adam of Fulda writes, "music inclines men to justice, evenness of character and to a proper political system [cogit homines ad iustitiam et morum aequitatem ac debitum regimen potitiae naturaliter inc/inanl. It elevates the spirit and exhilarates the mind, thus making men more capable of taking on labour.,,41 As shown by the frequent warnings and threats accompanying these regulatory measures, the official ideologues of the medieval theocracy did not go unchallenged in enforcing their rarified view of art. Thus, the 813 Synod of Tours admonishes priests to "abstain from all that is temptation for the ears and eyes ... For when [these] ... are bewitched, numerous faults penetrate to the soul.,,42 There was reason for such concern. The very places of worship and monastic discipline as well as the raiments of the clergy offered plenty of temptation to the eyes. Everywhere one could see "beautiful pictures and various sculptures, both adorned with gold, beautiful and costly coats, beautiful hangings tinted with different colours and beautiful costly windows, stained-glass windows tinted with sapphire, copes and chasubles interwoven with gold, golden chalices set with precious stones and gilded letters in books.,,43 What can any of this accomplish, wonders one churchman, except to satisfy "the greed of the eyes [ocularum concupiscentia]"?44 Why, asks Bernard of Clairvaux, do the interiors of monasteries, where the brethren are supposed to go about their devotions, display images of "fighting soldiers and huntsmen blowing horns" or pictures of "dirty monkeys, wild lions and monstrous centaurs, half-men and striped tigers?" Surely, such "ridiculous monstrosities," such "ugly beauty and beautiful ugliness," can serve no saintly purpose. 4S There were theoretical problems as well. A totally disembodied form of art, which one could talk about with some plausibility in the realm of music, was impossible to realize in vocal song, poetry, painting, and sculpture. In these, some degree of sensory appeal, physical content and concrete embodiment had to be tolerated and justified. Hence the eagerness with which medieval aestheticians, in the wake of Augustine and Pseudo-Dionysius, scanned bodily and artistic beauty for traces, echoes, or glimmers of the transcendent, invisible beauty of which they

The Middle Ages

71

were supposed to fonn a part. Here again the terminology varied, but the justification of all genuine earthly beauty as merely pointing to their true source in the beauty of God amounted [0 a consensus. What the Summa Alexandri, following Augustine, said about natural beauty was equally true of all theologically justifiable artistic beauty. "The beauty of creation is a trace [vestigium] on which one arrives at the cognition of noncreated beauty.,,4b Hence, aestheticians from antiquity to WinckeJmann and beyond could allow themselves to dwell with loving attention on the minutiae of physical beauty in both nature and art as long as they kept reminding themselves that their only concern in focusing on such detail came from endeavoring to document, as best they could, its transparency for the divine, good, and true. The same luxurious ornateness, which stands condemned in the words of Bernard of Clairvaux, thus finds its apologists elsewhere. Adorned as it was with silk, gold, and silver, the Church of Fecamp is called a "gateway of heaven.,,47 Suger, abbot of St. Denis, strikes a peculiarly future-oriented note. In waxing ecstatic over an altar "of wondrous workmanship and lavish splendour,,,48 he quotes Ovid's Mecamorphoses to the effect that the altar's art surpasses matter. Meanwhile its sumptuousness, complete with "gold, gems, and pearls" will reveal its uplifting qualities only to the educated like himself. I delighted in the beauty of the house of God, and the diverse colour and shapeliness of the gems ... bearing me from the material to the non-material sphere, inclined me to reflect on the diversity of holy virtues; it seemed to me then that I was in some wondrous region ... and that, by the grace of God, I could in like manner be transferred from the lower to the higher world:19

Most vindications of medieval religious art by contemporary churchmen sound less disingenuous. Yet all of them bear the mark of the apologists' defensiveness in the face of what must have struck them as the tk facco inexcusable luxuriousness of their churches and monasteries. This becomes the more obvious where an actual human body or person becomes the object of vindication. It might defy most people's ingenuity to imagine how anyone's personal beauty could be at once (a) without blemish, (b) have a certain elegance oftaste, and (c) own that certain chann of coloring and members attracting the emotions of onlookers. But this and more is what is claimed by Thomas of Citeaux. "The first arises through purification from sin, the second through the monastic life, and the third through the hidden inspiration of grace." 50 Wherever theologians justified physical beauty, they allowed themselves similar maneuvering space in determining which, if any, of the five senses should be involved in its appreciation. Ideally, none of them should, for

72

The genealogy of aesthetics

even sight and hearing can arouse low and lascivious fantasies. But given the impracticality of such exclusiveness, most theoreticians, following the ancients, allowed for at least sight and hearing as allegedly the purest and most closely linked to reason. 51 Others enlarged the scope even further. Less concerned with rationally conceived proportions and harmonies than most scholastics, a mystic like Hugh of St. Victor could find access to the higher forms of beauty through every sensory perception. "Beauty of colour feasts the sight, pleasantness of melody soothes the hearing, fragrance of smell - the sense of smell, sweetness of spices - the taste, and roundness of body - the toUch.,,52 Rather than merely harboring vestiges of the divine, such sensory perceptions, to Hugh, are the sine qua non toward attaining absolute beauty. For "our mind cannot ascend to the truth of invisible things, unless instructed by the consideration of visible things. ,,53 As we approach the high Middle Ages, such seemingly liberating tendencies receive a major impulse from the retrieval of some of Aristotle's works. The main impact here came from his metaphysics and psychology, the Poetics remaining an unknown entity until the Renaissance. 54 As we know, Aristotle did away with the Platonic split between idea and thing according to which the latter only carries traces of the former. He did so by collapsing both in one, the idea or entelechy now acting as a dynamic force driving the thing toward its self-perfection. Hence, an object's transcendent beauty - so far barely glimpsed at in scattered vestiges and echoes - has become more clearly manifest in its form. In medieval theorizing under Aristotle's influence, such notions can still appear side by side with Platonic and Neoplatoriic ones. Albert the Great calls form the beauty which "unites everything," yet at the same time invokes older notions, defining earthly beauty as a "kind of reflection of spiritual beauty" made of concord and clarity. 55 But for the most part, Albert's Opuscu/um de pulchro et bono simply fuses such divergent ideas. A transparency for the (ultimately invisible) light beyond turns into an actually visible luminosity radiating from the forms of objects. Beauty is declared to consist "in the gleaming of substantial or actual form over proportionally arranged parts of matter"; or its essence is said to lie "in the resplendence of form over proportionally arranged parts of matter or over various capabilities and actions."56 Another seeming liberalization of traditional aesthetics derived from an increasing tendency to move from an object-oriented evaluation of beauty - Augustine's and Aquinas' "a thing is not beautiful because we love it; rather we love it because it is beautiful,,57 - to a more psychological one assessing beauty in relation to the perceiving subject. Here Aristotle once again acted as a major catalyst. The beautiful, to William of

The: Middle Ages

73

Auvergne, arouses love (ad amorem sui allicir), pleases the mind (animum de/ectat), and delights us on its own account (per S8 ipsum placet). 58 "We are wont to give the name of beauty to that which contains features which make it pleasant to look at,,,59 states the Summa Alexandri. To Bonaventure, who fused orthodox Augustinianism with Aristotelean psychology, the beautiful is one of the three major sources of pleasure besides what is agreeable and health-giving (trip/ex ratio delectandi: pulchri, sUQvis, sa/ubris).60 Writers less encumbered by orthodox scholastic jargon, like the chronicler of the monastery of St. Germain d'Auxerre, might collapse such distinctions and, striking an oddly pagan note, derive the same physically pleasant and health-giving effect from the contemplation of a human artifact. "The pleasant beauty of a building sustains and refreshes the human body and gladdens and strengthens the heart.,,61 But all such seeming liberalizations of medieval aesthetics - beauty being defined in terms of the pleasure provided by its perception, or beauty lowered from its previously heavenly abode on to more earthly ground was either spurious or of short duration. The same Bonaventure who moves pleasure as derived from beauty into proximity of the physically pleasant and health-giving at one point, can call for the condemnation of physical beauty in favor of its spiritual counterpart at another. 62 Similarly, the possible impulse toward a deanaesthetization of aesthetics was neutralized by a timely emasculation of its new subject-oriented terminology. This was the work of Thomas of Aquinas, who places the previously metaphysical premises of mainstream antisensualist aesthetics ci la Plato and Augustine on a more psychological footing derived from Aristotle. To put it metaphorically, some of the older inmates of the traditional sophronisterion or prison house of aesthetics had gotten too restless, a problem Aquinas solved by quickly giving them new conundrums and tasks. Following Aristotle, Aquinas differentiates between two kinds of pleasure, one based on instinct, the other on a perception of mere harmony. He gives the voice of a stag as an instance. To a hungry lion, the hearing of that voice is pleasant because it promises food; to a human being, the same voice, like any sound or configuration ofshapes and colors, may cause pleasure too, but of a radically different kind. Like the lion, man will hear the stag's voice by means of sensory perception, but the concomitant pleasure will be caused, not by the hope of gratifying an instinctual desire, but "propter convenienliam sensibilium" (because they are pleasing to sense).fJ3 More psychologically astute than his scholastic predecessors, Aquinas concedes that there are pleasures mixing the aesthetic with the instinctual. A man's emotions vis-a-vis feminine beauty or aroused by a woman's

74

The genealogy of aesthetics

perfume, for instance, might easily straddle both realms. But one could never call such a fusion "aesthetic." Hence, Aquinas is clearly intent upon reattaching our perception of beauty to sight and hearing alone. For by being "most active in cognition," these two senses, "while serving reason," have a special association with beauty: "Thus we speak of beautiful sights and beautiful sounds, but not of beautiful tastes and smells: we do not speak of beauty in reference to the other three senses.,,64 But merely using the psychological jargon in order to reattach our perception of corporeal beauty to sight and hearing is not enough for Aquinas. After all, even these two supposedly most reason-oriented of our five senses could pollute the soul by inducing fantasies of appetency, even sexual desire. Hence, all links to such emotions have to be severed. Given his new psychological tools, Aquinas accomplishes both by positing the beautiful as a special force arousing neither instinctual desires nor pleasurable interests. For that, the beautiful had to be severed from the good. "Although beauty and good have the same subject ... they differ conceptually, because beauty complements good by subordinating it to the cognitive powers."65 In other words, we desire to attain what is good, but we are pleased with the mere, disinterested contemplation of beauty: '''beautiful' refers to that which gives pleasure when it is perceived or contemplated [cuius ipsa apprehensio placet]."66 Long before Hutcheson and Kant, we have Thomas Aquinas talking about the appreciation of art as a kind of disinterested pleasure.

6

The Renaissance

Basic insight: what is beautiful and what ugly. Nothing is more dependent, or shall we say, narrow-minded than our feeling for the beautifu1. Anyone trying to think of it as detached from the delight [Lust] humans feel for each other, would instantly lose her foothold. In the beautiful, humans admire themselves as a species [1J1Ius]; in extreme cases, they worship themselves. It is natural for a species [1J1Ius] that it can be made happy only by its own image; natural that it affirms itself, and only itself. Humans, as much as they see the world overwhelmed with beauty, have always overwhelmed it with their own "beauty"; that is to say, they deem beautiful everything that reminds them of the feeling of perfection with which, as humans, they dwell amidst all things. XIl,498

A man, seated at a table, is drawing a woman. Propped up on pillows, she lies in front of him on the same table. The paper he is sketching on is divided by a grid of squares also seen on the transparent screen positioned between them. An obelisque-like contraption, facing his right eyeball, helps him focus his gaze on the naked female. The man is studying perspective. Conspicuous about him are his eyes and hands, the former scrutinizing his object, the latter recording what he perceives on the geometric grid in front of him. The rest of his body is tensed up by his contemplative and artistic effort. The geometrically shaped little pitcher and the potted plant pruned into a near perfect globe, both on the window sill behind him, add further symbols of the triumph of mind over matter. Everything about and around the man stresses the severity of his cerebral effort. The woman, by contrast, is all mindless sensuousness and abandon. Her eyes are closed. She is either daydreaming or asleep. With the perspectivist scrutinizing the dramatically foreshortened curvatures of her body, the legs being positioned closest to and her head furthest away from him, we are treated to a full-length, sideways display of her voluptuous body. Her plump but firm breasts and belly are tilted towards us. Her pudenda, though covered by the bunched up corner of a sheet protruding from beneath her thighs, are a focus of special attention. Her left hand, 75

The Renaissance

77

1. Giono, The Last Judgmenr, Arena Chapel, Padua.

There is a self-portrait in the nude, in which he depicted his body in this impromptu, unmeasured fashion: his arms and legs either hidden or truncated; the slightly stunted body contorted by some sudden movement, as if he were turning to us, his lips full and sensual, the penetrating, knowing gaze from his slightly tilted eyes steadfastly holding our own; the dangling genitals delineated in such prominent fashion as to make them appear alive with a creatureliness of their own. like the nude in the etching, his self-portrait, while luring the spectator into its suggestive sexual orbit, pays little heed to harmony and proportion. In drawing either,

76

The genealogy of aesthetics

which, along with the arm, is nonchalantly perched on her belly and thigh, points toward them. Are we lured into relishing her sexual charms only to be made aware of the ironical contrast between our lascivious voyeurism and the cerebral efforts of the draftsman? Or is the picture one of those typical offerings to male chauvinist voyeurism, with the artist providing his clients with yet one more instance of a naked female body helplessly exposed to the lubricious fantasies of male spectators, as feminist critics might argue? Whatever the case, the picture is full of unresolved conflict. Completed just a few years before Diirer's death, the untitled etching provides a colorful icon of the artist's lifelong struggle with diverse artistic, aesthetic, and metaphysical problems. Perspective, the uses and limits of measure, the nature of beauty - issues such as these, which the draftsman in the picture seems to be pondering, concerned Diirer all his life. In a series of textbooks, he set out to teach his backward German countrymen that geometry "is the proper basis of all painting" and that "without just proportion, no figure can be perfect."l Yet long before the completion of the etching, this attitude toward the application of mathematically conceived proportions in portraying nudes had become divided. By 1507, Diirer abandoned his previous manner of trying to make his bodies conform to geometrical patterns, 2 henceforth attempting to deduce his ideal measurements either directly from nature or from classical models such as the Apollo Belvedere or the Medici U?nus. Equally divided was his understanding of beauty. In telling us what it is, he ends up with a pluralism he finds disturbing himself: it is the right, the apt, the appropriate, the harmonious, the proportionate, the concrete; it is what Zeuxis-wise we ought to assemble from "many beautiful things,,,3 taking "the head from one, the chest from another, shoulders, legs, arms, hands and feet from others again,,;4 it is what we should decide upon in terms of what has been deemed to be so by the majority through the ages;5 or it is what has been determined by practicing artists rather than the fickle and ignorant multitude. 6 In the final analysis, Diirer had to confess to a total agnosticism as to the ultimate essence of beauty. "What beauty may be, that I know not.,,7 Only God knows what the most beautiful human form might be. 8 "The forms and causes of beauty" are as manifold as they are confusing. 9 Our judgments concerning beauty are "so uncertain, that one might find two beautiful and pleasing people [beede fast schOn und lieblich] who are quite unlike one another at every point and in every part, both in proportion and in kind."IO Diirer's actual practice as an artist is similarly contradictory. His depictions of the human body according to his ideas of "just measure," even those executed after 1507, today strike most people as less successful than some of his unpremeditated sketches from nature.

78

The genealogy of aesthetics

2. Giotto, The Last Judgment, Arena Chapel, Padua.

Oilier was seemingly free from the strained cerebral etIons with which his draftsman tries to press the contours of the woman's body into the Procrustean bed of perspective. The unresolved conflicts between theory and practice suggested by the etching are characteristic of Durer's age in general. As such, they mark the beginning of a growing rift that has stayed with us ever since: between an art undergoing radical change and an aesthetics doggedly holding on

The Renaissance

79

3. "Standing Rotting Pair," panel made in Germany, ca. 1470, Musee de I'CEuvre Notre-Dame de Strasbourg.

The Renaissance

81

to its basic religiometaphysical persuasions; the pitting of a new creative impulse, drawing inspiration from pagan, pre-Platonic models, against a theory of art stuck in its post-Platonic moulds. Naturally, this rift is most manifest in depictions of the naked human body, an area in which Renaissance art takes its most spectacular departures from historical precedents. Medieval portrayals of the nude, we remember, by and large remain limited to an narrow spectrum of suffering and torture. The agonies of Christ or of the martyrS, the torments of the damned - no matter whether the imagined pain was to arouse sympathetic commiseration or gloating approval- the general message in either case bore out the fundamental premise of the post-Platonic Christian aesthetic: the body, as the prison house of the soul, has to be penalized, tormented, destroyed. Its biological functions, if allowed to be portrayed at all, are marked by man's fallen state. Eating and drinking turn into loathsome gluttony, sexuality becomes lechery, portrayals of the sexual act are confined to lurid forms of rape which infernal monsters inflict upon the damned along with other forms of torture. To the psychoanalytically enlightened modem spectator, such sexuality may be viewed as a symptom of repression or as harboring a dangerous sadomasochistic lure for those sufficiendy sick in mind to respond to such devious stimuli. Be that as it may, it is hardly erotic in the sense of arousing feelings of a joyful kind. We are moving closer to that possibility with the advent of Renaissance art. For painters like Diirer, Cranach, Altdorfer, Giorgione, Titian, and others, nudity ceases to be a mere blank upon which a general contempt of the body inscribes its message of cruelty, hate, and denial. Naturally, artists of the period continued to portray themes of torment and martyrdom, but alongside, they begin to depict naked bodies for their own sake, often with an overny sensualist bias, and sometimes, as in Altdorfer's Lot and his Daughter, while engaging in erotic play. Inspired by pagan models, some of them also produce what we now call pornographic art. To take the best-known example, Giulio Romano - incidentally the only Renaissance sculptor Shakespeare invokes by name - made sexual drawings which, before long, gave rise to a minor porn industry involving no less a man than Aretino. When Clement VII jailed Marcantonio Raimondi for engraving these drawings, the "scourge of princes" is said to have secured Marcantonio's release by interceding with the Pope, only in order to add his Sonetti lussoriosi to the pictures. In a letter to a friend, Aretino adds a spirited apology of such art and pours scorn on the hypocrisy of its would-be censors. "I am out of all patience with their scurvy strictures and their dirty-minded laws which forbid the eyes to see the very things which delight them most," he writes:

5. Albrecht Durer, Perspectivist Sketching a Lady, from The Painter's Manual, 1525.

The Renaissance

6. Albrecht DUrer, Self-Portrait, Nude, 1503/18, Schlossmuseum, Weimar.

83

The Renaissance

85

What wrong is there in beholding a man possess a woman? It would seem to me that the thing which is given to us by nature to preserve the race, should be worn around the neck as a pendant, or pinned onto the cap like a broach, for it is the spring which feeds all the rivers of the people, and the ambrosia in which the world delights in its happiest days. II

Had Aretino formulated his own theory of art, it would stand out as the lone exception in the otherwise uniformly antierotic aesthetics of the period. Yet aU we have are a few scattered comments. Apart from their iconoclastic tone, these strike a distinctly Shakespearean note. Thus both men favor an art "that Nature makes" 12 or which "in fact, [is] as living as life itself.,,13 What Bassanio admires in Portia's portrait,14 or Leontes in what he assumes to be Romano's statue of Hermione'" is what Aretino found praiseworthy in Titian's and others' depictions of human bodies. To Aretino, these seemed "animated by living pulses and warmed by the spirit oflife." 16 It was only natural that such works should stir up emotions similar to those aroused by real bodies. Thus a statue of Venus, with which Jacopo Sansovino was to adorn the bed chamber of the Marquis of Mantua, would be "so true to life and so living"17 as to "fill with lustful thoughts ... anyone who looks at it.,,18 By contrast with such erotically stimulative art, the depiction of male nudes being "dragged otT [to hell] by their genitals"19 in Michelangelo's Lase Judgment fills Aretino with revulsion. Through a friend, such ideas managed to infiltrate the outer margins of official Renaissance art theory, but little more. Using Aretino as his mouthpiece, Lodovico Dolce, in his Dialogo deUa piecura, objects to Michelangelo's depiction of "a devil who drags a large figure down with a hand-grip on his testicles so that he bites his finger because of the pain.,,20 Like Aretino, Dolce favors an art which, like Titian's, "moves in step with nature, so that everyone of his figures has life, movement and flesh which palpitates.,,21 In a letter describing Titian's Venus and Adonis, Dolce even ventures as far as to eulogize the erotically stimulative appeal of such a painting. "I swear," he writes, that there is no man so sharp of sight and discernment that he does not believe when he sees her that she is alive; no one so chilled by age or so hard in his make-up that he does not feel himself growing warm and tender, and the whole of his blood stirring in his veins. And no wonder; for if a marble statue could, with the shafts of its beauty, penetrate to the marrow of a young man so that he left his stain there, then what should this figure do which is made of flesh, which is beauty itself, which seems to breathe?22

However, such outspokenness is absent from Dolce's more official writings on aesthetics. Here, he clearly downplays Aretino's apology of Marcantonio's erotic engravings, even though he uses him as his

The Renaissance

87

spokesman. What in Aretino's letters (or in Dolce's own) amounts to a justification of erotic art in principle, is reduced to a half-hearted plea for pornography as a pastime permissible only in a strictly private sphere. So as to leave no doubt about his basic moral probity, Dolce links this apology to an attack on Michelangelo's alleged indecency. "It is not improper," Dolce's Aretino argues, for the artist to produce such works occasionally, by way of a pastime. Already in antiquity, for example, certain poets made lascivious play with the image of Priapus ... in public, however ... one should always pay attention to decency. And if these figures of Michelangelo's were more fully decent and less perfect in their design, this would be a good deal better than the extreme perfection and extreme indecency that one actually views. 23

Emasculated as it appears when compared with Aretino's original statements, Dolce's advocacy of a prosensualist art remains a rare exception amidst the high-brow cant with which Renaissance aestheticians at large discussed depictions of the human body. For the most part, these theorists simply kept reassuring each other of their rarified responses to its beauty by way of reiterating or elaborating upon well-worn Platonic cliches. One tries to persuade us that the "beauty of bodies manifests itself to us in divine light."24 Another argues that what "enraptures and moves the soul to special love ... is not found in the three material senses of taste, smell, and touch, but only in the objects of the two spiritual senses, sight and hearing.,,25 A third attempts to have us believe that, strictly speaking, not even hearing oUght to be included amongst those human capacities like sight and thought which guarantee a totally disembodied response hence, neither voices nor bodies can be called beautiful ("Voces autem et corpora pulchritudines appellari non possunt"26). In their efforts to convince themselves that art, by definition, deprives whatever object it depicts of all sensory stimuli, aestheticians ignored a few simple facts. For art, whatever its medium, works through suggestion, and the responses it elicits are by no means limited to its specific medium; similarly, sight as the allegedly most rarified sense, probably is more likely than any other to arouse emotions like lust and greed. Yet rather than ponder such faCts, they opted for a simplistic psychological reductionism; or where that proved insufficient, they drew on equally time-honored metaphysical arguments to justify what was "beautiful" about a nude in terms of underlying Pythagorean proportionalities rather than in those of direct sensory appeal. These efforts to justify what was attractive about a human body in terms of a hidden and invisible species incorporea,27 Idea. disegno. or bellezza di conceao28 received a major boost from the rediscovery of an ancient

The Renaissance

89

10. Pietro Aretino, Soneui lussorWsi (i Modi) e dubbi amorosi.

treatise, Vitruvius' De architectura. To many, Vitruvius provided the main analogy, used henceforth, for the basic notion of an invisible something underlying and informing what strikes our senses as beautiful. What is essential about a house, as Ficino put it echoing the treatise, is "the non-corporeal idea of the architect," not the materials used for its construction. 29 Vitruvius helped propagate this notion with regard not only to architecture, but also to the human body. The basis for what thus came to be known as "Vitruvian man" was tenuous enough. After pointing out that sacred edifices should be proportioned like the male body, he suggested a possible rationale for this idea: man's body, so he argued, is a model of proportion since, with arms and legs extended, it fits both square and circle, those most perfect of all geometric forms. 3o The formula proved irresistible. No matter if it did not work in practice, making some give the male body gorilla-like proportions like Vitruvius' commentator Cesariano, or others try to revise it, like Leonardo da Vinci. "Vitruvian

The Renaissance

91

11. "The Artistic Idea. Allegory," engraving by S. Thomassin after Errard, in Freart de Chambray's ParalJek de ['architecture antique et moder-ne, 1702.

the goddess's ear,38 try to persuade her to yield up her bodily charms to the spellbound admirer? The answer seems obvious. Yet even twentieth-century interpreters for the most part have been anxious to deny, or at least downplay, the erotic message of the paintings. These, to them, allegedly illustrate an argument about the "hierarchy among the senses" for which OttO Brendel invokes multiple analogues from the writings of Ficino, Leone Ebreo, Bembo, and Castiglione. 39 Naturally, the senses of smell, touch, and taste are not even admitted to this competition. Another commentator, Edgar Wind, interprets the musician's spellbound stare at the divinity'S naked charms as the Platonic questor's "reversal of vision by which alone a mortal can hope to face transcendent Beauty.,,4o Erwin Panofsky, while questioning Wind's "ultra-Platonic" interpretation remains in essential agreement with Brendel by pointing out that the paintings, iflooked at as a sequence, document a "slight but unmistakable shift from a total to a partial victory of the visual over the aural experience ofbeauty.,,41 The musician, who in the earliest painting is so stunned by what he sees that he actually desists from playing,42 is now serenading Venus to the accompaniment of a lute, while she seems ready to join him on the flute. 43 The traditional ranking of sight over hearing, to Panofsky,

90

The genealogy of aesthetics

man" captivated the Renaissance mind like few other concepts, and, along with several basic post-Platonic notions about art, has managed to maintain its hold over aesthetic theorizing ever since. Luca Pacioli, a friend of Alberti and Leonardo, explains part of that fascination by arguing that God has used the ratios and proportions of the human body to reveal "the innermost secrets of nature.,,3l Kenneth Clark, author of The Nude (characteristically subtidedA Study in Ideal Form), accounts for it from a twentieth-century perspective. To the Renaissance, he argues, Vitruvian man "was the foundation of a whole philosophy. Taken together with the musical scale of Pythagoras, it seemed to offer exactly that link between sensation and order, between an organic and a geometric basis of beauty, which was (and perhaps remains) the philosopher's stone of aesthetics."32 Theorizing about Vitruvian man, Pythagorean proportionalities and a Platonic ranking of the senses, also served critics in their eagerness to explain away or obscure the erotically stimulative appeal of much of Renaissance art. Twentieth-century interpretations of Titian's various depictions of Venus show that little has changed since then. Not enough of Titian's comments on his work have survived to make clear what exacdy the artist's intentions in depicting the goddess of love may have been. But some of the paintings, especially five showing the naked love goddess in the company of diverse, fully dressed male musicians, who have turned around to stare at her, reveal those intentions clearly enough. In two of them, the man's eyes are nonchalantly fixed on the woman's pudenda, which also provide a focal point in looking at the paintings;33 in one, the musician's absorption in the lady's sexual charm is so complete to make him desist from playing his instrument;34 in the two remaining ones, Venus seems about to engage her serenading young admirer in a duet, her left hand gently holding a flute, an instrument with obvious sexual connotations which Titian explored in yet another painting of comparably erotic innuendo. 35 It is left to the viewer to imagine the scenario in which Venus might accompany her lutenist friend on the instrument leaning against her couch. To the Renaissance mind, this viola da gamba, if played by a woman, had the broadly humorous connotation suggested by its Italian name. Did Titian, in painting these pictures, think of his friend Aretino's saying that music has the power to unlock the gates of a woman's chastity?36 In the two paintings showing Venus in the company of an organ player, iconographic and other details in the background underscore the erotic foreground narrative. 37 The satyr crowning a water fountain is a traditional symbol of priapic energy; the stag is an accepted emblem of the erotic; the man and woman walking on the left are lovers, and so on. Would the Cupid, who in at least two of the paintings is whispering into

92

The genealogy of aesthetics

has turned into a dialectic synthesis. "Titian, musician as well as painter, has in the end accorded equal dignity to the senses of hearing and of sight.,,44 A more recent critic of just one of the five paintings, while basing his interpretation on structural oppositions a La Levi-Strauss rather than metaphysical cliches a la Plato, arrives at essentially the same conclusion. The musician staring at the woman's pudenda "does not respond to her sexually, as a satyr might. Too civilized or too pretentious, he shows every sign of translating his desire for her into art.,,45 In other words, what we are supposed to look for in the naked Venus is not her sexual attractiveness, but a disembodied idea of beauty or art. To speak with Vincenzo Danti, it is that parte occuLta di bellezza corporaLe,46 which the artist in Durer's etching is trying to detect by staring at the nude on the table in front of him through a geometric grid. Although guessed at by the "spiritual senses" of sight and hearing,47 this spiritual beauty is ultimately perceived by understanding alone. Whether defined in Pythagorean or Vitruvian proportionalities or in terms of some Platonic idea supposedly sprung from the great artificer's mind, it is ultimately invisible. It is that species incorporea Ficino speaks of in trying to persuade us that a body as such has no beauty - "for not only the beauty of the virtues of the soul, but also that which inheres in bodies and sounds is non-corporeal.,,48 Durer's etching of the perspectivist sketching a lady provides an early instance of how the physical realities, which such ideational cant tries to obscure, tend to assert themselves regardless. Thus, one might view the draftsman as a caricature of the Renaissance aesthetician trying to press reality into the Procrustean matrix of a preconceived ideality. An emblem entitled "The Artistic Idea" from Freart de Chambray's ParaLlele de l'architecture antique et moderne (1702)49 suggests the same paradox in even more pregnant fashion. A compass in the personification's left hand, her eyes raised to heaven, the right transcribing her heavenly vision on to a tablet - all these wellestablished symbols are easily deciphered in terms of the concept that the emblem portends to illustrate. But at the same time, the image implies a message at odds with the one it claims to convey. "Idea" is a woman displaying a marked resemblance to the dreamily voluptuous nude scrutinized by Durer's perspectivist. With her naked breasts turned toward us, she is half spreading her legs, and a heavily crumpled sheet is streaming toward her hidden pudenda. These hold center stage in the image. Feminists would be right in accusing the creator of this emblem of providing his prurient male spectators with a pornographic image under the guise of an ideational pretext. But that, obviously, is only part of the story.

7

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

[In love] we encounter art as an organic function, embedded in the most angelic instinct of life, as the greatest stimulant of life ... The lover is more valuable, stronger. In animals, this state engenders new substances, pigments, colours, and forms; above all new movements, new rhythms, new mating calls and seductions. In humans, it is no different ... The lover turns spendthrift: he can afford it. He becomes bold, an adventurer, an ass of magnanimity and innocence; once again he believes in God; he believes in virtue, because he believes in love; as felicity's fool he even sprouts wings and new talents; the very portal to the arts opens up to him. Ifwe subtracted the traces of this intestinal fever from poetry in tone and word, what would be left of poetry and music? ... [sic] I.:art pour l'art perhaps: the virtuoso croaking of sequestered frogs, despairing in their swamp ... [sic] Love created all the rest. XIII, 299-300 / The Will to Power, 808

The aesthetic thinking of the fifteenth to seventeenth century, it has been argued, is as "outdated today as ancient and medieval aesthetics"] was in its time. At least in one sense, the comment is all too sweeping. Starting with figures like Alberti, the Renaissance secularization of art, in both practice and theory, represents an obvious departure from the Middle Ages and, to an extent, entails a deliberate rejection of medieval values. Even the obsession with Vitruvian man, however retrogressive and quaint it seems today, helped artists like Durer and da Vinci focus on the practical aspects of their subject matter and method. A naked body, even if scrutinized in search of nonexistent proportionalities, will inevitably reveal its less geometric qualities. Yet in another sense, fifteenth- to seventeenth-century aesthetics, especially when compared with its precedent, is even more obsolete than has been suggested. For its obsolescence has become repressive. The medieval theocracy formed too seamlessly coercive a system to allow for the kind of theoretical dissent that might need repressing. Anonymous artists obediently labored to fulfill its dictates: composers tried to approximate the inaudible harmonies of the spheres; sculptors and painters depicted the body as a prison house from which the soul ought to be liberated or in 93

94

The genealogy of aesthetics

which it must suffer torment. Deviations from the norms were expunged before they could burgeon into programatic theorizing. Aesthetics as a means of repression or camouflage, is, properly speaking, an invention of the succeeding age. We have already seen examples of how critics tried to explain away and or justify the erotic appeal of painted nudes, by arguing that what the artist had really been after was an incorporeal, transcendent beauty above and beyond the sine qua non of his subject and medium. More generally, the inherited norms of the previous age served to condemn what, judged from their puritanical perspectives, had gotten out of hand, or needed directing back into more traditional channels. In sum, as outdated as Renaissance aesthetics had become, its inherited dictates were made to play a radically new role vis-a-vis the arts. What used to provide clarification and containment, now increasingly served the purpose of condemnation, curtailment, segregation, or, alternatively, of philosophical and moral approbation along equally outdated lines. There was practical change as well. With the increasing secularization of society, administration of the rules artists were required to follow was taken out of the hands of the clergy. The new arbiters of what was appropriate, decorous, and beautiful came from all walks of life: they could be philosophers like Ficino, scholars like Valla, mathematicians like Pacioli, artists like Diirer, poets like Boccaccio, diplomats like Castiglione, physicians like Ebreo, or occasionally, even old-time clergymen like Bembo. The only specimen we do not find as yet is the professional aesthetician or critic. However, there was the Renaissance academy, which provided the breeding ground for the evolution of this new caste. Like the Renaissance, it represented a rebirth, and in the most literal sense of the word. The direct or indirect precedent for most subsequent ones, Ficino's Platonic Academy in Florence was modeled on Plato's school in Athens. Following it, there were, to name some of the more illustrious, the Pontanian Academy and Vasari's Academia del disegno, both in Florence, the Vitruvian Academy in Rome, the Madrid and Harlem academies, and finally diverse French ones which reigned supreme during the seventeenth century when that institution reached the pinnacle of its peculiarly restrictive influence over poets, artists, and musicians. What was common to all of them emerges clearly enough: on the surface, the academicians stood for enlightenment and progress: in reality they did everything, although often unconsciously, to force an emerging prosensualist art back into the life-negating, post-Platonic mould. The Paris Academy of Painting and Sculpture, founded in 1641, 2 makes explicit what to its predecessors is a more tacit agenda. Programatically, it

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

95

set out to liberate artists from the guild system, and to give back to them the freedom lost during the Middle Ages, which their predecessors had enjoyed in antiquity. Hence its motto, libertas artium restituta. 3 But such liberation had its price, to be paid in the currency first coined by Plato when he denounced as inferior to the ideal all that is quintessential to the arts: namely the physical nature of its subject matter, medium, and appeal. What the academicians payed attention to, then, was the ideational element in creativity, not its allegedly gross, bodily counterpart. Much like medieval musicians who were supposed to bypass the menial tasks of composing, let alone playing actual music, "men of genius," as touted by the Academy, should not be forced to engage in the "practical aspects of the fine arts.,,4 Plato's perverse but philosophically consistent reductio ad absurdum of the creative impulse has been debased to the level of a new, fa va sans dire double-talk: the artist is promised freedom depending on his willingness to obey dictates requiring him to renounce his actual medium. Never before or since have aestheticians tried to enforce this antiart premise in more absurdly pedantic fashion: there were rules concerning overall design, others regarding the right proportions of the human figure according to sex and age, rules about composition and expression, and about the right use of color as well as of light and shade. 5 Once and for all, the arts were to be fixed in a permanent ideational matrix subject to neither historical change nor geographical variation. According to Freart de Chambray, whose curiously contradictory emblem "The Artistic Idea" was discussed in the preceding chapter, beauty is the same everywhere and at all times. It would be frivolously wrong to allow that every age or nation should come up with its own definition. 6 Not all Renaissance academies were as bizarrely coercive as the French. Yet most, in one way or another, reformulated certain antisensualist tenets of the post-Platonic conglomerate, while reinforcing them with new variants. Juan Baptista Villalpando, a major ideologue behind the Madrid Academy, promoted an art out to reflect the musically conceived harmonies of the micro-macrocosm as well as an architecture modeled on the geometric configurations of the human form. As early as 1542, similar concerns had led to the founding of the Vitruvian Academy in Rome. 7 The main fountainhead for most of these endeavors was Ficino's Platonic Academy, which, of all subsequent institutions of its kind, also left the deepest imprint on the aesthetics of the succeeding ages. This is doubly paradoxical. Like Plato, Ficino was not overly concerned with the arts at all. Also, there was little that was new about the Platonism he is claimed to have rediscovered. As so often in history, the seemingly new caught on because it struck old chords that merely had not been

96

The genealogy of aesthetics

sounded for some time. Ficino may have been the first to translate Plato's original Greek into Renaissance Latin. But in interpreting Plato's philosophy, he followed the most commonly trodden path of all, namely that of Augustine's Christian Platonism. In fact, it was via Ficino that Augustine was allowed to reassert his hold over the aesthetic theorizing of the centuries to come. 8 From Petrarch (a fervent admirer of the Confessions) down to the humanists of the late Renaissance, Augustinian Platonism, thanks mainly to Ficino, became a major undercurrent of Renaissance thought. "When Francesco Patrizi, towards the end of the sixteenth century, attemp[ed] once more to revive Neoplatonism, he refers again explicitly to the judgment of Augustine."9 The most obvious thing about Ficino's Platonism is a phobic loathing for anything physical and sexual. What the Renaissance philosopher has to say about the "filth" and "pestilence of the body" 10 exceeds most of what we find in medieval and early Christian puritanism, or, for that matter, in Augustine. Ficino rarely tires of denouncing carnal man as "sick unto ruin"ll or as a "mad and miserable ... animal.,,12 Reversing his heaven-bound race, this Caliban lives upside down, "attempting to grasp with nose, lips, and fingers whatever is going on below.,,13 Ficino's influential commentary on the Symposium inveighs against the madness of beastly love;14 or it invokes the image, so dear to the Middle Ages, of the lynx's eyes which can penetrate to the loathsome intestines hidden under beautiful skin. 15 As a result, Ficino has little patience for Plato's idea of how the soul ought to escape from the prison house of the body via a step-by-step ascent to heaven. Reset in a Christian context, 16 his idea of such self-elevation takes several rungs at a time, especially where it allies itself with other Platonic notions like anamnesis or divine madness. 17 Ficino's distaste for anything bodily also marks his sense of beauty. Needless to say, beauty cannot be perceived by the lower senses of touch, taste, and smell. But even sight, the purest of the senses, is full of dangers. Quoting Scripture, Ficino warns against the "lust of the eyes,,18 or advises lovers to avoid eye contact like the plague. 19 The eye, to him, is the prime mover toward the sickness of bodily love. 2o Invoking Plato - a model to Ficino even in private ("His life was wholly temperate and, as St. Augustine asserts, chaste,,21) - he holds that a person unable to reach beyond "the form his [eyes] can see" lives in corruption; for "such a man is afflicted with the kind of love that is the companion of wantonness and lust.,,22 In short, true beauty is incorporeal (Pulchritudo est aliquid incorporeum) , 23 and hence holds no appeal whatever to our body (Nullam igitur naturam corporis ardet). 24 Like artistic beauty, so its creator: generally speaking, an artist will be successful in direct proportion to how forcefully he disassociates mind

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

97

from body. For "the deeper the mind is merged with this body, the more defective it is; and the farther it withdraws from it, the more progress it makes.,,25 Ficino is nothing if not insistent on this point. "Whoever achieved something great in any noble art," he writes, "did it mostly when he withdrew from the body.,,26 Or: "All those who invented anything great ... did so especially when they took refuge in the citadel of the Soul, withdrawing from the body.,,27 The artist's success depends on the degree to which he represses his bodily functions. As the artist, when creative, has to control the body, so his form will impress itself on matter. 28 Ficino's peculiarly repressive Platonism was slow to reach out beyond the confines of his Academy. Yet once it did, it spread like wildfire to every corner of Europe. The so-called trattati d'amore, which were inspired by Ficino's commentary on Plato's Symposium,29 constituted a Renaissance best-seller genre, deeply affecting other forms of literature like the euphuistic novel in England. Unlike Ficino's Latin works, they were written in the vernacular, with some of them, like Bembo's Gli Asolani and Leone Ebreo's Dialoghi d'amore, being translated into other languages like French, Spanish, and English. Several ran through numerous editions within one or two decades of their first appearance. 30 Most trattatisti, in addition to emulating Ficino's idealism, inherited his loathing for the physical and sexual. Mario Equicola's Libro di natura d'amore merely echoes the general consensus in speaking of la spurcitia del coito. 31 Sexual love, that rabbia Venerea,32 is mere "foolish perturbation.,,33 Unlike Plato's Symposium, the trattati, once again recalling Ficino and Augustine, paint a particularly grim picture of the nefaria scelleratezza of homosexuality.34 Mario Equicola calls it the horrendo vitio. 35 One example will suffice to give an idea of how the trattatisti turned Ficino's highbrow philosophy into popular cliche. Castiglione's Libro del Cortegiano, though not a trattato d'amore as such, gives a detailed account of the Platonic ascent and does so in a framework reminiscent of the debating club scenario of that genre. Of all Renaissance publications popularizing Ficino's Platonism, it was the most influential. By 1700 it had gone through some two-dozen Italian editions and been translated into French, Spanish, English, Dutch, German, and Latin. At least four separate editions of Thomas Hoby's English translation appeared during Shakespeare's lifetime. 36 According to Castigilione's mouthpiece Bembo, sensual love is "the lowest rung of that ladder by which we ascend to true love.,,37 In principle, sex is bestial 38 and "bad at every age.,,39 To learn "how to love beyond the manner of the vulgar herd,,,40 the devotee must "avoid all ugliness of vulgar love,,41 by turning his "desire entirely away from the body.,,42 For the latter, as Bembo explains more than once, "is something very different

98

The genealogy of aesthetics

from beauty.,,43 In the final analysis, beauty can only be seen "by the eyes of the mind.,,44 Granted we feel delight "when a single glance from a woman's beloved eyes reaches US.,,45 But this is nothing when compared with the delight "which fills the souls that attain to the vision of divine beauty.,,46 At best, the beauty of "corruptible bodies,,47 is a mere delusion; at worst, it is an incitement to "countless evils, hatreds, wars, deaths, and destructions.,,48 Once consummated, it engenders boredom, disgust, and aggression: "Hence, all those lovers who satisfy their unchaste desires with the women they love meet with one of two evils: for as soon as they have what they desired, either they feel satiety and tedium or conceive a hatred for the beloved object."49 In sum, beauty is incorporeal and can only be perceived and/or created by those who repress the body. There is no lack of dissent from this Renaissance consensus, particularly toward the end of the period. In ignoring the notion of spiritual beauty, Giordano Bruno extolled its physical counterpart as a power turning ordinary humans into poets and heroes. 5o Galileo, in a letter, ranked sculpture above painting because its representations can be touched. 51 Descartes, dismissing the Platonic notion of the beautiful per se, links the subjective perception of it to the individual's memory: whether I deem something beautiful or ugly depends on the associations the object will trigger in my mind. In this, I resemble a dog who, after repeated thrashings to the sound of a violin, will run away whining as soon as he hears the violin again. 52 But none of these isolated comments was to exert a major influence on the history of aesthetics. This is equally true of Montaigne and Bacon who, at least potentially, are the most radically innovative aestheticians before Hobbes. Both of them, in different ways, attacked the post-Platonic conglomerate at its very root. Looking back over the twenty centuries or so "over which the memory and learning of men extends,,,53 Bacon observes an ongoing "corruption of philosophy by superstition and ... theology.,,54 One mainspring of such corruption was provided by Pythagoras and his followers, another, "more dangerous and subtle," by "Plato and his school.,,55 Common to both Pythagoreans and Platonists was the tendency of splitting off spirit from matter, soul from body, metaphysics from physics, or, in Plato's particular case, the positing of ideas or "forms as absolutely abstracted from matter, and not confined and determined by matter.,,56 The idea of an absolute, abstract beauty, which Bacon fails to discuss in detail, no doubt would have been subject to the same reservations regarding abstract ideas in general. Broadly speaking, "the 'inquisition of man," in his view, "is not competent to find out essential jorms."57 The only forms of things we can ascertain are "those laws and determinations of absolute actuality, which

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

99

govern and constitute any simple nature, as heat, light, weight, in every kind of matter and subject that is susceptible of them."s8 This raises a further question. Was beauty a form of this kind, or was it a completely subjective, psychological response without a basis in things, as Descartes and Spinoza 59 were to suggest? Bacon, once again, leaves the question unanswered. But he objects to the time-honored notion of beauty as a geometric configuration or perfection underlying things. "A man cannot tell whether Apelles or Albrecht Durer were the more trifler; whereof the one would make a personage by geometric proportions, the other, by taking the best parts out of divers faces, to make one excellent."6o "Excellent beauty," instead of boasting such artifical perfection, to Bacon, always has "some strangeness in the proportion.,,61 More generally speaking, Bacon takes a refreshingly hedonistic view of the arts and their impact on those who enjoy them. Poetry, to him, is a "plant which comes from the lust of the earth."62 It is "a pleasure or play of imagination," rather "than a work or duty thereof."63 Painting and sculpture along with aesthetics, cosmetics, and medicine, are artes voluptuariae geared at the pleasure, strength, beauty, and health of the body. 64 Bacon had a decisive, often sweeping, sense of western cultural history as having got off on the wrong footing with thinkers like Plato and Pythagoras. Their "entire fabric of human reason," to him, was like a "magnificent structure without any foundation."65 Hence "the entire work of the understanding" had to "be commenced afresh." Its goal was a "recovery of a sound and healthy condition"66 still evident in preSocratic philosophers such as Democritus, Heraclitus, Empedocles, and Anaxagoras. 67 Yet temperamentally, Bacon shared too much of Plato's puritanical bias to allow him to attack his transvaluation of values at its root. One of his essays defines love, and especially "wanton love," as a "child of folly."68 The opposite is true of Montaigne. On the one hand, he ridiculed Plato as a "disconnected poet,"69 Socrates as a man wielding reason like "a many-ended stick,,,7o or their philosophies as but a kind of "sophisticated poetry,,;71 on the other, he lacked Bacon's sense of the original inversion of values which engendered the life-negating and idealistically preemptive tendencies of western thought he otherwise analyzed so astutely. He was well equipped for the task. A keen interest in nonwestern, exotic cultures provided him with the necessary perspectives; an unabashed delight in his sexual and other physical pleasures with the personal impulse. Even decades after the fact, he gleefully remembered his having been the most impertinently genital man that ever was.72 Unlike Plato, Augustine, and at a later point Kant, Montaigne totally escaped the

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

101

12. Gravettian female ivory figurines from Avdeevo, Russia, ca. 21,000-19,000 Be: "this symbolic expression centred on the body was enriched . . . through the use of the carved and adorned body as living jewellery on real human beings."

100

The genealogy of aesthetics

syndrome of becoming progressively more puritanical with age. Growing older simply made him more outspoken in defense of his youthful excesses. The "whole movement of the world," he protested, "resolves itself into and leads to this coupling. It is a matter infused throughout, it is a center to which all things 100k.,,73 Clearly, Montaigne disliked "that inhuman wisdom that would make us disdainful enemies of the cultivation of the body.,,74 He also hated that "most barbarous of our maladies" that causes us to "despise our being.,,75 In similar vein, he curses "our sickly, kill-joy mind" which would have us feel disgust with our bodily pleasures. 76 Though proceeding with his customary circumspection, Montaigne even points to the main originators of such perversity. Augustine's belief that sexual intercourse is "necessarily bound up with concealment and shame," to him, was prompted by the theologian's "overtender and respectful attitude.,,77 But here, in a comment omitted in print, is what Montaigne thought of Augustine's idea that women should be resurrected as men at the Last Judgment so as to protect us from further temptation. "Si c'estoit aelles de dogmatiser en telles choses diroient elles pas que pour cette raison il vaudroit mieux que ce fut anous de changer en elles?,,78 With equal irony, Montaigne invokes Plato's description of the penis as a "disobedient and tyrannical member, which, like a furious animal, undertakes by the violence of its appetite to subject everything to itself.,,79 Characteristically, Plato's disgust turns Rabelaisian delight in Montaigne's paraphrase. "To women likewise," he writes, the gods have given a gluttonous and voracious animal which, if denied its food in due season, goes mad, impatient of delay, and, breathing its rage into their bodies, stops up the passages, arrests the breathing, causing a thousand kinds of ills, until it has sucked in the fruit of the common thirst and therewith plentifully irrigated and fertilized the depth of the womb. 80

Whether male or female, the genitals, to Montaigne, are "the most pleasant and useful of our members.,,81 Sexual pleasure, to him, is "the only true pleasure of bodily life; the other pleasures [being] asleep by comparison."82 And yet, "many people have conceived a mortal hatred for them";83 so many in fact, that Montaigne has to venture outside European culture to find support for his own views to the contrary. His credulity here more than all else reveals his argumentative zeal. In most parts of the world, he reports, the genitals were deified; Egyptian ladies, at the festival of the Bacchanals, wore wooden penises around their necks, "exquisitely fashioned, big and heavy, according to each one's capacity,,;84 in other, unidentified localities, virgins openly displayed their

102

The genealogy of aesthetics

13. Case mirror from Corinth, ca. 320-300 BC: "What makes [this scene] most interesting is not merely [its) explicit eroticism, but the fact that the woman is represented as an equal parmer to the man, even as taking the initiative."

pudenda, males had special homosexual brothels;85 worshippers, before attending service, had sex with boys and girls housed in the church for this express purpose. 86 Such gusto contrasts with the unease he feels toward efforts to spiritualize sexuality. Personally speaking, he sees himself as the opposite of Socrates, who "corrected [his) natural disposition by force of reason."S7 "Others study how to elevate their minds and hoist them up tight; I, how to humble mine and lay it to rest."ss What is more, most of those who pretend to despise "sexual pleasure" do so because they have lost the powers to enjoy it. By contrast, Montaigne prefers to occupy his "soul with useful wanton thoughts to give it a rest,,,89 even in his

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare 103

dotage. All else is hypocrisy and pretence: "Xenophon, in the bosom of Clinias, wrote against Aristippic sensuality."9o In real life, no one ever seems to be "seized with desire for that noble Socratic exchange of body for soul, buying a philosophical and spiritual intelligence and generation at the price of [his lady's] thighS.,,91 More generally speaking, Montaigne is against dissociating the soul from the body, or against reserving the label "love" for emotions derived from such a split. The soul, instead of trying to flee sensual pleasures, whether sexual or otherwise, should "invite herself to them."92 Which other choice do we have? People might argue that love is primarily "concerned with sight and touch,,;93 in fact, it "is founded on pleasure alone.,,94 Whether we like it or not, love is "nothing else but the thirst for sexual enjoyment in a desired object.,,95 Like love, beauty, to Montaigne, is firmly rooted in sexuality. Conveniently limiting himself to Diotima's speech in the Symposium, he makes Socrates define "love [as] the appetite for generation by the mediation of beauty.,,96 Speaking for himself, Montaigne puts matters more bluntly: "Au liet, la beauu avant La bonu,,97 is a rule he finds applicable to himself but also to men and women in general. "I have often seen [men] excuse the weakness of their minds in favor of their bodily beauties; but I have never yet seen that for the sake of our beauty of mind ... they were willing to grant favors to a body that was slipping the least bit into decline."98 His defining the beautiful as sexually stimulative in an originary sense, leaves Montaigne with the question as to what could arouse such appetency. His far-flung anthropological interests help him illustrate the subjective nature of beauty. "The Indies paint it black and dusky, with large swollen lips and a wide flat nose ... In Peru, the biggest ears are the fairest, and they stretch them artificially as much as they can ... Elsewhere there are nations that blacken their teeth with great care, and scorn to see white ones; elsewhere they stain them red.,,99 There is even greater confusion as to what beauty is "in nature and in general."lOO Like Bacon, Montaigne dislikes attempts at reducing beauty to geometrical configurations like the sphere, the pyramid, or the square;lOl and where he talks about inner, spiritual beautyl02 or about the beauty of the soul, he does so metaphorically rather than ontologicaUy. Nor does he share the general Renaissance tendency of apotheosizing the human body as the ne plus ultra of the beautiful. On the contrary, "by many animals we are surpassed in beauty."lo3 To Montaigne, this is true even from a strictly sexual point of view. "Indeed, when I imagine men quite naked, yes, even in that sex which seems to have the greater share of beauty, his blemishes, his natural subjection, and his imperfections, I think we had more reason than any other animal to cover ourselves."lo4 Hence, the art of self-embellishment, to him, is a kind of aphrodisiac to

14. Temple frieze at Khajuraho, west of Allahabad in northern India, tenth century CE: "Many of the scenes portrayed in the sculptures at Khajuraho are frankly erotic . .. To the westerner, imbued with the puritan ethics of the Christian tradition, such subjects seem highly unsuitable for a sanctuary designed for religious worship."

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare 105

enhance a sexual appeal one might otherwise find wanting. People dress up in feathers, furs, and silk, the spoils from creatures better equipped with that strange sexual lure called beauty than ourselves. 105 But fashion and cosmetics are by no means the only "arts" operating along these lines. More appropriately than Bacon, Montaigne could have used the common denominator artes voluptuariae 106 in talking about painting and sculpture; or he might have included music and poetry under the same category. Comments about the fine arts are rare in Montaigne, but the exceptions reveal his predictable preference. Thus he invokes the anecdote, also mentioned by Aretino's friend Dolce, of the boy so enamored with Praxiteles' statue of Venus that he stained her with his semen;107 or he repeatedly dwells on the story of Pygmalion, who, "after building a statue of a woman of singular beauty," grows so infatuated with it "that he loves and serves it as though it were alive": Kisses he gives, and thinks they are returned; Pursues and holds, and thinks the flesh gives way Beneath his fingers, fears a mark will stay. 108

Pondering lines such as these helped the aging Montaigne occupy his soul with the beautifully wanton thoughts that gave it rest. The essayist obviously had a keen interest in erotically stimulative art and poetry. His list of over a dozen books like Strato's O/Carnal Conjunction or Aristo's On Amorous Exercises is one of the longest in his works. 109 He was familiar with and quotes from the Priapea and from Petronius' Satyricon, and he counts Catullus, along with Virgil, Lucretius, and Horace, among the "first rank [in poetry] by very far." I 10 His preference for Rabelais, for Boccaccio's Decameron, and for Johannes Secundus' The Kisses among more recent books "worth reading for amusement" 111 reveals his obvious lack of squeamishness about matters that upset most of his contemporaries. A story he found particularly amusing is that of the "good man" who, so as to shield people from succumbing to the concupiscence of the eyes, castrated a great many statues in his city. Should not that person, in order to achieve his final goal, also have castrated asses and horses, or rather "all nature"? To reinforce his point, Montaigne quotes some favorite lines from Virgil's Georgics, in his view "the most accomplished work in poetry": Yes, everything on earth, the race of man and beast, Fish of the sea, and flocks, and gaily painted birds, Rush into passionate flame. liZ

But there is more to Montaigne's interest in the erotically stimulative appeal of poetry than a concern with subject matter. As far as the reader is concerned, he wants poetry to "ravish," "overwhelm," "transport,"

106

The genealogy of aesthetics

"transpierce,"113 and "fiJl" US. 1I4 Characteristically, he illustrates this notion by interpreting two passages from Virgil's Aeneid and Lucretius' De rerum natura descriptive of sexual encounters. In one, Venus makes love to Vulcan,115 in the other the goddess is exhorted to fully abandon herself to Mars: 1'llke him in thy embrace, goddess, let him be blended With thy holy body as he lies; let sweet words pour Out of thy mouth.'16

Montaigne praises both poets for the discretion and delicacy with which they handle their subjects - but only in order to point out how such reserve enhances the content's sexual appeal. To him, "Venus is not so beautiful all naked, alive, and panting" as she is in Virgil.117 "Treating of lasciviousness as reservedly and discretely as they do," Virgil and Lucretius "reveal it and illuminate it more closely.,,118 How, more specifically, can poetry "reproduce an indefinable mood that is more amorous than love itself"? I 19 Montaigne teUs us by way of a detailed analysis of the lines quoted from the two poets. For poetry to "fiJl and ravish,,120 the reader's mind, he argues, it must be sustained by the poet's empathetic fusion with his subject. Only thus will his language transcend itself to the point where words "will mean more than they say," and where, by ceasing to be "wind," they will seem like "flesh and bone." "It is the sprightliness of the (poet's] imagination that elevates and swells the words"121 and makes us forget that we are not in the presence of the actual events they enact: When I ruminate that rejicit (flings), pascit (devours), inhians (wide-mouthed), moOi (soft), /tnJet (fondles), medullas (marrow), !abe/acta (trembling), pender (suspended), percurrit (runs through), and that noble circum/usa (blended), I do not say: "This is weD said," I say "This is weD thought.,,122

In sum, poetry should deal with, rather than shun, matters of sexual impon, and in doing so enhance, rather than downplay, their erotic appeal. Or as Montaigne puts it: ''Whoever takes away from the Muses their amorous fancies will rob them of the best subject they have ... and whoever makes Love lose the communication and service of poetry will disarm him of his best weapons."123 Hence, Montaigne has little more than contempt for the Renaissance trattati d'amore which steer poetry in the opposite direction: "My page makes love and understands it. Read him Leon Hebreo and Ficino: they talk about him, his thoughts and his actions, and yet he does not understand a thing in it ... If I were of the trade, I would naturalize an as much as they artify nature. Let us leave Bembo and Equicola alone."124

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare

107

Shakespeare never mentioned any of the Renaissance trattati d'amore expressis verbis, but his treatment of the Renaissance academy in Love's Labor's Lost is as forceful a caricature of their Platonist pretensions as Montaigne's name-calling diatribe against Bembo, Equicola, Leone Sbreo, and Ficino. Even by Shakespearean standards, the comedy is grossly bawdy. Its impertinently "genital" obscenity punctures, disrupts, and finally plays havoc with the rarified aspirations of the courtly academicians of Navara, who have declared war on "the huge army of the world's desires."125 Costard's provocative defiance when caught fornicating with Jaquenetta and breaking the courtier's three-year ban against any form of contact with women, sets the tone. He bluntly "confesses the wench," 126 brags that the "maid will serve [his] turn,"127 and argues, not inappropriately considering the drift of the play, that it "is the simplicity of man to hearken after the flesh.,,128 Berowne, the only courtier to realize that "Necessity will make [them] aU foresworn," 129 joins in this bawdy banter upon falling in love with Rosaline: Cupid, to him, is the "Dread prince of plackets, king of codpieces." 130 But the worst obscenities occur in witty repartee between Boyet and one of the ladies whose sexual charms are about to make the courtly academicians break their vows of living in philosophy,131 of warring against their affections,132 and of forswearing "the grosser manner of these world's delight.,,133 Once Costard joins the fray, the puns exchanged during a hunting party quickly degenerate into graphic smut. For modern readers, the Elizabethan hunting jargon is difficult to follow, but the sexual double entendres of "hit" equals "copulate," and "mark" equals female "pudenda" are as obvious now as they were then. A mark! 0, mark but that mark! a mark, says my lady! Let the mark have a prick in't, to mete at it, if it may be. MARIA: Wide a' the bow-band! I' faith, your band is out. COSTARD: Indeed '8 must shoor nearer, or he'U ne'er hit the clour. BOYET: And if my hand be our, then belike your hand is in. COSTARD: Then will she get the upshoot by cleaving the [pin].Il" BOVET:

Of course, there is more in Love IS Labor's Lost than such "incony vulgar wit,,135 to dismantle the academicians' antisensualist vagaries. The same effect is achieved more subtly where Shakespeare, in a complex feat of multiple parody, has the courtiers use the familiar Platonic cliches about heavenly love and beauty trying to justify breaking their vow of commitment to the same values. A good example is Longaville's sonnet in praise of the same "heavenly" Maria, whom we have already heard trade obscenities with Boyet and Costard. The spectators know all along

108

The genealogy of aesthetics

what makes the sonneteer invoke the "heavenly love" of his "goddess" in order to explain away his treachery. It is the "fever" with which Maria "reigns in his blood."136 As Berowne puts it: "This is the liver-vein, which makes flesh a deity. / A green goose a goddess; pure, pure [idolatryJ:,137 It is "[a] huge translation of hypocrisy," 138 as Katherine puts it in evaluating a similar poem written by another one of the enamored would-be Platonists. Parody turns argument where Berowne is asked to prove the academicians' "loving lawful, and [their] faith not torn.,,139His speech to that effect amounts to no less than an anti-Platonic aesthetics akin to that of Montaigne's. Sexuality, or the "love, first learned in a lady's eyes,,,140 to him, is the prime mover behind artistic and other creativity. For Ficino, the success of a creative act, as we recall, is directly proportionate to the degree to which the creator dissociates himself from his body. Berowne reverses that relationship: success in creation is dependent on an affirmation of one's senses; those "arts" which entirely keep or are "alone immured in the brain"141 are dismissed as "leaden"142 and "slow,,;143 their "barren practicers" are derided for barely being able to "show a harvest of their heavy toil."I ...j Real creativity takes its impulse from a pansexual force which, to quote Montaigne, is "infused" throughout life and the "center to which all things 100k,,:H5 But love, first learned in a lady's eyes, Lives not alone immured in the brain, But with the motion of all elements, Courses as swift as thought in every power, And gives to every power a double power, Above their functions and their offices. 1-16

The more fully artists and poets let themselves be inspired by their bodily and, indeed, sexual impulses, the more forceful will be their art. As in Montaigne, the transvaluation of values behind traditional postPlatonic aesthetics is retransvaluated. Not the repression of sensuality, but its affirmation ought to be the mainspring of artistic endeavor. The sophronisterion of bodily denial has been changed into an institution in which study, learning, science, and creativity, in short the entire panoply of man's Promethean efforts, takes bodily impulses, including sexuality, as its main impulse. From women's eyes this doctrine I derive: They sparkle still the right Promethean fire; They are the books, the artS, the academes, That show, contain, and nourish all the world. I"?

The Renaissance Academy, Ficino, Montaigne, and Shakespeare 109

Here as elsewhere, the parallels between Montaigne and Shakespeare are striking. The philosopher warns that to sever poetry from sexuality disarms the poet of "his best weapons,,;148 the playwright's Berowne argues that earthly love is an indispensable precondition in the creation of poetry: Never durst poet touch a pen [0 write Until his ink were temp'red with Love's sighs. 1.9

8

Hobbes and Shaftesbury

Apropos the origin of logic. The fundamental bias to posit as equal, see as equal, is modified, held in check, by usefulness, harm, and success: out afit arises an adaptiveness ... which allows [the organism] to satisfy itself without negating and endangering life. This process corresponds precisely to that external. mechanical one ... by which the protoplasm continuously makes what it appropriates equal to itself and fits it intO its forms and schemata (Formen und Reihen]. XII, 295-96 I The WiD ro fbwer, 510

Some aesthetic valuations are more basic [jUndamenraler] than the moral ones; for instance, the delight in what's ordered, easily surveyable, circumscribed, repeated: these are the feelings of well-being shared by all organisms vis-a-vis the perils of their situation or the difficulty of finding food. What's familiar causes pleasure; the sight of something we hope to O'lJerpower with ease causes pleasure, etc. The logical, arithmetical, and geometric feelings of well-being provide the basic stock of the aesthetic valuations. Certain conditions of survival [Lebens-Bedingunge,,] are deemed so important. ;md reality's opposition to them so insistent and forceful, that the sight of such forms engenders pleasure. XI,509-10

Comparing mainsa-eam western aesthetics with a post-Platonic sophroniscerion or prison lets us cast a backward glance at this point. As already pointed out, the core concepts of Augustine's Platonist aesthetics gradually lost all uaccs of their origins, and they continued to do so into the high Middle Ages and beyond. They resemble prisoners who somehow forgot what made them occupy this gaol, or what life was like before they got there. Once every few centuries or so, the entire institution undergoes extensive renovations, but there are definite limits to such endeavors. A gaol, after all, is a gaol, whatever internal changes it may undergo. It has to house prisoners and must not allow them to escape. Only very rarely, a newcomer spreads rumors of an independent life without. For the new prisoners, [00, have been deprived of the memory of their origins, and once admined, are quickly subjected [0 the timehonored correctional routines. Nonetheless, there are more and more 110

Hobbes and Shaftesbury

111

revolts. Quickly stifled at first, they become increasingly indomitable, until, over the centuries, they lead to actual escapes. But for the majority of the old-timers among both guardians and inmates, there is but a single development they can observe: all of them are getting older and older, until one by one, they fade out into senility and death. The further development of mainstream western aesthetics follows similar lines. For in a way, most of its basic concepts never freed themselves from their Platonic house of correction. Granted that major prison reforms have been undetway since the high Middle Ages. With Aquinas and others, the harsh penal conditions to which the prisoners had been subjected since Augustine, give way to less punitive treatments - with the paradoxical result of spawning reformers who end up restoring the Augustinian system with a vengeance. During the Renaissance, most priesdy wardens yield their posts to secular guards or philosophers. Hence, the prisoners themselves are allowed to comport themselves in more mundane fashion. But trouble arises due to such premature liberalization. The prison administrators, once united under a common doctrine, begin to quarrel among themselves. The reformers take over part of the gaol, some of them reinstating neosacerdotal regimes in their own, by now separate, wards. This in turn causes the more traditional guards to pull in the reins, and to harshly put down renewed outbreaks of revolt in the quarters still remaining under their jurisdiction. Then something unprecedented happens. A rare new breed of ideologues, while at first paying lip service to the old prison rules, redrafts basic concepts like the beautifu1 and ugly in such radically new ways as to theoretically set them free from the penal institution they have been caught in for so long. Suddenly realizing that the prison rules are based on superstition and fantasy, they threaten to undermine the whole institution. One of them counts painting and sculpture among the voluptuary arts like cosmetics. Another relishes in the beautifully wanton thought of semipornographic poetry, of which he has collected a little library; he suggests that poetry should feed off the poet's sexophysiological impulses as well as impart these to the reader. A third parodies the Platonic aspirations of his contemporaries in a play that proposes a more genuine creativity prompted by sexuality and love. At the very least, these three have recovered the memory, lost for so long, of being imprisoned in a jail at all. But otherwise their labors are largely wasted, and for concrete reasons. The first lacks the incisiveness of penetrating to the roots of why there should have been a prison house of aesthetics in the first place. The second, though fully aware of the cause, writes in such sketchy and unsystematic fashion as to be easily misread. The third speaks through

112

The genealogy of aesthetics

a medium, difficult to fathom and open to misinterpretation, of poetic indirection, parody, and wit. Yet a fourth new ideologue, who appears some fifty years later, changes all that. Never before had philosophy allied itself with as much commonsense psychological insight as his; never had it spoken with such bluntness and, indeed, contempt for most of what preceded it. To give two examples, he defines the good as whatever is the object of someone's desire or appetite, and the beautiful as that which has the appearance of promising such a good. To talk about anything more abstract than that he considers utter foolishness, and pours scorn on those who, rather than think for themselves, hide behind antiquated authorities. His contemporaries, for the most part, vilify, execrate, and condemn him - to all of which he responds with silence. He certainly does not put his objections into print. But that, of course, is precisely what they do when they realize what threat he poses to their vested interests. The older, priestly guard talk about having him burnt. When that fails, they glory in the prospect of seeing him fry in hell, with the smoke from his tormented body rising everlastingly. Sharing the administrative powers of the great jail with the old priestly guard, there arises a whole new school of latter-day Neoplatonists who spend much of their time refuting, or simply reviling him. By 1700, both priests and professors have published over 100 books and pamphlets against him. Meanwhile, his own books are put on the Index librorum prohibitorum, or forbidden altogether. A lone university fellow professing his doctrines is fired from his position, and forced to publicly recant his devilish error. Nevertheless he does not get his job back. A poet avowing the same allegiances is allegedly scared into a recantation on his deathbed, where he is regularly attended by two of the new ideologue's fiercest opponents. Yet everyone reads and discusses him. Even people who detest him, have to admit to the excellence of his prose style, the intransigence of his logic, and the exactness of his method. The more zealously they refute him, the more deeply his arguments get under their skin. Also, a wide range of his discoveries, primarily psychological, can be dissociated from his general philosophy, and even turned against him. Hence arises a whole tribe of newfangled psychological moralists who, learning to use his practical observations, try to beat him at his own game. Where he found nothing but appetite and desire, these double-dealing disciples rediscover all the old ideas. Equipped with their pseudoscience, they visit the old inmates and tell them about their "true" nature. Meanwhile, they merely replace the prisoners' metaphysical shackles by psychological ones, related to the prisoners' "inner selves." The incorporeal essence of beauty, hitherto sanctioned by its links to the

Hobbes and Shaftesbury

113

true and the good, is tied to a so-called inner sense that they either explain in ponderous psychological jargon or simply posit as a mysterious je ne sais quoi. While changing the jargon, they maintain the inmates' penal condition. So clever they are, these soul-searching moralists, that they gradually and almost imperceptibly usurp the rule of the prison from the priestly and philosophical guard. Rather than jump further ahead in this allegorical narrative, I should fill in some of the historical facts. Following Bacon, Montaigne, and Shakespeare, the fourth new ideologue who called the beautiful "that, which by some apparent signs promiseth good," and the ugly "that which promiseth evil") is, of course, Thomas Hobbes. Harmless as they sound, the two definitions carry the full weight of a new philosophy combining Bacon's radical empiricism with a new associationist psychology and a Machiavellian view of human nature. Man is driven by an innate will to power rather than by a God-given orientation toward the good. Reason, far from being able to control our emotions, has become a servant helping to satisfy our appetites; or in Hobbes' gnomic phrasing: "the thoughts are to the desires, as scouts, and spies, to range abroad, and find the way to the things desired.,,2 Good is what appeals to the desires, bad the opposite. To talk about anything more abstract leads into error. "For these words of good, evil, and contemptible, are ever used with relation to the person that useth them: there being nothing simply and absolutely so.,,3 The same is true of the beautiful or ugly. Meanwhile, his new theory of associationism allowed Hobbes to redefine the creative process as well as the imagination, 4 enabling later aestheticians like Erasmus Darwin and Archibald Alison to speak of our sense of the beautiful as a conditioned reflex-like response. Even when compared with the scandal surrounding the publication of Machiavelli's The Prince, the uproar over Hobbes reached extremes probably unequaled in European history. A number of bishops talked about wishing to see him burnt. 5 Robert Sharrock, in a sermon preached in 1673, painted a vivid picture of Hobbes burning in hell, "the smoke of his Torment ascending for ever and ever.,,6 In 1666, the House of Commons cited Hobbes' atheism as a probable "cause" of the great fire and plague of London, ordering that his works be investigated. 7 De Give and Leviathan were put on the Index. 8 As late as 1683, the University of Oxford decreed that both works be prohibited and publicly burnt. 9 In 1669, Daniel Scargill, Fellow of Corpus Christi College, Cambridge, after losing his post the previous year, was forced to disclaim, renounce, detest, and abhor his having openly and vaingloriously professed to being "an Hobbist and an Atheist." 10 Though the king intervened personally on

114

The genealogy of aesthetics

Scargill's behalf, the former Hobbist was not restored to his fellowship. I I

In 1680, the Earl of Rochester, poet, courtier, and "most aggressive libenine of his time,"12 made a similar recantation on his deathbed, where he was regularly visited by two of Hobbes' most vehement opponents, Dr. John Fell and Dr. Thomas Pierce. What had undone him, he confessed, was "that absurd and foolish Philosophy ... propagated by the late Mr. Hobbs.,,/3 The philosopher's influence, both during his lifetime and for almost a century thereafter, was negative, or, at best, indirect. He left no disciples. Yet he managed to force upon those who read, refuted, and vilified him part of his strict logical standards and exact philosophical method. 14 Also, people borrowed his "ideas without acknowledgement, and even used them to attack him."15 Most importantly, Hobbes made his opponents review, clarify, and question ideas they had all too long taken for granted. Though he did not foster a school of followers, Hobbes created one of opponents. The Cambridge Platonists' obsession with Hobbes is a welldocumented story. The school, it goes without saying, arose out of Platonism, but "Hobbism was the means of concentrating its thought and giving direction to it,,,16 writes one historian. "Whether by implication or by direct anack," argues another, "the Cambridge Platonists treated Hobbes as the opponent sine qua non." 17 Yet the philosophers were not the only ones to be obsessed with Hobbes. By 1850, anacking Hobbes in print had become a major industry, with books, sermons, and pamphlets, sometimes over a dozen a year, pouring from the presses both during the philosopher's lifetime and way beyond intO the early decades of the next century. There were at least 50 such items by 1670, and well over 110 by 1700. 18 Since none of these bear significantly on beauty and the arts, they need not concern us here. In attacking Hobbes, even major Cambridge Platonists like Henry More, Ralph Cudworth, and Joseph Glanville were too busy defending their central beliefs (e.g., in absolute ideas, man's free will and basic goodness, the Great Chain of Being, the devil and witchcraft19 ) to pay anention to more ephemeral maners like the nature of the beautiful and of the arts. 20 The elaboration of such a theory to counter Hobbes' was left to a late disciple of the Cambridge Platonists, Anthony Ashley Cooper, the Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713). As his essay on "Wit and Humour" shows, Shaftesbury took much the same stance as his seventeenth-century predecessors in continuing the fight against Hobbes. Against the latter's homo hom;pu' lupw, for instance, he posits man as an innately benevolent creature. But the tone has changed. Where Hobbes' priestly opponents lapsed into invective, or the Platonists drowned in abstruseness, Shaftesbury revives Plato's dialectical banter. A Hobbesian spokesman with his insistence on strict definitions

Hobbes and Shaftesbury

115

is exposed as a harmless eccentric who must not be allowed to talk people "out of their Love for Society, or reason'd out of Humanity and common Sense.,,21 What refutation and invective failed to achieve, ridicule and a fa va sans dire appeal to common opinion might. Nonchalant highhandedness replaces serious debate. It is a method aestheticians of a Platonic persuasion have followed ever since. To reinforce his appeal to the traditional consensus, Shaftesbury added some iconographic plates to the second edition of Characteristics. Prefatory to the essay "Wit and Hwnour," we find a small image showing Orpheus strumming a lyre, a lion asleep at his feet, as well as birds and animals flocking around him. Facing him is an artist depicting an armed warrior astride a dead foe. The message, pitting Shaftesbury's Orpheus spreading peaceful companionship against Hobbes' artist portraying life as a murderous battle, is underscored by a smaller emblem of a Redeemer lamb vis-a-vis a Hobbesian wolf. 22 Yet for all his antagonism against the Hobbesian "Spirit of Massacre,,,23 Shaftesbury clearly wages his own war. It is the familiar Platonic one on the body and nature. Shaftesbury is nothing if not insistent on dissociating beauty from man's "brutish part,,24 and from that "powerful Charm, the Wbrld."25 He disdains to consider the possibility that what we enjoy about beauty may be related to the pleasure of good eating. 26 Unlike the "riotous Mind, captive to Sense," the virtuous one, "of Reason's Culture,,,27 knows that there "is no Principle of Beauty in Body,,,28 or that "the Beautiful, the Fair, the Comely, were never in the Matter.,,29 Much else in Shaftesbury's theorizing is similarly predictable: like his identifying andlor associating the beautiful with the good, true, proportionate, and harmonious;3o or his ranking it on a threefold scale of "Dead Forms," and "Forms which/orm," and the "Supreme and Sovereign Beauty" or "Fountain of all Beauty,,,31 which is so "absconded and deep,,32 that it is inaccessible even to the otherwise privileged senses of sight and hearing. There is nothing so divine, Shaftesbury assures us, "as BEAUTY: which belonging, not to Body, nor having any Principle or Existence but in MIND and REASON, is alone discover'd and acquir'd by this diviner Part.,,33 A new sense of impatience rides roughshod over philosophical minutiae. Clearly, Shaftesbury does not share Plato's or Plotinus' concerns over the arduousness of an anamnesia, mystical conversion, or super-cerebral effort toward attaining absolute beauty. What suffices is an ill-defined "inward EYE,,34 called "Disinterested" on the one hand,35 but identified with an innate moral sense on the other. 36 Even more confusingly, Shaftesbury equates this inner sense with "true Taste,,,37 then charges the latter with the social and racist prejudices of his age. The consequent

116

The genealogy of aesthetics

exclusiveness of the concept is staggering. Naturally it bars the vulgar, 38 while also condemning practically all non-European countries as well as the art they produced. 39 Who, then, are the persons equipped with the proper "inward eye" and true taste? Predictably, the circle of such gentlemen connoisseurs is a peculiarly narrow one. It definitely excludes plain "barbarians" or "anti-virtuosi"40 as perhaps Hobbes, or even John Locke. It generally proscribes more traditional rivals like the professional scholar or the clergy. Shaftesbury handles them with the characteristic superciliousness of a social class patently under attack itself. "The mere Amusements of Gentlemen," so his "Advise to An "Author," "are found more improving than the profound Researches of Pedants.,,41 Or, "to be a Virtuoso (so far as befits a Gentleman) is a higher step towards the becoming a Man ofVirtue and good Sense, than the being what in this Age we caU a Scholar."42 Others barred from the inner core of the true connoisseurs include various proponents of the kind of "super-speculative Philosophy"43 probably associated with his own teachers, the Cambridge Platonists. Such exclusiveness makes one wonder about which possible discipline or method could raise the virtuoso above virtually any traditional competitor and at the same time award him the privilege of polishing the age and refining "the public ear."44 The multiplicity of labels given this "Exercise of Selj-Converse," "selj-discoursing Practice," or "religious Commerce and way of Dialogue" between the self and the soul,45 shows the importance Shaftesbury attached to it. And at least at first sight, his discussion of the method seems intriguing enough. Shaftesbury invokes the Delphic "Recognize Yourself" or the ancient belief in an inner "Daemon, Genius, Angel, or Guardian-Spirit"46 on its behalf. Otherwise, the practice sounds forward-looking, almost modern. Essentially, the solitary "Self-Examiner and thorow-pac'd Dialogist"41 is called upon to divide himself, be two,48 apostrophize his "own Fancys,"49 and transmute the "obscure implicit Language,,50 of the deepest recesses51 of his mind into the "Home-Dialect of SOULOQuy.,,52 The claims made for what will result from this "sovereign remedy and systematic method of soliloquy"53 are even more superlative. After putting himself through the "anticipating Remedy of SOULOQUY,,,54 the soul-searcher" will become "a second Maker" and "just Prometheus under Jove" who, "like that sovereign artist or universal plastic nature," can "imitate the Creator.,,56 However, what such superlative claims boil down to when looked at more closely, is suprisingly cliched. The general psychological framework of a divided self - with the nobler, better half 57 pitted against the lower one, the forces of reason against those of appetite - harks back to the medieval psychomachia or to Plato. As Socrates in Gorgias58 advised his

Hobbes and Shaftesbury

117

interloculors to submit to his doctrine like patients would to a surgeon, so Shaftesbury admonishes his reader "Patient" to willingly subject himself to his "Operation.,,59 More generally, there is the assumption that we have "each of us a Patient in our-self," and that we are properly "our own Subjects of Practice": and that we then became due Practitioners, when by virtue of an intimate Recess we ... discover a certain Duplicity of Soul, and divide our-seJves into tfJJO Partys ... One of these ... wou'd immediately approve himself a venerable Sage; and with an air of Authority erect himself our Counsellor and Governor; whilst the other Party, who had nothing in him besides what was base and servile, wou'd be contented to follow and obey.60

The result of such inquisitorial self-scrutiny, once we look past Shaftesbury's somehow incongruous imagery of the Promethean "second Maker,"61 is equally conventional. Artists refusing to undergo the "Exercise of Sel/-Converse"62 will "design merely after Bodys,"63 whereas those willing to put themselves through this "preparatory Discipline ... of Se/f-Examinalion"64 wil1 "copy from another Life," "study the Graces and Perfections of Minds," and, in short, become "Moral Artist[s)."65 Innovative about the whole process are two things: one, the near total interiorization of traditional aesthetics;66 and two, the contention that such a new, psychological aesthetics is uncoupled from and superior to religion and metaphysics which it was dependent upon and subject to so far. Shaftesbury's rejection of the prior claims of "super-speculative Philosophy"67 is as categorical as of those of religion. Since religion is "for the greatest part ... adapted to the very meanest Capacitys, 'tis not to be expected that a Speculation of this kind shou'd be openly advanc'd"68 by it. Self-Interest is there taken as it is vulgarly conceiv'd ... In the same manner as the celestial Plunomena are in the Sacred Volumes generally treated according to common Imagination, and the then current System of Astronomy and natural Science; so the moral Appearances are in many places preserv'd without Alteration, according to vulgar Prejudice, and the general Conception of Interest and Self Good. 60

While placing his new virtuoso aesthetics on its pedestal of independence and, indeed, supremacy, Shaftesbury also hastens to forestall possible challenges to its barely consolidated hegemony. One such challenge threatened from certain investigators of the human mind who, under the unacknowledged leadership of Hobbes, were "examining the Powers and Principles of [man's] Understanding" like John Locke. 7o For such probing analyses might undo Shaftesbury's effort to salvage man's God-given spiritual propensities toward the beautiful and good from Hobbes' onslaught by absconding them into the murky depth of

118

The genealogy of aesthetics

an unconscious where no one could follow except by going through his "Sovereign Remedy and Gymnastic Method of SOULOQUV.'>71 Systematic explorations of man's understanding, apart from being beside the point, lead to something "worse than mere Ignorance or Idiotism,,,72 in Shaftesbury's opinion. "The most ingenious way of becoming foolish," he remarks snidely, "is by a Sysrem.,,71 A second threat that loomed from science in general, Shaftesbury dismisses in equally high-handed fashion: One wou'd expect it of these PhysitJlogisu and Searchers of Modes and Substances that being so exalted in their Understapdings and inrich}f with Science above other Men, they shou'd be as much above 'em in their Passions and Sentiments ... But if their pretended knowledge of the Machine of this WOrld, and of their own Frame, is able to produce nothing beneficial either to the one or to the other; I know not to what purpose such a Philosophy can serve, except only to shut the door against bener Knowledge, and introduce Impertinence and Conceit with the best Countenance of Authority. 74

It was Shaftesbury's peculiar genius, in sum, that he correcdy read the signs of the times, seized the opportune moment, and salvaged what was left to salvage. Clearly, idealistic philosophy and aesthetics were in dire straits. Its laner-day Cambridge advocates had only proven its indefensibility in trying to answer the arguments of Hobbes and of kindred spirits like Spinoza. Theologians, in turn, had proven helpless in defending their convictions against the new philosophy. Shan of getting lost altogether, then, the old values of the good, true, and beautiful had to be given new guardians. But where would these come from? Shaftesbury once again hit upon the right answer: not from metaphysics or theology, but from the realm of art itself, which so patently stood poised to usurp the role of religion. Dressed up in brand new garments and equipped with fashionable new slogans, the ascetic priest had to be transformed into an aesthetic priest, or into what Shaftesbury called a man of taste, virtuoso, moral artist, or connoisseur gendeman. Shaftesbury even seems to have guessed at what he was doing at a deeper level. Thus he not only calls his "sel/-discoursing Practice" religious, but he also tells us that what it amounts to was a "son of PseudoAscetiks.,,75 Whatever the case, the strategy succeeded. The old prison house of aesthetics was secure again. No wonder Shaftesbury's bizarre, though familiar-sounding rescue action elicited instant, eager applause, which has kept echoing through the correctional facility's halls and corridors ever since. Granted there was the predictable dissent from older guardians like Bishop Berkeley, who deplored Shaftesbury's lack of religious

Hobbes and Shaftesbury

119

steadfasmess. 76 But the relief felt by numerous, socially embattled gentlemen dilettantes was all the greater. Shaftesbury's Characteristics went through eleven editions between 1711 and 1790. 77 In England, his writings left their imprint on a host of poets and fellow aestheticlans like Francis Hutcheson, James Thomson, and Mark Akenside. 78 In a more general way, they affected nearly every writer in the field. 79 Shaftesbury's admirers in France included Le Clerc, Voltaire, and Diderot; in Germany, where his fame became greatest, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Herder, Goethe, Wieland, Kant, and Schiller. A more recent aesthetician, neo-Kantian, and enthusiastic partisan historiographer of the Cambridge Platonists, Ernst Cassirer, calls Shaftesbury "the first great aesthetician that England produced."8o Shaftesbury, in Cassirer's view, laid the "foundations of eighteenth-century aesthetics,,81 by resting it on the twin notions of inward form and "disinterested pleasure,,,s2 the latter allegedly being Shaftesbury's "most important individual contribution to aesthetics."S3 Even more influential, especially in England, was his "man of taste," a concept that had risen to some prominence even before Shaftesbury enshrined it in his esoteric theorizing. Joseph Addison was one of the first to register the new phenomenon. "Of all our favourite Words lately, none has been more in Vogue, nor so long held in Esteem, as that of TASTE," he writes: "A Poem OF TASTE, wrote by a favourite Author, seemed first to bring it into Fashion. Another poet, finding the Success of that Piece, wrote one which he called The Man of Taste, and still brought the Word more into Use."S4 Twentieth-century research has gathered overwhelming evidence to substantiate Addison's claim. "Early in the eighteenth century," observes one scholar, "the rage for virtuosoship had become nearly a mania."S5 And there was plenty more than the arts themselves to keep our self-styled virtuosi busy in trying to keep up to date. Already during Joseph Addison's lifetime (1672-1719), there was a substantial literature, mostly by French authors, to help would-be connoisseurs acquire, enlarge, and refine the proper taste. N. Boileau, J. de la Mesnadiere, and R. Rapin enlightened them on poetics; J. B. Dubos showed them how to critically reflect on poetry vis-a-vis painting; A. Felibien, C. A. du Fresnoy, and A. Bosse taught them about painting, painters, design, and engraving; H. Testelin (the younger) about the practical aspects of painting versus sculpture; F. Blondel, Freart de Chambray, S. Le Clerc, C. E. Briseux, and Claude Perrault about architecture, modem and classical, as well as about Vitruvius' theories. More generally, D. Boubours advised them as to the proper manner de bien penser dans les ouvrages d>espril; Yves-Marie Andre and J. P. Crousaz how to ascertain the beautiful, and P. Nicole how

120

The genealogy of aesthetics

to distinguish between false and true beauty. Following Boileau's 1.onginus translation of 1674, there was an ever-growing number of studies, in both French and English, to usher the more enterprising connoisseurs into the awesome new realm of the sublime. 86 The mounting flood of kindred literature as we approach the nineteenth century adds several new emphases such as an unprecedented concern with genius (e.g., w. Duff), with the picturesque (e.g., William Gilpin, Sir Uvedale Price), with the affinities between music and the sister arts (e.g., Daniel Webb, Anselm Bayly), and with the art of gardening (e.g., George Mason, William Chambers). It also provides do-it-yourself-type manuals like M. Pilkington's Gentleman's and Connoisseur's Dictionary of Painters, Benjamin Ralph's Student's Guide to Expression in Historical Paintings, or Seran de la Tour's L'art de sentir et de juger en matiere de gout. At the same time, theoreticians increasingly emphasized the theoretical and philosophical aspects of their subject matter. Not content with just writing about taste (e.g., J. Armstrong, J. Baillie, A. Gerard, A. Thomson) or the beautiful (e.g., I. H. Brown, Sir Uvedale Price), Richard Payne Knight pursues "An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste" (1805), Archibald Alison probes into the "Nature and Principles of Taste" (1790), Francis Hutcheson conducts "An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and VirNe"(1725), and Edmund Burke "A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful" (1757). The dilettante aesthetician is donning the robes of the professional philosopher. Charles Batteux presents us with Les beaux artS reduit a un meme principe (1746), Alexander Baumgarten with his Aesthetica - the first major work of its kind to carry the word in its tide - and J. G. Sulzer with his AUgemeine Theone der SchOnen Kiinste. The number of similarly comprehensive "aesthetics" since then has been legion, and, as we know, continues to this day. One of the few efforts to stem this steadily mounting flood came from a man who caused an uproar only second to that which Machiavelli had stirred up in the sixteenth century and Hobbes in the seventeenth. Much like The Prince and Leviathan, The Fable of the Bees, writes Phillip Harth, "stimulated men to re-examine their ways of thought in order to justify their exasperation." For John Brown .. , Hobbes and Mandeville were "Detested Names!" ... John Wesley, reading The Fable of the Bees for the first time, wrote in his journal: "Till now I imagined there had never been in the world such a book as the works of Machiavel. But de Mandeville goes far beyond it." To an anonymous eighteenthcentury poet, indeed, his contemporary was Anti-Christ: "And, if GOD-MAN Vice to abolish came, I Who Vice commands, MAN-DEVil. be his Name. 87

9

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

Aeschetica The states in which we bestow a radiance and plenitude [Verkliirung und FiUJe J on things as well as wax poetical about them until they reecho with our plenitude and joi4 de vivre [LebenslustJ, are the sexual drive, intoxication, feasting, spring, victory over a foe, derision, the act of bravado, cruelty, the ecstasy of the religious sentiment. Above all, three elements: the sexual drive, intoxication, cruelty, all forming part of humankind's oldest festive juy; all, in the same way, predominant in the original "artist." Conversely, when we encounter things which display this radiance and plenitude, then the animal in us [das animalische Dasei"J responds by being aroused in the sphere that houses all these feelings of joy. A blend of these very subtle shades of animal delights and appetencies is the aeslhetic disposilion [der aesthecische Zusland 1. xn. 3931 The Will f() Power. 801

The uproar over The Fable of the Bees brought few results for aesthetics, and for a familiar reason. Like Montaigne, Bacon and Hobbes, Mandeville had only a secondary interest in art. Also, he came to it late in life. Yet after reading Shaftesbury's writings, aesthetic concerns became a minor obsession to him. "This Noble Writer," he tells us in "A Search into the Nature of Society," Fancies, that as Man is I made for Society ... looks upon Virtue and Vice as permanent Realities that must ever be the same in all Count I ries and all Ages, and imagines that a Man of sound Understanding, by following the Rules of good Sense, may ... find out that Pulchrum & HoneSlum both in Morality and the Works of Art and Nature. I

The critique of Shaftesbury stands at the center of the 1723 "Search" and runs like a red thread through his final two works, The Fable ofthe Bees. Part II (1729) and An Enquiry into the Origin ofHonour and the Usefulness of Christianity in WEIr (1732). Both are extensive dialogues between Horatio, an admirer of Shaftesbury, and Cleomenes, who stands for Mandeville. 2 Mandeville's main strategy is to turn the table on his opponent. By satirical inversion, Shaftesbury's contention "that no Ridicule can be fasteo'd 121

122

The genealogy of aesthetics

upon what is really great and good,") is proven on the noble author's· "polite manner ofWriting,,,5 "lovely System,"6 and lofty subjects. 7 The barrage never stops. Shaftesbury's style is so very engaging, his language so polite, his reasoning so strong!S He has "a most charitable Opinion of his Species, and extoll[s] the Dignity of it in an extraordinary manner.,,9 How charming his "Portrait of a complete Gentleman!" How ravishing "the Figure which a Person of great Birth and Fortune, to whom Nature has been no Niggard ... when he understands the World, and is thoroughly well bred!,,10 What Mandeville is after, of course, is a caricature of that gentleman and of Shaftesbury himself. Much as the latter's writings are enjoyed by everyone, he remarks snidely, their benefits will not become fully apparent "before that Publick Spirit, which he recommended, comes down to the meanest Tradesmen." I I What our virtuosi gentlemen mean when they intone that "very fashionable" word "Virtue," in fact, is nothing but their own "great Veneration for whatever is courtly or sublime, and [their) equal Aversion to everything, that is vulgar or unbecoming."J2 More generally speaking, there are no "Instances of Benevolence, Humanity, or other Social Virtue, that I Lord Shaftesbury has hinted at, but a Man of good Sense and Knowledge may learn to practice ... from no better Principle than Vain-glory." 13 To put it bluntly, Shaftesbury's "lovely system"J· is "diametrically opposite,,15 to his. There could not be two of them more contrary to each other "than his Lordship's"16 and his own. Translated into aesthetics and related issues, Shaftesbury's search for "this Pulchrum & Honestum" is "not much better than a Wild-GooseChace.,,17 To prove his point, Mandeville uses arguments familiar from Montaigne, Hobbes, Bayle, and others. 18 "Which is the best Religion?" Ask in Rome, Constantinople, and Peking and you will get three different answers, each "equally positive and peremptory.,,19 How about sexual mores? "Plurality of Wives is odious among Christians ... But Polygamy is not shocking to a Mahometan.,,2o The same about pulchrum. "The many ways of laying out a Garden Judiciously," for instance, "are almost Innumerable, and what is called Beautiful in them varies according to the different Tastes of Nations and Ages.,,21 More specifically, Mandeville ridicules Shaftesbury's advocacy of an art that emphasizes "human actions in ... superior," "heroic and sublime" dimensions. 22 No doubt he preferred the popular theater a la John Gay to the Italian opera of an Alessandro Scarlatti, or the genre paintings by Brouwer and Ostade to the neoclassical works by Poussin and Lorrain. Two unidentified paintings of the Nativity, one by a Dutch artist, the other by a neoclassical one, serve him as examples. The former depicts a country-inn scenario, dwelling on realistic details like the head of an

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

123

ox, more cattle, a manger, rack, straw, and hay, the latter stresses the opposite: ass and ox are half hidden in the darkness of its artfully mysterious chiaroscuro; the stable is changed into a magnificent palace of impeccably symmetrical design with finely rounded Corinthian columns and perspectival vistas. To compound the irony, Mandeville has his spokesman Cleomenes assume the role of a Shaftesburyan virtuoso like Horatio, while making Fulvia, who openly admits to her total lack of virtuososbip, speak for the author. Like Shakespeare, the lady favors an art so much like nature it seems made by nature, or, as she puts it, an art that deceives her eyes to the point where she can see "the Things in reality which the Painter had endeavour'd to represent.,,23 In that sense, the Dutchman's "Nativity" is her preferred choice: "sure nothing in the World can be more like Nature.,,24 But the twO male connoisseurs are simply outraged: Like Nature! So much the worse: Indeed, Cousin, it is easily seen that you have no Skill in Painting. It is not Nature, but agreeable Nature, la beOe Nature, that is to be represented; all Tbinp that are abject, low, pitiful and mean, are carefully to be avoided, and kept out of Sight; because to Men of the true Taste they are as offensive as Things that are shocking, and really nasty.25

Fulvia keeps protesting. By her interlocutors' standards, the Nativity should not be painted at all. 26 It outrages her common sense to find that an artist, just because he has studied architecture, should transform a stable into a Roman emperor's banqueting hall. 27 Is not art supposed to be an imitation of nature?28 But artists, as Aristotle has taught our connoisseurs, should imitate things, not as they are, but as they ought to be. And following Shaftesbury, they have to pursue a further task, which though incomprehensible to the vulgar, would eventually refine the taste of everyone. "These Things may seem strange to you, Madam, but they are of immense Use to the Publick: The higher we can carry the ExceUency of our Species, the more those beautiful Images will fill Noble Minds I with worthy and suitable Ideas of their own Dignity."29 But Fulvia remains unconvinced. Does good sense have any share in the judgments which her so-called "Men of true Taste form about Pictures"~o An outraged Horatio calls her to order, and she apologizes. "I beg pardon, Sir, if I have offended."3! But instantly, she is at it again. An Augean stable, "even before Hercules had c1ean'd it," she tells the men, "would be less shocking to me than those fluted Pillars.,,32 Nobody who affronts her understanding will please her eyes. Put on the defensive, her virtuosi interlocutors increasingly resort to personal insult. Fulvia has no understanding of painting. 33 She has

124

The genealogy of aesthetics

low taste. 34 She is advised to seek instruction from a text like Richard Graham's The Art of Painting "above in the Library.,,3s One more time, Horatio calls her to order for describing as ridiculous what he finds elevating. Ridiculous Madam! for Heaven's sakeI beg pardon, Sir, for the Expression. 16

HORATIO: FULVIA:

Fulvia finally makes her escape, alleging, tongue in cheek, that she has convinced herself of her low taste and that she will seek refuge with her own kind, while Horatio plays his role of the perfectly bred gentleman to the bitter end. I am convinced of the Narrowness of my own Understanding, and am going to visit some Persons, with whom I shall be more upon the Level. HORATIO: You'll give me leave to wait upon you to your Coach, Madam. 37

FULVIA:

Though the farce is over, Mandeville's probing into the role of the Shaftesburyan virtuoso has only just begun. The representative of a dying social class trying to impose his equally obsolete views on the rest of the world, the connoisseur gentleman is a new species of ascetic priest who, drawing on time-honored traditions, perverts everything that is lifeaffirming and joyful. He is a parasitical drone unfit for "Labour and Assiduity," yet perfectly suited to "the stupid Enjoyments of a Monastick Life."38 Mandeville's extended portrait of this "indolent Man," especially as drawn up against his counterpart, the worldly minded, voluptuous, and ambitious "Man of Action,"39 has touches foreshadowing Nietzsche's of the ascetic priest. Basically, the indolent man is repressed, introverted, conceited, and vindictive. He "turns his View inward upon himself; and there looking on every Thing with great Indulgence, admires and takes delight in his own Parts, whether natural or acquired: hence he is easily induced to despise all others ... especially the Powerful and Wealthy."40 His values are like those of someone who has been "kept under.,,41 Yet if by chance he should be empowered to command others, his pride will "have a sort of Revenge mix'd with that Passion, which makes it often very mischievous."42 By contrast, the man of action gives a free rein to his passions and ambitions. Hence he has little cause for perverting his emotions or for exteriorizing the resultant rancor by taking indirect revenge on his fellow human beings, the world in general, or even himself. "To see a Man of a very good Estate, in Health and Strength of Body and Mind, one that has no reason to complain of the World or Fortune, actually despise both, and embrace a voluntary Poverty for a laudable Purpose, is a great Rarity.,,43

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

125

There is more than the above to make one want to add Nietzsche to the list of those like David Hume, Adam Smith, Jeremy Bentham, even Charles Darwin, Max Weber, and Lord Keynes whose ideas Mandeville is said to have foreshadowed by his own. 44 Thus we find him probing into an original transvaluation of values in which morality, metaphysics, and aesthetics have been imprisoned ever since Plato. Though fragmentary and incomplete, such speculations represent the first major endeavor of its kind since Plato himself and, with the possible exception of Marx and Max Stirner, remain the main ones until Nietzsche. Looking back to Plato's Gorgias, it seems as if Mandeville resumes the argument where Callicles left off. The laner, we remember, described Socrates' inversion of values as a kind of slave revolt in morals: 4'i rancor and resentment, born from repression, cause the weak to claim "that intemperance (akolasia) is shameful." "And because they themselves are unable to procure satisfaction for their pleasures, they are led by their own cowardice to praise temperance and justice."46 With Mandeville, this inversion is about to be reversed. What was transvaluated by Plato, is beginning to be retransvaluated. Mandeville's early forays in this direction still operate within Plato's physis-nomos dichotomy. On the one hand, there is the natural "sovereignty and advantage of the stronger over the weaker,,,47 on the other, the rule of law whereby the weak, according to Callicles, bestow praise and blame "for themselves and their own advantage" so as to prevent the stronger "from gaining the advantage over them.,,48 In his 1714 "Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue," Mandeville traces this genealogy of morals further back than either Socrates or Callicles in Gorgias. Natural man, in his view, displayed few social propensities beyond those of sating his natural instincts with the partner of his choice. Enslaved by lust and wholly incapable of restraint, he "yielded without Resistance to every gross desire, and made no use of [his] Rational Faculties but to heighten [his] Sensual Pleasure.,,49 Early attempts to harness this savage to the interests of his stronger peers bore no results. For primitive man, "being an extraordinary selfish and headstrong, as well as cunning Animal," it was "impossible by Force alone to make him tractable.',5o Hence "Lawgivers and wise Men,,51 thought of a different course of action. Observing the strengths and frailties of their lesser brethren, they noticed that "none were either so savage as not to be charm'd with Praise, or so despicable as patiently to bear Contempt.,,52 The answer, then, was to flatter these gullible creatures into believing that self-denial (or sophrosyne) was most worthy of praise, and self-indulgence (or akolasia) most worthy of contempt. An astute observer of human nature, Mandeville had noted the force of flanery and deceit when applied to children. Thus, an awkward young girl

126

The genealogy of aesthetics

will, with a bit of clever coaxing, be made to perform graceful curtseys, or a mischievous boy caused to act like a captain, lord mayor, or king, to the point where he'll strain "all his Faculties to appear what his shallow Noddle imagines he is believ'd to be.,,53 Much in the same manner, according to the early Mandeville, "Savage Man was broke" by "the skilful Management of wary Politicians,,:54 Having by this artful way of Flanery insinuated themselves into the Hearts of Men, they began to instruct them in the Notions of Honour and Shame; representing the one as the worst of all Evils, and the other as the highest Good to which Mortals could aspire: Which being done, they laid before them how unbecoming it was I the Dignity of such sublime Creatures to be solicitous about gratifying those Appetites, which they had in common with Brutes. 55

Judged by Nietzschean standards, Mandeville's genealogy of morals misses out on some major steps, such as the division of original humanity into masters and slaves, the oppression of the latter giving birth to resentment, and resentment breeding an interior transvaluation of values which is finally exteriorized in a general slave revolt in morals. Meanwhile, there is enough to suggest that the later Mandeville was pondering some of these issues. Thus, he draws a distinction, pointing to Nietzsche's masterslave dichotomy, between the powerful, outgoing man of action, and his indolent, reactive, vindictive counterpart. Or he sketches his "Caricarura" of the gentleman virtuoso, a Nietzschean ascetic priest turned aesthetic priest to meet the demands of the age's increasing secularization. More importantly, Mandeville finally breaks with the traditional physisnomos dichotomy which, to invoke F. A. Hayek's metaphor, had held similar theorizing captive as in a prison since Greek antiquity. 56 Never one to endorse the notion of a social contract instituted by legendary legislators as in Machiavelli and Hobbes,57 Mandeville, late in life, also abandoned his own earlier variant of this simplistic narrative whereby wily politicians and "Sagacious Moralists,,58 had flattered the common rabble into stifling their appetites and embracing values totally at odds with their instinctive interests. Far from being attributable to the designs laid out by certain legislators, social progress is the result of collective hit-and-miss efforts by the whole of society as it is gathering hard-won experiences over many generations. It is a process of stunning advances and unexpected, devastating reversals rather than the neat four-link chain of nomadic, pastoral, agricultural, and commercial civilization familiar from related eighteenth-cenrury theorizers like Turgot, Ferguson, Adam Smith, and others. 59 Mandeville begins his genealogy at point zero. Primitive man had neither a priori ideas, language, social instinct, nor a sense of good and evil.

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

127

Earliest acculturalization was accomplished by the family or clan, with members of the same unit protecting each other from wild beasts. 6o Even such simple bonding, however, gave birth to complex emotions, which Mandeville dissects with psychoanalytic astuteness. The primal father, in punishing his children, is torn between anger and pity, while the recipients of his chastisements respond with both fear and love, two passions which "together with the Esteem, which we naturally have for every thing that far excels us," will bring forth "that Compound, which we call Reverence.,,61 Mandeville strikes an equally Freudian note in elaborating how primitive man, after outgrowing an early animalistic phase, projects his original ambivalence toward the primal father on God the father. 62 We reach a second stage in Mandeville's new genealogical narrative once primitive man has taken care of his immediate needs as well as secured himself against his animal foes. For now his natural self-love has had time to blossom into a "Desire for Superiority,"63 "Instinct of Sovereignty,"64 and "Desire for Dominion,,65 over his fellow human beings. In the ensuing struggles, the stronger, both in body and mind, will prevail over the weaker and subject them to basic forms of legislation, 66 a rudimentary division oflabor,67 and the fundamental norms ofa morality based on self-restraint. 68 The evolution of language, which Mandeville explores in similarly genealogical fashion, plays the role of a major catalyst in the consolidation of this social order. Originally, primitive man communicated by "dumb signs,,,69 gestures, and nonverbal sounds, even though at this earliest stage, he excelled over the animals by the diversity of such prelinguistic skills. Language as such evolved much later, and, as all other arts, crafts, and sciences, by fits and starts, "slow degrees," and over a great "length of time.,,70 What completed this process of slow-motion acculturalization was the "Invention ofLetters,'o7l itself a major stepping stone toward the further enlargement of language. Mandeville nowhere worked out in any detail the changes and/or inversions which man's original valuations, thus made articulate and recorded in language, underwent from stage one to two. But his comments on the Latin word virtus in An Enquiry into the Origin of Honour, published the year before his death, suggests that he was groping toward such a general theory. His method once again foreshadows Nietzsche's similar etymological speculations. 72 To the Mandeville of 1723, we recall, the "very fashionable word" "virtue,"73 as used by Shaftesbury, had long turned into a "vast Inlet to Hyp0cr1Sy.,,74 The claim that virtue was an innate human propensity easily activated by reason, common sense, and good breeding is a blatant, though largely unconscious pretense behind which gendemen

128

The genealogy of aesthetics

virtuosi could indulge their part indolent, part rancorous, part vindictive temperaments. 75 Now, exactly ten years later, we find Mandeville wonder what virtus may have stood for when primitive man first encoded that certain sense of himself in the new word. Was it coined during those "Struggles for Superiority,,76 characterizing stage two in the genealogy of morals? Mandeville finds an answer in the original meaning of virtus and of the Greek areti, which is derived from af1Tl~, the god of war, and signifies martial virtue. "The same Word in Latin . .. comes from Vir,'t77 and hence means fonitude and manliness. Virtus, Mandeville speculates, originally would have denoted an animal-like quality predating later distinctions between good and bad, good and evil. Hence, there is reason to assume, he writes, that, at First, Nothing was meant by Virtus, but Daring and Intrepidity ... else it could never have been made to signify Savageness, and brutish Courage; as Tacitus, in the Fourth Book of his History, makes use of it manifestly in that Sense. Even Wild Beasts, says he, if you keep them shut up, will lose their Fierceness. Etiam lera animalia, si clausa reneas, vinuris obliviscuntur. 78

Mandeville could have noted similar changes regarding honestum, which originally meant "rich," or concerning pulchrum, originally signifying "beautiful" as well as "strong" and "powerful." Or he might have pointed out that fortis, meaning "strong in body and mind," was also used regarding beautiful women. Even beUus, which gradually replaced pulchrum in denoting the beautiful per se, and which thus entered French and English, carried similar connotations as a popular diminutive of bonus (a connection already recognized by Priscian), meaning "good" as well as "courageous."79 That he did not go into such detail is probably because what is easily accomplished by consulting an etymological dictionary today, was a major feat of erudition then. Virtus, the one instance he explored in detail, was enough to prove that his method of dismantling or, to use his own term, "exploding"80 contemporary concepts like "beauty," "virtue" or "love," automatically pointed to earlier significations which had been lost, changed, or inverted in a general transvaluation of values. "Love," and more specifically "Platonic Love," serves him as another example. The method is the same as the one he used with "virtue." "Platonick Lovers," like indolent gentlemen virtuosi, "are commonly the pale-face weakly People of cold and phlegmatick Constitutions in either Sex.,,81 By contrast, "the hale and robust of bilious Temperament and a sanguine Complexion never entertain any love so Spiritual as to Exclude all Thoughts and Wishes that relate to the Body."82 "Love" in general "is not a Genuine, but an Adulterated Appetite, or rather a Compound ... of several contradictory Passions blended in one.,,83 The

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

129

more it is sublimated and divorced from "all Thoughts of Sensuality, the more spurious it is, and the more it degenerates from its honest Original and primitive Simplicity.,,84 This process goes back to the times when primitive man was "broken" by being flattered into believing that to sate one's sexual appetite was evil, but that to restrain it was good. Or that sex was revolting, but that its virtuous counterpart "love" was noble. It is the familiar Mandevillean story, only that sexuality, given its far-reaching social implications, required harsher and more vigilant restraints than aU other "vices." Hence, "the very Name of the Appetite, tho' the most necessary for the Continuance of Mankind, is become odious, and the proper Epithets commonly join'd to Lust are Filthy and Abominable."s5 Meanwhile, Mandeville leaves no doubt as to what should be done regarding such transvaluations. Concepts thus affected, like "virtue," "love," and "beauty," ought to be extricated from the traditions in which they are stuck and rerooted in their original meanings. What else can one do once it is recognized that "love," for instance, is a mere "product of Nature warp'd by Custom and Education"86 with often irrational and nefarious results? Oh! the mighty Prize we have in view for all our Self-denial! can any Man be so serious as to abstain from Laughter, when he considers that for so much deceit and insin- I eerity practis'd upon our selves as well as others, we have no other Recompense than the vain Satisfaction of making our Species appear more exalted ... than it really is. 87

But none of Mandeville's contemporaries seemed ready for these Nietzschean endeavors. Or if any such persons existed, they did not make themselves known in print. With Mandeville either vilified or ignored instead, the century's new type of aesthetic priest ruled without major upsets until the appearance of Burke's Enquiry into ... the Sublime and Beautiful of 1757. To suit his new ideology, the charges had been successfully reconditioned as well as given tasks to keep them busy. There was something for everyone. Where Shaftesbury had proposed that they search for the beautiful via a forbiddingly arcane mode of "religious Commerce and ... Dialogue between Them and their Soul,,,88 his follower Hutcheson talked about a less taxing route toward the same goal. All one had to do was activate a special inner sense. Yet those who tried soon found out that the connoisseur skills required for that effort were as far out of their reach as Shaftesbury's "Pseudo-Ascetiks."89 However, there were always alternatives. The association of ideas, discovered by Hobbes, named by Locke, and carried into aesthetics by Dennis, Addison, Hutcheson, and others,90 offered possibilities of assembling the

130

The genealogy of aesthetics

beautiful like a puzzle ruled by causality, resemblance, or contiguity, and pieced together through introspective reminiscence. For all such seemingly secularizing tendencies, some of the older, harsher rules were enforced with unabated rigor. Whether perceived by an inner sense or filtered through an unconscious sieve of associative memories, the beautiful had to be enjoyed in strictly disinterested, spiritual fashion. Generous as they were in equipping their charges with ever newer internal senses, guardians, as much as ever, limited the use of their inmates' natural senses; the more liberal-minded, now as ever, allowing for both sight and hearing, the odd exception like Dugald Stewart favoring sight alone. 91 In any case, to talk of beauty as a response to something smelt, tasted, or touched, let alone sexually arousing, was out of the question. The least attempt to bridge "the chasm" dividing sight and hearing from "the lower-senses of feeling, smell, and taste," was showered with ridicule and contempt. Coleridge's "Principles of Genial Criticism," in the poet's view the best critical piece he had ever written, echoes that eighteenth-century choir of supercilious chauvinism and disgust that goes back to Shaftesbury and beyond. That the Greenlander prefers train oil to olive oil, and even to wine [writes Coleridge], we explain at once by our knowledge of the climate and productions to which he has been habituated. Were the man as enlightened as Plato, his palate would still find that most agreeable to which it had been most accustomed. But when the Iroquois Sachem, after having been led to the most perfect specimens of architecture in Paris, said that he saw nothing so beautiful as the cook's shops, we attribute this without hesitation to savagery of intellect, and infer with certainty that the sense of the beautiful was either altogether dormant in his mind, or at best very imperfect. 92

Generally, there was no need for the old-fashioned penal measures to jolt erring charges out of possible deviations. These, after all, were mental symptoms (easily cured by the appropriate psychological therapies), rather than religious heresies. In short, inmates of the remodeled prison house of aesthetics increasingly came to resemble robots without smell, taste, touch, and sexual instincts, but equipped with interchangeable intellectual mechanisms as well as geared toward a widening spectrum of targets like the beautiful, sublime, and picturesque, with their continuously multiplying and changing subdivisions. The more controversy concerning these, the better for keeping would-be rebels busy with the games of feigned dissent - that is as long as the guardians were quick to ferret out possibly disruptive deviances, and sufficiently adept in terminological jugglery to subsume these under the basic old labels. Such a danger arose when Addison first isolated the sublime from the beautiful. 93 Naturally, an undue fascination with this turbulent and

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

131

unpredictable new category might easily break down the barriers which a long process of domestication had erected around aesthetics. But guardians quickly closed the breach, with the odd, but harmless freethinker pondering yet one more seeming concession to the rabble: perhaps one could allow at least a fraction of lower-sense perception in through the back door of association, that is, on the well-established condition that the resultant conglomerate be unerringly geared toward the spiritual. According to W. J. Hipple (author of a classic study of The Beautiful, the Sublime, and the Picturesque), eighteenth-century aestheticians to a man "were agreed that the original objects of intellectual tasteaesthetic objects - are visual or audible.,,94 To find an otherwise intransigent empiricist and sceptic like David Hume bow to this consensus argues forcefully for its overwhelming and blinding force. Surely, a man who had gone as far as to dismande the claims made for God-given morality, the substantiality of the ego, the law of causality, or even the principle of numerical identity, would make one expect the very opposite. And Hume's Treatise of Human Nature, published by the 29-year-old, indeed strikes such an unmistakably antiPlatonic, Hobbesian note. "Pleasure and pain," it says, "are not only necessary attendants of beauty and deformity, but constitute their very essence.,,95 But Hume's tone changed radically by the time he published his major contribution to aesthetic theory, an essay auspiciously entided "Of the Standard of Taste." In principle, he still makes sure to disavow any belief in beauty as an immutable given, existing as a transcendent entity. "Beauty," as Hume puts it, "is no quality in things themselves: it exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty ... To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an inquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter.,,96 Yet that much said, Hume proceeds to prove the opposite, or at least he uses essentialist terms which beg questions at every turn. What is "perfect" or "universal beauty,,?97 How can we establish "the general rules of beauty" that would allow us to distinguish different kinds of beauty and separate the "superior" from the "most frivolous" ones?98 Which are the true, decisive, and universal standards of taste whereby the men of sense, reflection, learning, and experience in the arts will enlighten their less accomplished fellow human beings?99 Hume's implied answers skirt any direct commitment to essentialist principles. They also avoid traditional equations of the beautiful with the good and true, as disputed by him elsewhere. 100 Yet inversely, they equally omit any mention of his prior, exclusive identification of beauty with pleasure and of deformity with pain. Instead, Hume steers an

132

The genealogy of aesthetics

altogether more mainstream course. The highest and most excellent kind of beauty relates to "design and reasoning"IOI while appealing to the "finer emotion of the mind.,,102 The only certain way to appreciate it is via "a perfect serenity of mind," 103 which more than one critic has compared with disinterested pleasure. 104 The only person capable of ascertaining perfect beauty is the gendeman virtuoso whose extensive portrait would have done Shaftesbury proud. Though a rare specimen indeed, he is "easily to be distinguished in society, by the soundness of [his] understanding and the superiority of [his] faculties.,,105 Being "endowed with good sense and a delicate imagination," he generously initiates those with "but a faint and dubious perception ofbeauty,,106 into realms inaccessible to them otherwise. Yet the gendeman connoisseur also has more regulatory tasks. Though disinterested and "free from all prejudice," 107 guardians of the "true and decisive standard,,108 oftaste to be embraced by all, ought to reprimand and castigate deviations wherever called for, ferret out the perverted, unsavory, and plain unhealthy,109 as well as draw attention to, for instance, "all the absurdities of the pagan systems of theology" or the frequent "want of humanity and of decency" in, say, Homer and Greek tragedy."0 For "where a man is confident of the rectitude of that moral standard, by which he judges, he is justly jealous of it, and will not pervert the sentiments of his heart for a moment, its complaisance to any writer whatsoever." III Though published in the same year (1757) as "Of the Standard of Taste," Burke's Enquiry was all but complete by 1753,112 when the author was a mere twenty-four and, worse, chasing a woman. 11 3 Hence, the "crude confusion of the aesthetic and non-aesthetic" which, according to the Enquiry's 1958 editor J. T. Boulton, obscures Burke's analysis of beauty.114 Burke, to Boulton, "may have been swayed by the type of beauty he saw in Jane Nugent, afterwards his wife." 11 5 The complaint was an instant and frequendy repeated one even though Burke's critics then must have been unfamiliar with his courtship of Ms. Nugent. One of the first to imply it was Germany's Moses Mendelssohn, whose extensive 1758 review of the Enquiry was duly read by Kant. 116 In limiting beauty to "some merely sensible quality," Mendelssohn writes, Burke urges us to focus on the Venus of Medici, a sculptural representation of the love goddess notorious for its erotic appeal ("er verweist seine Leser auf die fleiBige Betrachtung der mediceischen Venus"). I 17 An anonymous "Gendeman [F. Plumer] writing a Letter ... to his Nephew at Oxford" (1772), mocked Burke's "Taste for Women."IIS August Wilhelm Schlegel quipped that the beautiful, in Burke's estimation, was a "tolerably pretty strumpet," and the sublime "a grenadier

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

133

with a big moustache." 119 In Dugald Stewart's view, the "idea offemale beauty was evidently uppermost in Mr. Burke's mind when he wrote his book," thereby producing a doctrine "more erroneous in itself, and more feebly supported,,120 than any he could remember. Contrary to Burke, who had allowed sex to warp his mind, Stewart urges a process whereby one arrives at the idea of "beaury in general" by gathering instances "from objects intended to produce their effect on the eye alone.,,121 Today's reader will likely be surprised at how little outraged Burke's contemporaries so much. "Observe that part of a beautiful woman where she is perhaps the most beautiful, about the neck and breasts, the smoothness; the softness; the easy and insensible swell; . .. the deceitful maze, through which the unsteady eye slides giddily, without knowing where to fix, or whither it is carried.,,122 Of course, Burke's Enquiry had more to outrage eighteenth- or even twentieth-century critics than its description of women's breasts, like its complete "disregard for established aesthetic presuppositions .. 123 (of which more later) or, perhaps worse, its de facto rooting of man's original notion of the beautiful in sexuality. As such, beauty is a quality, or several of them, by which bodies "cause love, or some passion similar to it."124 Though rudimentary in a genealogical sense, and naive anthropologically, the general bias of Burke's theorizing here is indisputable. Burke divides the "passions" into those stemming from selfpreservation, the realm of the sublime, and those originating from social, and ultimately sexual instincts, the domain of the beautiful. The first is characterized by "pain and danger," the second by "gratifications and pleasures." What is more, "the pleasure most directly belonging to this purpose," as Burke puts it euphemistically, "is of a lively character, rapturous and violent, and confessedly the highest pleasure of sense." 125 In evolving his primordial concept of beauty from sexually induced pleasure, Burke, as if anticipating his readers' outrage, sharply separates humans from animals. Whereas brutes sate their sexual appetites in instinctually indiscriminate fashion, human beings, in seeking to gratify the same impulse, are guided to the partner of their choice by the latter's special appeal, called beauty. In short, "beauty" is a by-product of specifically human sexuality, yet sexuality nonetheless. Only at a later point is the sexually engendered concept of beauty projected on to other objects of a broadly social and gratifying nature: "The object therefore of this mixed passion which we call love, is the beauty of the sex."126 Burke nowhere explains how that originally sexual, then more generally social delight in beauty comes to encompass the pleasure afforded by the arts. Altogether, he limits himself to a discussion of poetry. However, in doing so, his predictable emphasis is on the way in which poets should

134

The genealogy of aesthetics

recreate what they felt, and allow readers to relive such experiences. Burke's sketch of the most beautiful part of women, that is, "about the neck and breasts,,,127 is a perfect instance of the techniques he recommended for this purpose: not so much descriptive precision and detail, as "strong expression" and forceful innuendo in communicating what "is felt." 128 Apart from committing the aesthetician's sin of sins of associating the beautiful with the sexual, Burke made the more tactical error of contradicting almost every fellow worker in the field. Addison, Joseph Spence, and others had linked beauty with "Symmetry and Proportion of Parts,,;129 Burke ridiculed Vitruvean man, the basis for much such speculation, as involving a strained, unnatural, and unbecoming posture.1 30 Hogarth, Gerard, and others had associated beauty with fitness and utility; Burke countered that, by that token, "the wedge-like snout of a swine, with its tough cartilage at the end, the little sunk eyes, and the whole make of the head, so well adapted to its office of digging, and rooting, would be extremely beautiful." 131 Shaftesbury, Spence, and Hutcheson had revived the Platonic identification of the beautiful with the true and good; Burke argued that such equations had given "rise to an infinite deal of whimsical theory" that "merely confounded our ideas ofbeauty.,,132 Mendelssohn summed up his age's overwhelming distaste for such iconoclasm. Burke was least profound philosophically in discussing proportion, fitness, perfection, and virtue, he argued, pleading that it would go beyond his scope as a reviewer to refute Burke's argument formally. In any case, that task was left to Immanuel Kant, whose early knowledge of the Enquiry seems to have come from Mendelssohn's review. ll3 No wonder that Burke's aesthetics, with few exceptions, found neither sympathizers nor followers. Dr. Johnson, who kept his distance from the pettifogging squabbles of the aestheticians, praised the Enquiry as "an example of true criticism.,,134 Germany's Lessing may stand for many others who borrowed from the treatise without acknowledging their indebtedness. Thus his Laocoon, in disapproving of Ariosto's description of a beautiful woman according to her body's alleged proportionality, urges the kind of Burkean suggestiveness that makes readers "feel something of the soft excitement of the blood which accompanies the actual sight of beauty." 135 Otherwise, Lessing found that Burke's principles "are not worth much," 136 or he echoed Mendelssohn's sense that Burke, at best, had collected "all the materials for a good system,"137 the two of them unwittingly pointing toward Kant's Critique ofJudgment. The British consensus too was next to unanimous. Richard Payne Knight, himself the author of An Analytical Inquiry into the Principles of Taste, reports that he had hardly met with any man of learning, by

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

135

whom the philosophy of Burke's treatise "was not as much despised and ridiculed, as the brilliancy and animation of its style were applauded and admired."lls Knight points to one of two exceptions, Uvedale Price, author of several works on the picturesque, who convinced himself "of the general truth and accuracy of Mr. Burke's system," and made it "the foundation of [his] own.,,139 The other was the grandfather of Charles Darwin. Erasmus Darwin's accomplishments, as acknowledged both then and now, are staggering. To Coleridge, he was the most literary, originalminded, philosophically inventive, and polyhistorically knowledgeable man in all of Europe. 140 He was known as the finest physician in England. He was an influential poet and a renowned scientist who foreshadowed the theory of evolution. He first explained the workings of artesian wells, fertilizers, and certain cloud formations; he gave an almost complete description of photosynthesis; and he pioneered the humane treatment of mental illness. In sum, Erasmus Darwin belongs, with Leonardo da Vinci and Goethe, in the small band of great polyhistoric savants} 41 For familiar reasons, both contemporary and twentieth-century critics have been less generous in appraising Darwin's extensive theorizing in aesthetics. Darwin himself acknowledged his debt to Burke as well as to Hogarth, whose 1753 Analysis of Beauty Burke, in the second edition of the Enquiry,142 in turn had acknowledged as paralleling certain of his own insights. Burke had had reason to do so. The resemblances between his and Hogarth's linking of our original notions of the beautiful to the female body were close enough to make Darwin attribute to the painter what more appropriately should have been credited to Burke. Much like Burke, Hogarth describes "Intricacy in form," or more specifically, "wa'lJing and serpentine lines" that "lead the eye a wanton kind of chace" as quintessentially beautiful; 143 and he gives the round plumpness "peculiar to the skin of the softer sex,,141J as an example. But, unlike Burke, he nowhere mentions the female breasts, which became central to Darwin's idiosyncratic, proto-Freudian theorizing. More so than Burke'S, Darwin's approach to aesthetics is genealogical. Phylogenetically speaking, eyes and notably hands enabled our animal ancestors to develop the rational faculties which gradually marked them off as human beings. Similarly, humans evolved what became known as sense of the beautiful from a love of pleasure afforded to their so-called lower senses - such as their sense of warmth, of touch, of smell, of taste, hunger, and thirst.1IJ5 Ontogenetically speaking, the baby's perception of the mother's breast plays the decisive role here. What is beautiful to adults stems from an originary association "with the form of the mother's breast; which the infant embraces with its hands, presses with its lips, and

136

The genealogy of aesthetics

watches with its eyes; and thus acquires more accurate ideas of the form of its mother's bosom, than of the odour and flavour or warmth, which it perceives by its other senses.,,146 The Platonic ranking of the senses has been reversed. Although sight is considered the foremost sense for perceiving the beautiful in a civilized, adult human being, it comes last in the phylogenetic or (to speak with Nietzsche) genealogical evolution of the original concept. What was first smelt, tasted, touched, and finally seen, is ultimately projected on to other things. "And hence at our maturer years, when an object of vision is presented to us, which by its waving or spiral lines bears any similitude to the form of the female bosom ... we feel a general glow of delight. which seems to influence all of our senses." 147 Twentieth-century critics of Erasmus Darwin, even if sympathetic toward him in general, raise his example of the baby learning beauty at the mother's breast to the level of a universal paradigm so as to dismiss the whole theory - one calling it "questionable,,,148 another "absurdly narrow." 149 More unceremoniously, J. T. Boulton calls Burke's definition of the beautiful "demonstrably false,,150 without demonstrating why. Viewed more sympathetically, Darwin's (like Burke's) ontogenetic paradigm of the baby at her mother's breast is a bold (though probably erroneous) attempt at coming to grips with a more general theory whereby our conceptions of the beautiful, including the post-Platonic ones, could be explained as emerging from originarily sensual and instinctual perception, before being raised to increasingly abstract, cerebral levels. Darwin's definition of the beautiful from his Zoonomia, and reprinted in his Temple of Nature; or The Origin of Sociecy, suggests precisely that kind of general theory. "Our perception of beauty," it reads, "consists in our recognition by the sense of vision of those objects, first which have before inspired our love by the pleasure which they have afforded to many of our senses: as to our sense of warmth, of touch, of smell, of taste, hunger and thirst; and secondly, which bear any analogy of form to such objects."ISI With twentieth-century critics proving unable to appreciate Darwin's thoughts on beauty, little else can be expected from his contemporaries, particularly during the repressive years following the revolution in France. A major parody of The Loves of the Plants in The Anri-Jacobin 152 as well as hostile reviews of Zoonomia l53 and The Temple of Nature 154 precipitated his decline. Coleridge, who had long detested Darwin's atheism,155 like many others, came to "nauseate" Darwin's poems IS6 as much as his evolutionary speculations. We do not know what he thought of Darwin's ideas about beauty, but one may guess at it from his reaction to Darwin's suggestion that the orangutan might be a prototype of the human being. Coleridge thought it was a "horrible nightmare.,,157

Mandeville, Burke, Hume, and Erasmus Darwin

137

What protected the Enquiry from similar erasure was Burke's growing fame as an author in other fields, especially as the foremost spokesman of European conservatives in his famous Reflections on the Revolution in France. Also, critics were unanimous in admiring the touches of genius in the Enquiry's prose. Hence, the role of an alternately eulogized, ridiculed, dismissed, and dreaded work, which the Enquiry has continued to play to the present century. How could a writer of Burke's "exalted genius" have lapsed into the philosophical absurdities of that early book? Dugald Stewart answered his question by claiming that Burke had lost sight in his "inquiries concerning the Human Mind, of the sober rules of experimental science."158 Whatever the case, both he and other fellow aestheticians were coerced into reading Burke's Enquiry in the sheer effort "to remove the chief stumbling blocks, which a theory, recommended by so illustrious a name," had thrown in their way. Only that by 1810, when Stewart said so, that feat of retrogressive theorizing had long been accomplished.

10

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

Yet another word against Kant as a moralist. A virtue must be our invention, our most personal self-defense and need: in every other sense, it is merely a danger. What does not sustain our life, harms it. A virtue born from the mere feeling of respect for the concept "virtue," as Kant wanted it, is barmful. "Virtue," "duty," the "good in itself," the good cbaracterized as the impersonal and universal, are cerebral phantoms suggestive of the decline, the ultimate exhaustion of life, the Konigsbergian Cbinadom. The profoundest laws of self-preservation and growth command the reverse of this, namely that everyone invent his own virtue, his own categorical imperative. VI, 177/The Anri-Chrisr, 11

Considering the staunchly antisensualist bias of his Critique ofJudgment, Kant is nothing if not courteous toward Burke. He quotes his definitions of both the sublime and the beautiful. He acknowledges that Burke, in basing the latter on love, insists "that desire be kept apart from this love."l He points to Burke's differentiation between the beautiful and the sublime as aroused either "by the imagination in connection with sensation," or "by the imagination in connection with the understanding.,,2 He even grants that pleasure and pain - to Burke the roots of the beautiful and sublime - are "ultimately always of the body," regardless of "whether they come from imagination or even from presentations of the understanding."3 In sum, Burke's observations are "exceedingly fine"4 in a strictly psychological sense. They also provide "rich material for the favorite investigations of empirical anthropology.,,5 In fact, Burke is given pride of place as the "foremost author" amongst those including "many acute men" in Germany who had dealt with this subject matter in "merely empirical" fashion. 6 Nonetheless, Kant's disagreement with Burke by far outweighs such consent. If we equate the beautiful with charm or emotion, he argues, we cannot expect anyone else to concur with our judgment. For concerning such matters, each individual rightly consults his private sense. "But, if that is so, then all censure of taste will also cease unless the 138

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

139

example that other people give through the contingent harmony among their judgments were turned into a command that we (too) approve. At such a principle, however, we would presumably balk, appealing to our natural right to subject to our own sense, not to that of others, any judgment that rests on the direct feeling of our well-being.'" IT, then, except that. Hence, it cannot, but must. The debate over the beautiful and sublime has entered the courtroom where the contestants appeal to their personal understanding and natural right while at the same time clamoring for universal justice - cost it what it may. There must be a principle that will mandate such consent to everyone. Unproven, yet inexorable demands push their way through a convoluted legalese toward their predictable self-validation. Not untypically for the Critique 0/Judgment, the following paragraph of twelve lines in the original German counts a half-dozen "musts," "mays," and "ought tos," postulating an a priori judgment of taste amounting to an unconditional commandment (Gebot), exacting universal consent, and ordering us (gebieten) how to judge. All of it is presented as one hyposyntactical conundrum of encapsulated conditionals, relatives, explications, parenthetic qualifiers, and apodeictic allegations, framed by a causal claim leading up to an allegedly self-evident postulate. 8 Hence, since a judgment of taste must not be allowed to be considered egoistic, but must, according to its inner nature, i.e. on its own account, not because of the examples, others provide of their taste, be deemed pluralistic, if one honours it as one which at the same time may demand, that everybody consent to it, then it must have an a priori principle (be it subjective or objective), which no manner of scouting for the empirical laws about mental changes can ever uncover for us, because the latter only let us know how we do judge, but do not command us how we ought to judge, and what's more in a way that such a commandment be unconditional; which is precisely what judgments of taste presuppose, inasmuch as they want to see the [aesthetic] delight immediately attached to a presentation. 'I

Here as elsewhere in the three Critiques, the notorious contortions of Kant's syntax and terminology argue convincingly for the compulsive thoroughness, obsessive circumspection, and agonizing self-scrutiny with which the philosopher wrestled down his problems. In the midst of the most complex argument, no reservation, doubt, or possible objection is left without instant response. As the argument proceeds, its main points are tirelessly reiterated, lest we might lose the main thread; after fanning out into countless subsidiary issues, none of these is left unresolved as the Critique moves toward its finale. Rather than moving slowly, step by step, from inference to inference, Kant's critical prose seems haunted by some hidden imperative forcing him to prove what must not be otherwise aU of which our exegetical efforts will have to take into account. To

140

The genealogy of aesthetics

do justice to Kant's aesthetics, we thus have to retrace some of these contortions, and approach it via his general, and more particularly, his moral philosophy. Heinrich Heine, in a humorous fable about Kant's servant Lampe, catches some of the consternation among Kant's contemporaries, who after years of simply giving up on Kant's prose, gradually caught on to what he had done. Kant, they found, "had stormed heaven, put the entire crew to the sword, the overlord of heaven swimming unproven in his blood: now there is no more mercy, no more paternal benevolence, no more rewards in the world beyond, for one's abstemiousness in this one; the soul's immortality is breathing·its last - there are groans and death rattles - and old Lampe stands by with his umbrella under the arm, an aggrieved witness, tears and cold sweat pouring down his face."lO Kant's Critique of Pure Reason, Heine suggests, had created a vacuum. God, immortality, freedom, and the very nature of things have become inaccessible to human reason. All our logical arguments concerning them collapse in the void of equally justifiable opposites or antinomies. The conviction that there "belongs to the world, either as its part or as its cause, a being that is absolutely necessary,"11 is erased by the equally logical assertion that an "absolutely necessary being nowhere exists in the world, nor does it exist outside the world as its cause."12 With all proofs of the existence of God reduced ad absurdum, it is as if the Christian deus absconditus, guaranteed by revelation, had turned into an empty cypher. Even the cog-ito ergo sum, Descartes' back door to traditional essentialism, has been reduced to an "entirely empty expression." 13 Kant accepts the cogico as the conditio sine qua non of all perception and judgment, but refuses to conclude that "ergo sum" in the sense of an essentialist res cogicans l4 which had led Descartes to once again prove the existence of God and of the world. A person exploring herself in the hope of unearthing the ultimate, will find nothing except what she sees when staring into a mirror. Even if we follow nature into the deepest recesses of its physical, biological, and other laws, we shall never be able to answer questions about God or man's soul that go beyond nature. Our reason for this is that the transcendental ground of this unity, no doubt lies too deeply hidden, is too unsuitable a tool to serve us, who, via the inner sense, only know ourselves as mere appearance, to search out anything else than mere appearance, whose nonsensory cause [nichtsinnliche Ursache] we would like to explore. IS

Roughly four years after the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason, Kant reiterated the same caveac in the Groumiwork of che Metaphysics of Morals (1785), his analytical prolegomenon to the Critique of Practical Reason. The terms are almost identical. "Even as to himself," Kant writes,

Kant's ethicoteleotogical aesthetics

141

"the human being ... can obtain information even about himself only through inner sense and so only through the appearance of his nature and the way in which his consciousness is aft"ected.,,16 Yet Kant is not just repeating himself. If he once again stresses that pure reason cannot penetrate beyond the limits of appearance, it is by way of pointing to an alternative that may give us access to the supersensible after all. Methodically, the route he proposes is analogous to the Cartesian cogico ergo sum, but with a difference. Descartes' "I think therefore I am," proven to be unviable in the Critique of Pure Reason, is replaced by a moral variant. 1 act from dUty,17 therefore I am, that is, exist as a free "member of an intelligible world,,'8 beyond mere appearances. We know how the remainder of the Groundwork and the second Critique follow a similarly Cartesian bias in using this assumed fact of our transcendent moral nature as the basis for introducing the practically, though not intellectually, knowable notions of our freedom, of our immortality, of our membership in a universal "kingdom ofends in themselves" 19 and of God as this kingdom's "sole absolute lawgiver.,,2o Yet why should we feel an incentive to act according to such a moral law in the first place?21 Not unlike Plato's sophrosyne, Kant's pure morality operates independently of all natural incentives stemming from our instincts, inclinations, and interests. Thus, acting from one's duty, to Kant, amounts to a totally gratuitous, "disinterested,,22 form of conduct, that will fight, repress, and sacrifice such natural incentives, instead of following them. What else might prompt human beings to act from duty? Formally, Kant proposes his famous categorical imperative. Thus, you are supposed to "act as if the maxim of your action were to become by your wiD a universal law of nature.,,23 But how, we may ask, do we establish a "universal law of nature," especially since nature, in the universal, transcendent sense, is inaccessible to our cognitive faculties? Or how, when confronted with a moral dilemma requiring instant redress, would we be able to ponder, let alone resolve, such a conundrum? Just to mention the fact that no imperative, law, or commandment, however clearly and persuasively it may be formulated, will ever make us follow it on its own account. Kant's idea of freedom, that is of acting in independence from bodily causes but in conformity with a higher, strictly supersensible law in the universal kingdom of ends in themselves, simply adds another question mark to the same unresolved impasse - which Kant has to admit to himself. There is "a kind of circle" here, he argues, from which there may be "no way to escape," that is, "we take ourselves as free in the order of efficient causes in order to think ourselves under moral laws in the order of ends; and we afteIWards think ourselves as subject to these laws because

142

The genealogy of aesthetics

we have ascribed to ourselves freedom of will.,,24 Needless to say, Kant prompdy proceeds to resolve this vicious circle by admitting to an ultimately unfathomable element in the proposed solution. The question as to "how a categorical imperative is possible," he concludes, "can indeed be answered to the extent that one can furnish the sole presupposition on which alone it is possible, namely the idea of freedom ... [However,] how this presupposition itself is possible can never be seen by any human reason:,25 Ultimately, all we can comprehend about the "practical unconditional necessity of the moral imperative" is "its incomprehensibiliry." What is more, "this is all that can fairly. be required of a philosophy that strives in its principles to the very boundary of human reason.,,26 At the same time, Kant sees some indisputable benefits in such incomprehensibility. At least it might stop those who, "to the detriment of morals search about in the world of sense for the supreme motive and a comprehensible but empirical interest.,,27 The unfathomable void to which the en'rique of Pure Reason had reduced the divine, has found a fitting match in an equally inscrutable morality. Meanwhile, two things in this metaphysical wasteland never falter: one, Kant's basic belief that God, however absconded, has the status of an "absolutely necessary being [eines schlechterdings nothwendigen Wisens)";28 and second, that man's divine nature, as manifest in the moral law, however incomprehensible, is an indisputable fact. The appeals to such alleged self-evidence abound, Even "the most hardened scoundrel" will be moved by "examples of honesty of purpose, of steadfastness in following good maxims, of sympathy and general benevolence.,,29 Even "the most confirmed fatalist ... must still, as soon as he has to do with wisdom and duty, always act as if he were free. ,,30 Conscience to make us act from duty and according to the idea of freedom is active in everyone. 3 } And since conscience must have universal validity, its functioning modes - its disinterestedness, its not looking for rewards either in this life or the beyond, its independence from natural inclinations, and so on - are assumed to be self-evident too. What would moral conduct be otherwise but a "mere puppet show,,32 on the strings of natural causality? "Unless we think of our will as free" from such constraints, Kant protests in a review of J. H. Schulze's Attempt at an Introduction to a Doctrine ofMorais as early as 1783, "this imperative is impossible and absurd and what is left us is only to await and observe what sort of decisions God will effect in us by means of natural causes.,,33 Meanwhile, Kant's exclusively negative determinations of morality gradually land him in a puppet show of his own. His Groundwork still shows him hard at work in maintaining a Donconceptual, supersensible

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

143

terminology regarding moral conduct prompted neither by our natural sensibility (as by "pathological love"), nor by a thereby attainable purpose. 34 But, then, by what else? By our respect for the law, Kant answers, defining duty as "the necessiry of an action from respecl [Achtung] for law.,,35 At the same time, he hastens to forestall the objection that he is merely seeking "refuge, behind the word respect, in an obscure feeling, instead of distincdy resolving the question by means of a concept of reason.,,36 However, since there cannot be such a concept, the problem is "resolved" otherwise. Respect for the law is a feeling unlike others. It is a "feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept and therefore specifically different from all feelings ... which can be reduced to inclination or fear.,,37 In spite of such disclaimers and counterdisclaimers ("I do not yet see what this respect is based upon"),38 metaphorical elements suggestive of something concrete are starting to infiltrate the inscrutable void of conscience. Man's "lawgiving reason," once apprised of the universal applicability of what is prescribed by the categorical imperative, "forces [abzwingt] from me immediate respect."39 The idea of coercion entails other, more colorful details. For one, "coercion [Zwang],,40 provokes the "powerful counterweight" of man's "needs and inclinations, the entire satisfaction of which he sums up under the name happiness.,,41 On the opposite front, reason issues its precepts against such self-indulgence so "unremittingly [u,znachlaftlich],,42 as to make the culprit pay the appropriate respect to duty. In the CritUjue of Practical Reason, "respect [Achtung] for the moral law,,43 has become something of an obsession. The qualms with which Kant, in the Groundwork, apologetically redefined the concept as a "feeling self-wrought [selbstgewirktes Gefiihl] ,,44 or nonfeeling have clearly been put aside. As man's sole incentive toward the good,4S respect has joined the ranks of concepts like conscience that are simply self-evident. It is the "sole and also the undoubted moral incentive.,,46 Even that is not enough. Rather than an impulse toward morality (Sittlichkeit), respect is "morality itself," though "subjectively considered as an incentive.,,47 It can be perceived a priori precisely because it is "only negative,,,18 that is, contrary to everything that causes us to act from bodily, emotional, and pragmatic impulses. It is the trunk on which one can graft every good moral disposition, the "best, and indeed the sole, guard to prevent ignoble and corrupting impulses from breaking into the mind.,,49Here, as in the Metaphysics of Morals (1797), these preventative services rendered by respect suggest an increasingly allegorical scenario in which Kant's more abstract terminology suffers some further contortions. To give an example, the moral law itself knocks down self-conceit, thereby earns our

144

The genealogy of aesthetics

greatest respect, and hence becomes "the ground of a positive feeling that is not of empirical origin and is cognized a priori.,,50 Compared with ]. H. Schulze's ridiculous puppet show, 51 mentioned earlier, Kant's courtroom scenario, where the culprit is hauled before his own inner "judge's throne [Richterstuhl ];'52 boasts considerable solemnity. A real defense lawyer pleads, however feebly, on behalf of the culprit's natural inclinations, while an all-powerful inner prosecutor leads the charges. 53 The remainder of this story of how conscience acquits or condemns the accused according to the utmost "rigor of right,,54 is told in the Metaphysics of Morals, published nine years after the Critique of PracEical Reason. Man's soul as the locale of an ongoing legal process, Kant proposes, is to be thought of as "a dual personality" or "doubled self," enacting the functions of culprit, defense lawyer, prosecuter and judge all in one. Yet behind it all looms the ultimate inscrutability of the moral law enacted in this internalized courtroom. When the proceedings are concluded, the internal judge, as a person having power, "pronounces the sentence of happiness or misery ... Our reason cannot pursue further his power (as ruler of the world) in this function; we can only revere his unconditional iubeo or velO.,,55 Evidently, Kant's moral convictions have become more rigorous and intransigent. Even if acquitted, the accused will never be rewarded. Instead, he will have to content himself with having escaped punishment. Thus, "the blessedness found in the comforting encouragement of one's conscience," Kant writes, "is not positive (joy), but merely negative (relief from preceding anxiety); and this alone is what can be ascribed to virtue, as a struggle against the influence of the evil principle in a human being.,,56 The mood has darkened all around. The Critique of PracEical Reason still had man's self-respect (Achtung fUr uns selbst) depend on his aversion to finding his "inner self-scrutiny" reveal a contemptuous and reprehensible creature. 57 Severe as this may sound, it is a far cry from "the descent into the hell of self-cognition" recommended by the Metaphysics of Morals. 58 In proposing freedom (from the world of sense), immortality (to enable us to fulfill a duty never fulfillable in one's lifetime), and God (as the highest good, final purpose, and ultimate goal to be realized by our actions) as necessary postulates of our respect for the moral law, the Critique of PracEical Reason, while stressing the hypothetical nature of these postulates, still held out a real promise. Thus the moral law, as Kant puts it there, "demands of us disinterested respect ... [which once it] becomes active and ruling, first allows us a view into the realm of the supersensible, though only with weak glances."59 In the Metaphysics of Morals the same prospect has narrowed considerably. The highest Good,6O previously apostrophized as the all holy,

Kant's ethicoteleologicai aesthetics

145

blessed, wise 61 creator of the wOrld,62 has become an inscrutable judge "contained (even if only in an obscure way) in the moral self-awareness of conscience."63 God has been reduced to an elusive moral cypher reified in ceaseless moral striving after an unknown and unattainable goal. He has become "the infinite and inaccessible ruler of the world.,,64 Yet inaccessible as he may be, he demands "only duties" while allowing us "no rights against him,,6S in return. The promise has turned disclaimer. The starry sky above and the moral law within, which once exacted our admiration and reverence,66 have turned into an inescapable maze inspiring anguish and dread. 67 Not that the Metaphysics of Morals or any other of Kant's writings on moral philosophy since the en·rique of Practical Reason take significant doctrinal departures. The ultimate inscrutability of conscience and God, moral freedom as a total negation of the world, our gratuitous striving for a goal that is unattainable except in some putative immortality, and even our ultimately irredeemable sinfulness 68 (hard as we may strive69 ) all of them are prefigured in the second Critique. However, there is a difference. The abstract philosophical terms used in the first two Critiques allow one to guess, but not to draw conclusions, about the religious impulses prompting Kant's strictly critical writings from their inception. This changes in the writings on moral philosophy, starting with Religion Within me Limits of Reason Alone (1793). These suddenly bring to light what was obscured in the first and second Critique, letting Kant's religious temperament take front stage while relegating his philosophical props and trappings to the background. The change goes hand in hand with an increased use of biblical language. Describing a person who has learnt to permanently judge himself before his inner tribunal, shed "the old man," put on "the new man" and entered a lifelong run of self-sacrifice in "the crucifying of the flesh," Kant invokes passages70 dear to the Pietists71 like those who taught him at the Collegium Fridericianum during 1732-40. 72 Other biblical references, such as to St. Paul's urging us to "work out our salvation with fear and trembling,,,n are quoted in support of doctrinal consideration that seem to recall Augustine's De civitate dei or Calvin's Institutes of Religion rather than the earlier Critiques. Yet here again, the later writings on moral philosophy merely make explicit what is already hinted at in the earlier, critical works. Calvin's doctrine of the wonderful inscrutability of God's "incomprehensible plan that the angels themselves adore"" provides an example. The "sacred precincts of divine wisdom,,75 and the "hidden sanctuary of God's plan,,76 are forever inaccessible to human knowledge. Those who dare otherwise will "enter a labyrinth from which [they] can find

146

The genealogy of aesthetics

no exit.,,77 Calvin quotes Augustine in urging people to refrain from attempting to penetrate "God's secret plan.,,7s "You wish to argue with me? Marvel with me, and exclaim, '0 depth!' Let both of us agree in fear, lest we persist in error.,,79 What is more, "God's unattainable secrets," in Calvin as in Kant, have a practical purpose, that is, "that, humbled and cast down, we may learn to tremble at his judgment and esteem his mercy!'SO To argue that Kant expresses similar notions in his postcritical writings on morality is meant neither to contribute to the debate regarding his preponderant religious leaning toward either Pietism, Lutheranism, or Calvinism,81 nor to refurbish his image as "the philosopher of protestantism."S2 More to the point here is a comparison with Kafka, whose Trial presents us with a nihilistic variant of Calvinist religiosity without ever explicitly referring to Calvin. Thus Kant, halfway between Calvin and Kafka, was prompted to translate basic Calvinistic (or, for that matter, Augustinian or Pauline) notions about man's relation to the supersensible, into a rationalist philosophy which, even at its most religiouslyembroidered, takes a major step toward the empty transcendence found in Kafka and other modernist writers. What is more, Calvinist traits in Kant's writings on morality and religion are evident throughout. 83 Thus, the idea of hell and heaven being "separated from one another by an immeasurable gulf," though figurative to Kant, "is nonetheless philosophically correct in meaning."S4 Man, being irredeemably evil, is dependent on God's grace. 85 Kant even endorses Calvin's doctrine of double predestination, which, as he writes, "must be referred to a wisdom whose rule is for us an absolute mystery.,,86 Also, God's inscrutability, especially as our judge, is to be praised rather than condemned. For the general mystery surrounding God and his plans has its hidden meaning - so "it may well be expedient for us merely to know and understand that there is such a mystery, not to comprehend it."s7 Even the future damnation of some and the salvation of others, "though containing an element of horror, is nonetheless highly sublime [sehr erhaben] ."S8 Granted, none of these more distinctly Calvinist formulations can be found in the earlier Critiques. Yet even in these, their religiophilosophical basis is clearly manifest. There is the inscrutable God, inaccessible to reason and logical proof in the first; our incrutable conscience to make us strive, though never attain, this mysterious guarantor of an equally occult kingdom of ends in themselves in the second Critique; and finally, our feeling for a mysterious je ne sais quoi, called the beautiful, through which the teleological equivalent of that elusive moral kingdom of ends in themselves is revealed in nature's forms. Meanwhile, the inscrutability of

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

147

it all, which might be a source of worry or indeed anguish to some of us, is the best thing about it to Kant - as it had been to Calvin, Augustine, or St. Paul. God's "impenetrable wisdom, through which we exist," to him, "is to be respected for what is denied us, as for what is revealed to us."S9 This finally brings us back to the Critique 0/ Judgment, published just three years before the first of Kant's more distinctly religious works, his Religion Within the Limir.s 0/Reason Alone. Given what has been said so far, it seems most appropriate to read this book backwards. Rather than follow Kant's step-by-step argument of tracing the possibilities of our aesthetic and teleological judgments to their alleged conditions, we will investigate how these conditions derive from man's so-called moral freedom and its two postulates, our immortality and God. In a way, Kant suggests such an approach himself. Philosophy, as he points out in the second, "improved" edition of the Critique 0/Pure Reason, ought to "invalidate [aujheben] knowledge in order to make room for faith,,9o in matters of freedom, immortality, and God. Kant's Groundwork 0/ the Metaphysics 0/ Morals (1785) and his Critique 0/ Practical Reason (1788) mapped the basis and limit of such faith in the moral law as determined by conscience. The Critique 0/Judgment continues the same endeavor, especially in its concluding pages where Kant defines faith in familiarly riddling fashion. Faith is reason's moral way of thinking in assenting to what is not accessible to theoretical cognition. To "have faith (simply so called)," in other words, "is to have confidence that we shall reach an aim that we have a duty to further, without our having insight into whether achieving it is possible.,,91 We are back in the Kafkaesque world familiar from Kant's writing on moral and religious philosophy. For unknown reasons, conscience prompts us to strive after a goal while withholding the knowledge of its attainability. Yet the promise that we might attain it "justifies us in assenting to the conditions" (i.e., the postulates of freedom, immortality, and God) "under which alone our reason can conceive of that acbievability.,,92 Pbysicoteleology, that is, what enables us to pass aesthetic judgments of taste on how the "unfathomable artistry in the purposes of nature,,93 is revealed in the beauty of nature's products - the main subject matter of the third Critique - rests on even shakier grounds. For the final supersensible purpose sustaining all others, which alone could generate such a teleology, cannot be proven rationally. There is no way in which pure reason, we know from the first Critique, will lead us to "a determinate concept" of God. 94 The only alternative, we know from the second Critique, leads via practical reason and its postulates. The supersensible purpose sustaining a general physicoteleology, in other words, "can be found only in the

148

The genealogy of aesthetics

concept of a moral author of the world.,,95 Analogously, "moral teleology alone can provide us with the concept ofa single author of the world suitable for a theology"96 and, by extension, for a physical equivalent which in turn provides the basis for our aesthetic judgments of taste regarding the beautiful. It is on these dubious foundations that the Critique ofJudgment carries out its threefold program: (a) of showing how physico teleological judgments (as rooted in the ethicoteleological postulate about "the highest moral final purpose,,97) allow us subjective knowledge of the otherwise "unfathomable artistry in the purposes of nature"; 98 (b) of demonstrating how aesthetic judgments of taste enable us to appreciate the beauty through which the otherwise "unfathomably great art that lies hidden behind nature's forms,,99 stands revealed in nature's products; and (c) of elucidating how aesthetic judgments of feeling assess the so-called sublime whenever a natural phenomenon suggestive of an infinity of might or magnitude causes the imagination to take refuge with practical reason's postulates of immortality and God. Characteristically, Kant's notion of respect as a "feeling self-wrought by means of a rational concept [durch einen Vernunftbegriff selbtgewirktes GejUhl],,,IOO so central to the second Critique,IOI plays a similarly crucial role in the third. 102 The latter's final chapters sum up the parallels, substituting Hochachtung (high esteem), Ehrfurcht (awe), and Verehrung (veneration) for the more low-key Respekt. As for practical reason, "our deep esteem [Hochachtung] for the moral law ... [makes us] conceive of the final purpose of our vocation"; our truthful reverence (wahrhafteste Ehrfurcht) makes us include a "cause ... in harmony with the final purpose" within this "moral perspective." 103 Aesthetic and teleological judgments simply reinforce our respect for the final purpose presupposed by the moral law. Thus, our "admiration for the beauty of nature" as well as "the emotion aroused by the so diverse purposes of nature" inspire respect and religious awe for the moral and "intelligent author of the world.,,104 "Hence, they seem primarily to act upon the moral feeling of gratitude and veneration [Verehrung] towards the unknown cause ... by means of a mode of critical judgment analogous to the moral mode.,,105 Kant's general endeavor "to invalidate knowledge in order to make room for faith," 106 then, gives us a direct reason for reading the Critique of Judgment backwards - or, less metaphorically speaking, from the perspective of the moral and religious beliefs that prompted him to write it. Another, more directly methodological incentive for pursuing the same approach is provided by Kant's contention that we can proceed from ethicoteleology to physicoteleology, but never from physicoteleology to ethicoteleology. Thus, the book's introduction one more time draws

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

149

attention to the "great gulf" separating the knowable world of pure reason from the transcendent world of practical reason. It is impossible to throw a bridge from pure to practical reason, Kant insists - for "the sensible cannot determine the supersensible in the subject."I07 What seems possible is the reverse. Where pure reason fails to provide insight into the supersensible, the "concept of freedom" might. This "possibility is contained in the very concept of a causality through freedom, whose effect is to be brought about in the world."I08 For this causality allows us to entertain the notion of a final purpose which also enables us to "presuppose the condition under which it is possible [to achieve] this final purpose."I09 In other words, teleological judgments, being grounded in practical reason, presuppose this condition a priori, while at the same time mediating "between the concepts of nature and the concept of freedom." 110 The progression, then, is from conscience to duty and from duty to freedom, immortality, and God; or from ethicoteleology to physicoteleology, and from physicoteleology to the beautiful and the sublime. This in turn reconnects the aesthetically inclined human being with the moral law either indirectly via physicoteleology (beauty) or more directly via an escape into practical reason's postulate of immortality (sublime). Kant repeatedly and unequivocally stresses the ultimate dependence of the sublime and the beautiful on teleology and morality in this simultaneously sequential and circuitous interconnectedness. Yet coming from the opposite direction, his central announcement of such an ultimate dependence of our feelings for the sublime and the beautiful on our morality has caused undue consternation and denial among his interpreters. It therefore seems worthwhile to examine these various dependencies in more detail. One concerns the hegemony of practical reason over teleological judgment, of ethicoteleology over physicoteleology. Kant more than once vetoes attempts to derive the proof or postulate of a final supersensible purposiveness from physicoteleology itself. 1 II He protests against a mingling (~rmengung) of physical with ethical teleology in the same pursuit. Clearly, "the actual nerve" of such a proof or postulate, to him, lay elsewhere. 1I2 Thus, "the only (thing) which can give man's existence an absolute value, and by reference to which the existence of the world can have a final purpose, is the power of desire [Begehrungsvermogen] ,,113 for the morally good. Physicoteleology, Kant adds, "was unable to do thiS.,,1I4 In sum, our assumption of a final physicoteleological purpose encompassing all others has to be anchored in the postulates of our moral conscience, such a purpose being no more than "a concept of our practical reason." 11 5

150

The genealogy of aesthetics

The sublime is rooted in the same moral ground. Generally speaking, it is a feeling aroused by phenomena suggesting an infinitude either in terms of measure (mathematical sublime) or might (dynamical sublime). Since these exceed our imaginative grasp, they cause a block (Hemmung)1l6 constraining the mind to focus on "ideas containing a higher purposiveness," 11 7 "a purposiveness within ourselves entirely independent of nature."U8 The sublime, in other words, is an emotion awakening our respect for a supersensible substrate underlying both nature and our ability to think ll9 as well as our respect for the "supersensible vocation [Beszimmung1,,120 in trying to ful1iU the moral law. Hence, an aesthetic judgment of the sublime is necessary and universal only insofar as "it has its foundation in ... the predisposition to the feeling for (practical) ideas, i.e., to moral feeling" in man. 121 Kant stresses the same dependency over and over again. The experience of the sublime is based on a moral "feeling that the mind has a vocation that wholly transcends the domain of nature ... and it is with regard to this feeling that we judge the presentation of the object [as1 subjectively purposive,,,122 that is, sublime. Looked at from the opposite angle, the sublime "becomes interesting only because we present it as a might of the mind to rise above certain obstacles of sensibility by means of moral principles." 123 In spite of the "contrapurposive"124 indirectness of its psychological mechanics (with a frustrated imagination seeking refuge in the individual's rational awareness of his or her vocation under the moral law), the sublime, then, is direcdy purposive regarding man's moral feeling. The reverse is true of the beautiful. Whatever causes us to call something beautiful, has a direct appeal to the senses, while revealing its moral purposiveness in stricdy indirect fashion. In Kant's words, the sublime is immediately "purposive in relation to moral feeling," the beautiful via "the contemplative understanding.,,125 Yet in spite of such indirectness, beauty's link with the "morally good" alone allows us to claim that our judgments about it, as those about the sublime, are necessarily universal. 126 Moreover, "whoever takes ... an interest in the beautiful in nature can do so only to the extent that he has beforehand already solidly established an interest in the morally goOd.,,127 In sum, a genuine taste for beauty "is, in the ultimate analysis, a critical faculty that judges of the rendering of moral ideas in terms of sense [ein BeurcheiJungsvennogen tier Versinnlichung sittlicher ltieen]."128 But how does such "ultimate analysis" proceed in detail? Once again, Kant's own more ofthand pronouncements provide the answer. What we are trying to find, they suggest, is a "true interpretation of that secret script [Chiffreschrift] through which nature speaks to us figuratively in

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

151

its beautiful forms.,,129 What we are looking for is an understanding of "the unfathomably great art that lies hidden behind nature's forms"J3O or of the "unfathomable artistry in the purposes of nature.,,13J It is a comprehension, however limited, of how "natural beauty reveals to us a technic"J32 or "concept of nature as art.,,133 Hence, wherever we tend to admire natural beauty, we are really appreciating something both beyond and underlying such beauty, namely a "technic" revealed in such beauty "not merely by chance but, as it were, intentionally, in terms of a lawful arrangement." I 34 As an example, take a "mere blade of grass" 135 with the beauty of its form as well as its purposive interconnectedness with the rest of the world created, as we would like to assume, by "a supreme architect!,,136 As far we may push natural science in investigating it, Kant warns, "there is absolutely no possibility for us to obtain, from nature itself, bases with which to explain combinations in terms of purposes."m If we try to ascend a posteriori from an assumed purposiveness seemingly apparent in the blade's form toward a final cause, we get lost in rapturous excesses "where reason is seduced to poetic raving.,,13S If, assuming the existence of a "supreme architect,,,139 we descend a priori to the various forms of nature he created, we are simply lost in fanciful explanations. "For we do not know ... the principles by which natural beings are possible."140 In sum, nothing in nature explains the technic or concept of nature as art in terms of an ultimate purpose, except we "look for it in ourselves, namely, in what constitutes the ultimate purpose of our existence: our moral vocation." 141 If, by contrast, we try to infer such an ultimate purpose (to explain the unfathomably great art hidden behind nature's forms) 142 from physicoteleology, we are simply fooled by the fact that such inference was inadvertently mingled with the "moral basis for proving" such a "supreme understanding.,,143 It would be equally erroneous to assume that the ethicoteleological way of postulating a supreme purpose merely supplements "the physicoteleological basis for proving [the existence of this deity].,,144 Instead, ethicoteleology provides physicoteleology with the kind of postulate it could not generate itself. "Physical teleology on its own, if it proceeded consistently instead of borrowing, unnoticed, from moral teleology, could not provide a basis for anything but a demonology." 145 To illustrate this argument, Kant makes two rare forays into genealogical criticism. Physicoteleology, if left to its own devices, he contends, produces not the concept of a deity, but such a demonology.146 Thus primitive man, prompted by fear, invented several gods (i.e., demons) instead of one, being otherwise "very ignorant in the teleology of nature." 147

152

The genealogy of aesthetics

Yet in spite of such ignorance, practical reason, "by means of its moral principles," gradually allowed early man to come up with "the concept of Goo.,,148 Subsequently, this ethicoteleological postulate generated a physicoteleological adjunct - early man's sense of the "inner moral destination of [his] existence for a purpose" compensating "for the deficiency in [his] knowledge of nature." In other words, it prompted primitive man to add something to the "purpose whose principle satisfies reason only ethically," namely "the thought of the supreme cause ... as having properties that enable it to subject all of nature to that single intention."149 Anthropologically speaking, Kant posits the same genealogical precedence of man's moral sense over his physicoteleological one as well as over his appreciation of beauty (as revealing such purposes in the forms of nature's products). Primitive man, he explains, hatched a lot of nonsense in generating his earliest moral and religious conceptions. But once he "began to reflect on right and wrong," his main line of progression was clearly set, even though he was still "indifferent to ... the purposiveness of nature."150 Before our ancestors could acquire such knowledge, they had to arrive at the judgment "that in the end it must make a difference whether a person has acted honestly or deceitfully": "It is as if they heard an inner voice that said: This is not how it should be. Hence they must also have had a lurking conception, even if an obscure one, of something toward which they felt obligated to strive."ISJ The only way to resolve the resultant "contradiction between an inner final purpose ... and an external nature in which that final purpose is to be actualized but which itself has no final purpose whatever," was by devising "a supreme cause that rules the world according to morallaws."152 Everything else came as afterthoughts: the assumption of a physicoteleological cosmic order in analogy to the prior, ethicoteleological one, as well as the growing sense of how this supreme art of nature's purposes speaks to us through the beauty of nature's forms. Genealogically speaking, "it was in all probability through this moral interest that people first became attentive to the beauty and the purposes of nature." Yet even when people's sense for the assumed purposiveness and beauty of nature became more fully developed, it remained dependent on the original idea of a moral cause and ruler of the world. 153 Not surprisingly, Kant's posthumously published essay about the progress made in metaphysics since Leibniz and Wolff barely mentions either the physicoteleological or aesthetic arguments discussed in the third Critique. The proposition of a "physical purposiveness encountered in the world," it states laconically, "can greatly advance acceptance of moral purposiveness."154 Otherwise, "we can cognize absolutely nothing

Kant's ethicoteleological aesthetics

153

of the nature of supersensible objects";155 while faith is simply "that putative perceiving and cognizing by virtue of which it is forgotten that those ideas are arbitrarily made by ourselves [wn uns selbst wilkurlich gemacht]."156

Such formulations from Progress (1804) once again contain nothing that cannot be found in the earlier Critique ofJudgment - except that the posthumously published work bluntly speaks of artificially made up ideas, what the third Critique enacts argumentatively through a syntactical maze of reciprocally invalidating presuppositions and conditionals. Faith, as we read in the final pages of that work, "is the mind's steadfast principle to assume as true what we must necessarily presuppose as a condition for the possibility of [achieving] the highest moral final purpose ... despite the fact that we have no insight into whether (achieving) this purpose is possible, or ... impossible."157 Kant's explanatory foomote to this definition more than all else in the third Critique gives us a glimpse of what prompted him to write it. It sets out with yet another definition of faith: Faith is a confidence in the promise of the moral law; but the moral law does not contain this promise: it is I who put it there, and on a morally sufficient basis. For no law of reason can command [us to pursue] a final purpose unless reason also promises, even if not with certainty, that this final purpose is achievable, and hence also justifies us in assenting to the conditions under which alone our reason can conceive of that achievability. I "I

The sentence, like many others in Kant's writings, recalls the "hidden sanctuary of God's plan"159 from Calvin's Institutes of the Christian Religion or, for that matter, the secret law in Kafka's The Trial. "If anyone with carefree assurance breaks into this place, he will not succeed in satisfying his curiosity and he will enter a labyrinth from which he can find no exit," 160 warns Calvin. Kant follows the same argument, but with a difference. In one sense, he expatiates on Calvin's warning by way of dismantling the proofs of God advanced by theologian-philosophers from Augustine to Leibniz and Wolff. Yet in another, he casts doubt even on Calvin's deus absconditus, lifting him out of the guarantees of revelation and relocating him in the quicksand of a human, moral conscience, ultimately as inscrutable as the deus absconditus himself. In this he takes a giant step toward modernity. What is left of the divine is an inscrutable moral law grinding away, enforcing its imperatives, but leaving us in ultimate darkness as to the possible rewards we might reap from obeying its dictates. "It is not necessary to accept everything as true, one must only accept it as necessary," as K. is told. '''A melancholy conclusion,' said K. 'It turns lying into a universal principle.'"161

154

The genealogy of aesthetics

Yet Kant draws a different conclusion from it aU. "In fact the word

fides," he adds to his definition offaith, "already expresses this, and it must seem dubious how this term and this special idea have made their way into moral philosophy: for they were first introduced with Christianity, and it might seem as if their acceptance [by moral philosophy] is perhaps only a fawning imitation of the language of Christianity [eine schmeichlerische Nachahmung seiner Sprache] ."162

11

Kant's midlife conversion

"Beauty is what pleases without interest," Kant has said. Without interest! One should compare this definition with the other one formulated by Stendhal, that genuine "spectator" and artist who once called the beautiful une promesse tk bonheur ... Who is right, Kant or Stendhal? In any case, we may laugh a little at the expense of those aestheticians who tirelessly weigh in on Kant's behalf arguing that the enchantment of beauty permits us to look even at statues of female nudes "without interest." V, 347 I The GeJualogy of Morals, In, 6 Against Kant. Of course, I am connected with the beautiful that pleases me through an interest. But that is not readily apparent. The expression of happiness, perfection, stillness, even the silence of the work of art, its letting itself be judged, they all speak to our instincts. - Ultimately I experience as "beautiful" only what matches an ideal ("the happiness") of my own instincts. X, 293

The core concept of his moral philosophy a fawning imitation of the language of Christianity! One might specify Kant's admission by substituting "crypto-Augustinian or Calvinist theology" for "Christianity" as well as expand on it by way of describing his critical enterprise as an attempt to reformulate in philosophical terms the answers, provided by such a theology, to three questions raised in the Critique of Pure Reason. "1. What can I know? 2. What oUght Ito do? 3. What may I hope?,,1 The first Critique provided the proof that theology's deus abscondirus, as well as our immortality and moral freedom, cannot be objects of human knowledge or rationalist proof. The second Critique, as we know, reintroduced the three concepts as postulates or "necessary conditions for obedience" to the moral law as dictated by conscience which, though ultimately inscrutable, is taken to be self-evident. 2 Much of the third Critique, as well as Kant's later writings on religion, were devoted to what we can hope for in this world and the beyond. Rather than Kant's philosophical formulations, an allegorical definition of conscience in a lecture on ethics hints at the ultimate driving force 155

156

The genealogy of aesthetics

behind all this theorizing about epistemology, morality, aesthetics, and finally theology. Conscience, it says, is "the representative within us of the divine judgment seat: it weighs our dispositions and actions in the scales of a law which is holy and pure; we cannot deceive it, and, lastly, we cannot escape it because, like the divine omnipresence, it is always with us.") Conscience follows us "like a shadow where [we try] to escape." It is the interiorized Old Testament God, "contained (even if only in an obscure way) in [our] moral self-awareness.,,4 To speak in biographical terms, it is the punitive, vengeful God whom Kant had done away with philosophically, but who he could not escape emotionally. Like his deus absconditus who, thaugh unknowable, enacts the "supreme rule of righteousness,"; Kant's notion of conscience is thoroughly Calvinist in tone and doctrine. To Calvin, conscience is an inner forum; it stands, so to speak, between God and man, not suffering the latter "to suppress within himself what he knows";6 it is an important aspect of Christian liberty, inciting man to an everlasting, tireless pursuit of a goal ultimately shrouded in God's everlasting, inscrutable wisdom. It would go beyond the scope of this book to trace the hypothesizations connecting conscience with God to the same origin or, beyond it, to Augustine's Christian Platonic conglomerate to which Calvin himself stood indebted above all else. Be it enough to point out that the terms Kant uses in this context clearly display the respective birthmarks. Freedom, autonomy, spontaneity, will, power of desire, good and evil, pleasure, happiness - these and more are defined in ways to mark them off as ne plus ldtra superlatives of the transvaluation of values prompted by a general repudiation of the body, first systematized by Plato. A few examples must suffice to document these semantic purges, inversions, and juggling acts by which, say, slavery to an unknown God becomes freedom, or a total negation of all bodily impulses the supreme power of desire (Begehrungsvermiigen).7 One's habitual sense of freedom seems well defined by Kant's ability "to do or to refrain from doing as one pleases."s But the latter, to Kant, would be arbitrary voluntariness (WiHkur) or "animal choice [arbitrium brutum]." By contrast, true freedom of choice, to him, is the "independence from being determined by sensible impulses,,9 on the one hand, and acting under the dictates of the moral law, 10 on the other. Meanwhile, Wille, far from being the strong desire, intention, or ability of deciding what one wants to do, is a "power of self-determination, independent of any coercion through sensuous impulses" 11 in one sense, and "practical reason itself" in another, "insofar as it can determine choice" on the grounds of the moral law. 12 A firm believer in working with existing words rather than neologisms, 13 Kant bad a knack for turning words with strong concrete meanings into

Kant's midlife conversion

157

disembodied abstractions. Spontaneity, commonly thought of as an instinctive, automatic, natural way of acting, becomes one that avoids all "natural grounds," "sensuous impulses," and "inclinations"; instead of following "the order of things as they present themselves in appearance," it frames "an order of its own according to ideas, to which it adapts the empirical conditions"; 14 as the theoretical analogue to our freedom to act under moral causality, it is reason beginning "to act of itself, without requiring to be determined to action by an antecedent cause in accordance with the law of [natural] causality.,,15 Wherever redefinitions do not do the trick, Kant provides elaborate supplements. Respect for the moral law is a "feeling se/f-wrought by means of a rational concept" 16 and hence different from all other feelings. "Unconditional obedience, sufficient in itself and in need of no other influences,,,17 is called "good in itself." This is to mark it off from the ordinary "good" which is mere conformity with what "nature itself has imposed upon us," and which, if it conflicts with duty, is "quite evil."18 "Pleasure [Lust] ," since it involves its own mental power while also cuning across the other two (cognitive power and power of desire), involves Kant in special terminological acrobatics. Lust, the lowest kind as caused by bodily affects, is called "pathological pleasure." 19 Pleasure, as occasioned by one's observance of duty under the categorical imperatives of practical reason, is termed "moral p1easure,,20 or "pleasure ... of a distinctive kind.,,21 Pleasure induced by what is beautiful is called aesthetic pleasure or delight (Wohlgejallen), positive in the case of beauty, negative in that of the sublime. Both moral and aesthetic pleasure are intellectual pleasures based on a totally "sense-free inclination [propensio inrellecrualis],,,22 insofar as the aesthetic and/or moral determination of our desire precedes the pleasure, rather than the pleasure, caused by something sensuous, determining the desire. The distinction, positing a general hegemony of mind over maner, finds numerous analogues in Kant's critical enterprise. Just as the "inrernal court in man,,23 determines what is good and evil, not with regard to "the matter of the action and what is to result from it, but with the form and the principle from which the action itself follows,,,24 so a more general tribunal must, by "the recognized methods of legal action," establish man's cognitive powers insofar as they determine sensuous experience, rather than as to how sensuous experience affects our cognitive powers. 25 The philosopher must be a "lawgiver of human reason,,,26 and human reason the "lawgiver of nature ..,27 As the internal court in man judges the form rather than the outcome or intended result of an action, so the tribunal presiding over man's cognitive powers must concern itself, not with nature "marerialir.er,,,28 but with the "formal (aspects) of nature,,,29 or, in other

158

The genealogy of aesthetics

words, with the necessary legitimacy of aU objectS of experience insofar as they are knowable a priori. 30 The legislation under which we pass teleological andlor aesthetic judgments of taste (beauty) and feeling (sublime) is subject to the same distinction. Pure, theoretical reason legislates to nature the categories defined by our a priori grammar of knowledge; practical reason legislates to the will the moral terms" of striving toward the supreme moral good;32 judgment, though unable to legislate its own laws, devises quasilaws or principles in analogy to those legislated by practical reason. Thus we pass objective physicoteleological judgments on the purposiveness of nature in analogy to the laws determining the causality of freedom in the moral kingdom of ends in themselves. We pass aesthetic judgments of taste about the beauty (through which nature's physicoteleology, as grounded in ethicoteleology, stands subjectively revealed in the forms of nature's products) as a purposiveness without a purpose. Or we pass judgments of feeling about the sublime whenever something suggestive of an infinity in size and power dwarfs our imagination to the point of reminding us directly of our citizenship in the kingdom of ends in themselves. The irreconcilable division between body and reason, or between interestedness and morality, that marks Kant's critical enterprise in general, finds its most famous expression in his apostrophe of "the starry heavens above me and the mora/law wirhin me.,,33 Thus, the "first view of a countless multitude of worlds annihilates, as it were, my importance as an animal creature • •. The second ... infinitely raises my worth as an inuQigence.,,34 Yet for the most part, discussions of the dichotomy draw on the familiar imagery of bodily sense corrupting mind, and of mind trying to extricate itself from the body. A representation is pure only when "there is no mingling of sensation."35 The passions are "cancerous sores" for "pure practical reason,,36 and "without exception, evil."37 Our affectS are extremely prejudicious to our moral freedom,38 like chains cutting into the growth of our limbs. CenainIy, none of our "natural grounds" and "sensuous impulses" could ever "give rise to an ought,,39 as demanded by true morality. The latter, on the contrary, has to be derived from "eleutheronomy" or "the principle of the freedom of intemallaw-giving.,,40 To derive it from "pathological p/easure[s]" or "eudaemonism (the principle of happiness)" would be "the euthanasia (easy death) of aU morals."4! It has already been shown how Kant's so-called aesthetic judgments of taste about the beautiful are determined by the same dichotomy. More specifically, one might add, first, that a judgment of taste about the beautiful is based on the morally inferred, but naturally unmanifest purposiveness of an object;42 second, that such a judgment is, in more direct

Kant's midlife conversion

159

analogy to practical reason, "the ability to judge an object, or a way of presenting it, by means of a liking or disliking devoid 0/ all interest";43 and third, that such like or dislike is universally valid44 as well as necessary45 without having to refer itself to a concept. To briefly recall the parallels involved here, the moral law, according to Kant, is, ofcourse, both universal and necessary. What is more, our striving under that law is devoid of all interest insofar as its imperatives are necessary "without being based upon and having as [their] condition any other purpose"46 of a more mundane kind. Unlike "animal choice [thierische Willkur],,,47 a pure or "good will is not good because of what it effects or accomplishes ... but only because of its volition.,,48 Even where it fails, it will shine, jewel-like, like "something that has its full worth in itself."49 Just as a totally gratuitous sophrosyne impressed Plato as an unfathomable "science of the absence ofscience,"5o so a law that "can be of itself and immediately a determining ground of the will" ultimately struck Kant as an insoluble problem for human reason. But, of course, the problem would not let him rest. Hence, his obsession with the notion of "respect" for the moral law as a completely spontaneous, "self-wrought," disinterested, and nonconceptual feeling. Analogously, there is his concern with the aesthetic as an equally self-created, disinterested, and nonconceptual pleasure in the beautiful. The original introduction to the third Critique draws the parallels in detail by recalling how the Critique 0/ Practical Reason, in establishing respect as "morality itself, subjectively considered as an incentive,"51 had been "unable to derive this feeling from concepts.,,'2 In "the same way," the Critique 0/ Judgment sets out to demonstrate (a) how an aesthetic judgment of reflection evincing a similar kind of respect is based on an a priori, yet indeterminate concept (namely that of "the formal ... subjective purposiveness of objects," "basically identical with the feeling of pleasure" for the beautiful), and (b) how it cannot derive this indeterminate concept from determinate ones. 53 In assessing aesthetic judgments about beauty according to his table of categories, the dependence of such judgments on a physico-, and ultimately, ethicoteleological understanding of nature, as discussed so far, is summed up under the category of "relation." Meanwhile, the remaining three amount to little more than embroideries on this central one. Qualitatively, such a judgment must be distinct from the pleasures of the body, that is, free of all interest in any real or imagined objects we may desire, wish to make our own, use for our pragmatic needs, or enjoy as sensual pleasures; for example what we may find beautiful about a dish is not what makes us want to eat it, but some other hidden element. 54 Quantitatively, such nonpleasure, while being devoid of mundane interests, must have universal validity, even though it cannot lay claim to

160

The genealogy of aesthetics

the a priori conceptuality presupposed by such universality; for example what gives my pleasure in the beauty of a rose its universal validity is not the fact of its being a rose, but some other, secret something. 55 ModaJiur, that is in terms of its necessity, contingency, possibility or impossibility, such ethereal pleasure, without relating to an a priori conceptuality, must have the validity of a law requiring "everyone to assent,,;56 that is, what shines as beautiful is not some debatable agreeableness based on sensual pleasure, but a mysterious je ne sais quoi which yet enforces its universal demands like the moral law dictated by conscience. And what, in each case, is this hidden element, secret something, or mysteriousje 118 sais quo'-? It is that ~ssumed higher purposiveness beyond all mundane or mechanical purposes which, as Kant would have us believe, reveals itself to us through the beauty of nature's products. And what do we know about such higher purposiveness? Nothing, except what we can assume about it in analogy to an equally assumed teleology of moral purposes postulated by our unfathomable conscience. However, is not all this a rather specious basis for our speculations about a moral kingdom of ends in themselves, about an analogous, cosmic purposiveness, or about beauty or pleasure derived from the contemplation of such an assumed purposiveness without a purpose? On the contrary! For the inscrutability of both our conscience and its unknown destination makes us strive all the more eagerly to attain that goal. "Thus what the study of nature and of the human being teaches us sufficiently elsewhere may well be true here also: that the inscrutable wisdom by which we exist is not less worthy of veneration in what it has denied us than in what it has granted us.,,57 Although Kant suggests such a straightforward summary here and there, his critical method will not allow him to proceed accordingly. Instead, he will prove what is already taken for granted. He will establish what are moral and religious givens via an a priori epistemological tour de force. He will push toward these assumptions by recycling our traditional associations of the beautiful with, say, the morally good, desensitized, disinterested. And he will press, what could be stated more straightforwardly, through the wringer of categories rightly ridiculed by Nietzsche and others. The result is a pseudological maneuver, which for the unrelenting coerciveness of its apodeictic pronouncements stands out even by Kantian critical standards. This is not the place for a complete roll call of his most frequently used catchphrases - such as "all one wants to know," "we can easily see," "everyone has to admit," "he must believe that," "it is true that," "it must" or "ought to have," "we always require others to agree," "it would be foolish" or "ridiculous" - which, often several to a paragraph, inseminate Kant's" Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment" on next to every page. 58 Instead,

Kant's midlife conversion

161

let us look at a few instances of Kant's more terminologically oriented gambols in overruling old distinctions, inflating terms, and inventing new ones. Here, for instance, are some of his neologistic circumlocutions to determine a strictly hypothetical, physicoteleological purposiveness as itself based on an equally putative ethicoteleological one: "merely formal purposiveness," "inner purposive causality," "subjective purposiveness in the presentation of an object," "purposiveness as to form," "formal objective purposiveness" "lack[ingJ a purpose," "purposiveness without a purpose" or concept, "purposiveness whose purpose is unknown.,,59 Or here are some of Kant's terminological membra disiecta to characterize the workings of the imagination: "proportioned attunement" between "the cognitive powers," "reciprocal subjective harmony between the cognitive powers," "subjective universal communicability" in the "free play" of the cognitive powers. 60 And here finally is his brand new "common sense" which, as one would expect, is totally distinct from what is vulgarly called a "common sense [sensus communis]." Thus, Kant's ethical common sense "judges not by feeling but always by concepts, even though these concepts are usually only principles conceived obscurely."61 An example of how Kant tends to overrule his own terminology is found when he tries to prove the absolute disinterestedness of the aesthetic judgment of taste about beauty. Seemingly oblivious of a previously worked out distinction between our "interested" pursuit of mundane goods and our disinterested pursuit of the highest moral good,62 he suddenly obliterates that dividing line, claiming that what is called interest also extends to "what is good absolutely and in every respect, i.e., like the moral good, which carries with it the highest interest.,,63 In terms of inner consistency, Kant would have done better to distinguish this higher interest from its vulgar brother by renaming it interest itself or interest self-wrought. Instead, he reverses his prior disassociation of the beautiful from both the moral as well as the higher interest that makes us pursue "what is good absolutely" by redefining the beautiful as a "symbol of the morally good."64 Or he claims that, at least genealogically speaking, "it was in all probability through this moral interest that people firSt became attentive to the beauty ... of narure.,,65 After all, even among civilized people, so his argument goes, such aesthetic appreciation remains dependent on the original idea "of a moral cause and ruler of the world.,,66 Thus, whoever takes ... an interest [Inreresse] in the beautiful in nature can do so only to the extent that he has beforehand already solidly established an interest [lmeresse] in the morally good. Hence if someone is directly interested [unmittelbar inreressiert] in the beauty of nature, we have cause to suppose that he has at least a predisposition [0 a good moral attitude. 67

162

The genealogy of aesthetics

Kant's Einbildungskra/t or imagination provides us with the ne plus ultra instance for a hypertrophic inflation of simple terms also observable in his use of other concepts such as intuition, spontaneity, or respect. Predictably, the kind of imagination he is after is sharply divided from the empirical68 or recollective type as determined by sensory perception and the laws of association. Our experience of the sublime shows these two different powers at work. To the ordinary imagination, the infinitude evoked, say, by the starry sky, suggests a frightful void,69 while to the higher one it opens up ecstatic prospects of our infinite moral vocation. 70 For the ordinary imagination, "acting in accordance with the law of association" and being "dependent. on [something] physical,'o7J can only experience such infinitude as painful. By contrast, the same power when acting "in accordance with ... reason and its ideas,,,72 will fty to explore the same infinitude in analogy to a moral vocation in eternity "that wholly transcends the domain of nature."73 As a result, this so-called productive imagination will acquire "an expansion and a might that surpasses the one it sacrifices."74 The productive, autonomous, and free imagination75 plays an equally important, though somewhat more complicated role, in aesthetic judgments of taste about the beautiful. Its first major discussion in the third Critique sends Kant into a veritable tailspin of apodeictic assertiveness. Predictably, a higher, productive imagination not only will, but must provide the key to "that puzzle [Ratsel],,76 as to "Whether in a Judgment of Taste the Feeling of Pleasure Precedes the Judging of the Object or the Judging Precedes the Pleasure.,,77 In the introduction to the Critique ofJudgment, we saw Kant grope for an a priori epistemological equivalent to nature's assumed supersensible or physicoteleological purposiveness as revealed through the beauty of nature's products otherwise graspable only in analogy to the ethicoteleological purposiveness presupposed by the moral law. For if such a mental capacity could be proven to exist, it might provide a shortcut to the world of the supersensible that is so vigorously ruled out by the first Critique. 78 The claims made for this "facilitated play of the two mental powers (imagination and understanding) quickened by their reciprocal harmony,'>79 with the imagination providing creative freedom, and the understanding lawfulness,80 escalate as we move into the actual Critique ofJudgment. A universal harmony between imagination plus understanding with the object "perceived as purposive,,81 becomes a hegemony of these mental powers over nature. Not only do "we think the subjective purposiveness [of nature] before we sense it,,,82 but our very thinking such a subjective purposiveness imposes the latter on nature. When we explore nature's purposiveness via "the play of the imagination ... it is we who

Kant's midlife conversion

163

receive nature with favor, not nature that favors us [wo es Gunst ist, wamit wir die Natur aufnehmen, nicht Gunst, die sie uns erzeigr] ."83 Finally, there is the notion of second maker, reminiscent of Shaftesbury and Plato's Timaeus, a notion one thought the first Critique had done away with once and for all. So far, our awareness of nature's technic and its supreme architect has been something we glimpse at through the beauty of nature's products. Or we infer it in physicoteleological analogy to the moral order. But now that the imagination has been equipped with unprecedented new powers, we are suddenly projected into the Platonic demiurge's brain. Imagination in its role as a productive, cognitive power, Kant writes, "is very mighty when it creates, as it were [gleichsam], another nature.',84 All that Kant's followers had to do in order to reinstate the full arsenal of transcendentalist assumptions about beauty and the arts was to remove the word gleichsam. And who would blame them if they did? Even though Kant himself retained that coy "as it were," the thrust of his thinking since the completion of the CritUjue of Pure Reason points in the same direction; only to mention the fact that those able to read between the lines must have sensed that even the first Critique was prompted by its author's peculiar assumptions about the divine all along. In other words, Kant was ruled by his urge to justify his belief in an unfathomable, yet moral divinity, against the then current proofs of the existence of God as well as against the presumptions of essentialist speculation in general. As he puts it in one of his more casual remarks: "Perhaps nothing more sublime has ever been said ... than in that description above the temple of Isis (Mother Nature). 'I am all that is, that was, and that will be, and no mortal has lifted my veil.' ,,85 Kant's hypertrophic enlargement of the powers of imagination in the Critique 0/ Judgment seems particularly striking when compared with his previous uses of the term. This is true even of the Critique of Pure Reason, which first evolves the notion of an imagination or "faculty of affinity"86 that is productive rather than receptive of experience in oscillating between freedom and Iawfulness. 87 The first Critique also credits the imagination with being "a blind but indispensable function of the soul, without which we should have no knowledge whatsoever.',88 Yet it nowhere attributes to it the, as it were, transcendent powers of being able to reinvent God's own physicoteleology in creating "another nature.',89 Even so, the first Critique's evaluation of the imagination marks a "near complete reversal,,90 vis-a-vis the much narrower, and mostly negative characterizations of that faculty in Kant's precritical writings. At best, his 1763 Attempt co Introduce the Concept o/Negative Magnitudes into Philosophy reflects upon the imagination's power to not only retain and exclude,

164

The genealogy of aesthetics

but also to either destroy or bring forth a representation 91 - a complex activity "concealed within the depths of our mind [and going] unnoticed even while it is being exercised.,,92 For the most part, as in his Dreams of a Spiril-Seer of 1766 or in his Blomberg Lectures on logic from the early 1770s, the precritical Kant either faults the imagination for being an obstacle to knowledge,93 or traces some of its illusions to the fact that its representations "are simultaneously accompanied by certain movements in the nerve-tissue or nerve-spirit of the brain.,,94 The transition from the early pre-I 770 works toward the critical period is marked by other reversals and changes of a similar kind. An intense interest in unconscious mental pro.cesses gives way to Kant's increasingly non psychological investigations of conscious, a priori mental processes. His open-minded, pluralistic exploration of the possibly self-reflective, even selfish motivations for moral behavior yields to the well-known rigorism of his "mature" moral doctrine. 95 His earlier, Lockean urge to base his new "science of the iz"milS of human reason" on the "humble ground of experience and common sense [auf dem niedrigen Boden der Eifahrung und des gemeinen ~rstandes]" is replaced by an obsession with establishing the legislative powers of "pure" reason and judgment untainted by "pathological" bodily responses, that is, without any "mingling of sensation."96 Kant referred to these reversals as his waking up, thanks to David Hume, from his dogmatic slumbers; and to this day, much scholarly ingenuity is expended on trying to establish the exact time and intellectual framework of this awakening. More appropriately, one might say that, instead of being roused from his dogmatic slumbers, Kant abandoned his "quasi-Humean,,97 stance of around 1766 by way of lapsing into the neoscholastic slumbers of critical schemes which, ever since, have kept philosophers busy debating the major premises of epistemology and aesthetics within their limits. Kant himself successfully set these boundaries in calling for a tribunal of reason that would determine philosophical and aesthetic debates in the aetas Kanriana. 98 Rather than determine a moral order, such a tribunal, he alleges, would "undertake anew the most difficult of all its tasks, namely, that of selfknowledge.,,99 However, the claims made for its "recognized methods of legal action" (according to "fundamental principles of its own institution, the authority of which no one can question"JOo) are as dogmatic as those put forward by the divinely sanctioned authority of man's moral conscience. Thus, the tribunal will arbitrate between the alleged opposites of empiricism (e.g., David Hume) and rationalism (e.g., Plato and Leibniz), both deemed equally erroneous. We l1ave entered "the age of criticism"IOI where what is inconvenient will be renamed (e.g., empiricist

Kant's midlife conversion

165

analysis, dogmatic skepticism), where the real debates will be rechanneled into spurious ones, and where such feigned dissent will dress up the old consensus in a new, pseudoanalytical terminology. Typically, most of Kant's precritical works fell victim to the same project. 102 Asked to give his permission for a collection of his minor writings, Kant, in a letter of October 13, 1797, insisted that the projected volume contain nothing prior to his On the Form and Principles of the Sensible and Intelligible Wbrld of 1770. 103 He had reason to say so. For it is in this Inaugural Dissertation that Kant abandoned his search for a "science of the limits of human reason" on "the humble ground of experience and common sense,"I04 and instead began to devote himself to evolving a new metaphysic kept uncontaminated by any "admixture of the sensual [von alter . .. Beymischung des SinnJichen praeservirt]." 105 Kant scholarship, by and large, has tacitly accepted the philosopher's verdict on his twenty-five pieces of writing published before 1770. To quote Howard Caygill, "these texts have been relatively neglected, especially in comparison with the interpretative industry surrounding the critical texts; many of the pre-critical writings remain untranslated and terra incognita even for many Kant scholars."106 A typical instance is Kant's 1764 Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime. In many ways, the text reminds one of De pulchro et apto, written before Augustine's conversion from Manichaeism to Platonism and Christianity. To mention just one of several parallels, both Kant and Augustine, in their allegedly "mature" writings, use Epicurus' theories about bodily pleasures as a main contrast for pointing out that "true beauty," as Augustine puts it, "is seen by the inner eye of the soul, not by the eye of the flesh," 107 or that our liking for the beautiful should be, as Kant has it, entirely disinterested. 108 According to the Critique of Judgment, that means that a pure judgment of taste be independent of "charms and emotions,"109 let alone sexual appetencies. For instance, if we say "That is a beautiful woman," as the older Kant explains, "we do in fact think nothing other than that nature offers us in the woman's figure a beautiful presentation of the purposes [inherent] in the female build. For in order to think the object in this way, through a logically conditioned aesthetic judgment, we have to look beyond the mere form and toward a concept.,,110 Both Augustine and Kant had altogether more sanguine things to say about beauty when younger. Granted, there is little in Kant's life to parallel Augustine's obsession "with beauty of a lower order" III which made him run "wild with lust that was manifold and rank.,,112 But even the Konigsberg bachelor had his moments of being chased through the city's alleys by a certain Jacobi and her lady friend,113 or of writing

166

The genealogy of aesthetics

about Swedenborgian ghost stories to a certain Fraulein Charlotte von Knobloch 114 by way of apologizing for invading "the chamber of a beautifullady like her with stories of such an ungraceful nature."115 Though Kant remained a bachelor all his life, he displayed an amazing openmindedness toward sexuality in his Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime. Human beings, by achieving sexual happiness, fulfill the "great purpose of nature."116 The refinements that accrued around the way nature "pursues its great purpose" through the human sex drive (Geschlechtertrieb), "are only trimmings and borrow their charm ultimatelyfrom that very source."U7 In short, it is an impulse "onto which the finest and liveliest inclinations of human nature are grafted."118 Rather than concern himself with "platonic love," which he makes light of in an aside,119 the 39-year-old Kant, much like Berowne in Love's Labor's Lost, prizes a sexuality learnt in the beauty of a lady's eyes rather than in "the books, the arts, the academes.,,12o Women, by "their fine figure, merry naivete, and charming friendliness" amply compensate men for "their lack of book learning," 121 especially when the lady's sexual attractiveness aligns itself with moral beauty.122 More generally speaking, the "sexual inclination,"123 while ennobling man, beautifies woman even further. 124 In distinguishing between what is beautiful in a "moral" vis-a-vis a "nonmoral" sense, Kant predictably values the former or "beautiful in the proper sense" 125 higher than the latter. Nonetheless, sexuality underlies a woman's charms even where she tries to hide it "under a mien of composure and a noble demeanor."126 Analogously, Kant ranks "coarse laste,,127 (that is eager to reap the sexual pleasures promised by what it perceives as beautiful or sexually attractive) below "finer taste" (able to appreciate a woman's moral beauty as it shines through her bodily allure).128 Nonetheless, man's "healthy and coarse taste" pertaining strictly "to sex" ought not "on that account to be disdained. For the largest part of mankind complies by means of it with the great order of nature." 129 Also, there are the dangers of over-refinement, Kant adds, no doubt casting an ironical glance at himself. Thus "a very refined taste," while taking away "the wildness of an impetuous inclination" and rendering our taste "modest and decorous," "usually misses the great goal of nature."130 Instead of making do with what nature has to offer, it is busy inventing perfect creatures endowed with all the noble and beautiful qualities that nature seldom unites in one human being whence "arises the postponement and finally the full abandonment of the marital bond,"131 which the aging bachelor was to experience himself.

Kant's midlife conversion

167

In sum, there is Kant's precritical aesthetics acknowledging sexuality as the major motivating force for man's pleasure in the beautiful, and, as its general philosophical framework, a "quasi-Humean," semiegotistic, even professedly pagan stance. Then, from 1770 onward, there is the world of disembodied abstractions prompted by Kant's crypto-Augustinian religiosity plus his largely neo-Platonic aesthetics. The change seems so drastic as to suggest a conversion of the kind experienced by Augustine. But what possibly could have occasioned it? A possible answer would require a fully fledged new biography of Kant and his times, and particularly one exploring the spiritual, religious, and philosophical setting of Kant's life up to the "silent decade" preceding the 1781 publication of the first Critique. In the meantime, it bears reminding ourselves of a few well-known facts surrounding the "diverse reversals,,132 preceding his first, neodogmatic entrenchment during the so-called critical period. Kant's pietistic upbringing at home and at the Collegium Fredericianum, and his later markedly contradictory response to both, no doubt provided the basis here. On the one hand, there was his deep respect for the religiosity of his parents - respect for "that calm, that serenity, that inner peace, undisturbed by any passion,,133 - on the other, his contempt for the hypocritical, ostentatious, reward-seeking piety fomented by the Collegium Fredericianum. Broadly speaking, the latter may have prompted his temporary escape into a "quasi-Humean" skepticism as well as into an aesthetic paganism a La Edmund Burke; while the former made him hold on to his parents' belief in a righteous but inscrutable divinity, a creed which, from 1770 onward, he translated, albeit unconsciously, into the convoluted critical discourse which, as he half knew himself, was but a "fawning imitation of the language of Christianity',134 derived from St. Paul, Augustine, and Calvin. The belief in a deus absconditus as well as in a self-motivated, gratuitous type of morality - the main spiritual heritage bequeathed him by his parents - are the main constants throughout; only that this general attitude assumes an, as it were, protoexistentialist pose during the 1860s. The concluding paragraphs of his ObservaTions on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime of 1764 are typical here. In the attempt to eschew the "empty space, whither the butterfly wings of metaphysics have raised us,,,135 he warns, we have to make such observations, not so much in terms of "what the understanding comprehends," but rather in those of "what the feeling senses." 136 Or he frowns upon those whose moral conduct depends on the rewards they hope to reap in a beyond, who enact for selfish reasons what they ought to do gratuitously, and who all the while speculate on

168

The genealogy of aesthetics

matters unfathomable to human reason. His advice to such know-it-all, hypocritical saints is couched in the humorous banter so typical of his precritical writings, and so markedly absent from his mature works: wait to find out until you get there, yet strive nonetheless. But since our fate in that future world will probably very much depend on how we have comported ourselves at our pasts in this world, I will conclude with the advice which U,lraire gave to his honest Candide after so many futile scholastic debates: Let us attend to our happiness, and go into the garden and work! 137

It is Kant's philosophy in a nutshell. Yet it is so stripped of all the more specifically Christian religiosJty aLa St. Paul, Augustine, and Calvin that prompted it, and that, by and by, reinserted itself into his critical philosophy from 1770 onward. "For whatever one knows a lot about as a child," as Kant put it, "he is certain later, as an adult, to be ignorant of, and the profound man in the end becomes the sophist of his youthful extravagance." 138

12

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

The "in itself." Formerly we asked: what is laughable? As if there were things outside us which carried the laughable as an attribute ... Now we ask: what is laughter? How does laughter originate? We have thought things over and finally realized, that there is nothing good, nothing beautiful, nothing sublime, nothing evil in itself; but instead that there are mental states in which we label things outside and inside us with such words. We have taken back the predicates of things, or at least we managed to remember that it was we who lent these predicates to them. Ill, 189-90 I Daybreak, IV, 210

Art reminds us of states of animal vigour; on the one hand, it is an excess

and overflow of blossoming corporeality into the world of images and desires; on the other, an arousal of the animal function through images and cravings of an intensified life; an elevation of the feeling of life, a stimulant to it. xn, 394 I tne Will to fbwer, 802

Whereas few would dispute the all-powerful influence Kant's Critique of Judgment exened on subsequent aesthetics, there is Martin Heidegger, himself one of this century's most influential aestheticians, to whom Hegel's Ulrlesungen aber dieAsthetik constitute "the most comprehensive reflection on the essence of art that the West possesses."t Heidegger is right at least in the sense that the Critique ofJudgment has next to nothing to say about art as such. Its overwhelming concern is with natural beauty which, somewhat paradoxically, is conceived of in analogy to the human work of an. Ambidexterously as elsewhere, Kant protests that this technic or "concept of nature as art,,2 is a strictly heuristic principle or "mere idea that serves as a principle for our investigation of nature,,,3 while also insisting that whatever human an has to its credit derives itself from nature. Only genius can produce great an, and genius acts as an often unconscious medium through which nature creates both human an as well as the rules to be derived from it. Genius, in other words, is the "innate mental predisposition [ingenium] through which nature gives the rule to art.,,4 Kant's formulations here foreshadow what Jung was to 169

170

The genealogy of aesthetics

say about the unpremeditated creativity of visionary art, which tells the artist what he did not know beforehand. 5 "Genius itself," Kant writes, cannot describe or indicate scientifically how it brings about its products, and it is rather as nature that it gives the rule. That is why, if an author owes a product to his genius, he himself does not know how he came by the ideas for it, nor is it in his power [GewaltJ to devise such products at his pleasure, or by following a plan. 6

Clearly, Kant is convinced of the "superiority of natural beauty over that of art."7 His prime example for such superiority is birdsong, which "seems to contain more freedom !lDd hence to offer more to taste than human song, even when this human song is performed according to all the rules of the art of music."s Or take the instance of "the nightingale's enchantingly beautiful song" when imitated by "some roguish youngster who (with a reed or rush in his mouth) knew how to copy that song in a way very similar to nature's." Those deceived at first, will turn away from what they hear with impatience, even disgust, as soon as they realize the deception. For "in order for us to be able to take a direct interest in the beautiful as such, it must be nature, or we must consider it SO."9 Hence, the absolute need for art to conceal its art. For "art can be called fine [schon] art only if we are conscious that it is art while yet it looks to us like nature." to Hegel reverses Kant's emphasis. In his introductory lectures on aesthetics he categorically refuses to discuss "the beauty of Nature,"II alleging "that artistic beauty stands higher than nature": "For the beauty of art is the beauty that is born - born again, that is - of the mind; and by as much as the mind and its products are higher than nature and its appearances, by so much the beauty of art is higher than the beauty of nature." 12 Hence, Kant's nightingale mimicked by "some roguish youngster" serves Hegel, not to argue the superiority of natural over artistic beauty, but to prove the erroneousness of a doctrine purporting that art should be a mere "imitation of narure.,,13 In short, the creations of art, being an expression of mind, are superior to the productions of nature, which are physical only. "For everything spiritual is better than anything natural. At any rate, no existence in nature is able, like art, to represent divine ideals." 14 Hegel acknowledges Kant's Critique ofJudgment as "the starting point for the true conception of artistic beauty,,15 and adopts some of its most unpropitious features, such as Kant's fourfold categorization of the beautiful in terms of quality, quantity, relation, and modality. Thus, Kant's qualitative determination of an aesthetic judgment of taste about the beautiful as being "devoid of aD inreresr,,16 is reformulated as "devoid

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

171

of relation to our appetitive facuiry."17 Kant's qualitative definition of the beautiful as "what, without a concept, is liked universally,,,18 becomes that which "without a conception, Le. without a category of the understanding, is perceived as the object of universal delight."19 Relationally, beauty as an "object's form of purposiveness insofar as it is perceived in the object without the presentation ofa purpose,"20 is redefined as that which is "displayed to us as teleological."21 Modaliter, "what without a concept is cognized as the object of a necessary liking,,22 in Kant, becomes the "object of a necessary delight," "wholly without relation to conception, i.e. categories of the understanding,,23 in Hegel. However, Hegel finds fault with Kant's philosophical scheme in general. What Kant prized as his foremost critical achievement - to have discovered the unbridgeable gulf between our knowledge and reality per se - becomes his greatest error to Hegel. Thus Kant, in Hegel's view, "fell back again into the fixed antithesis of subjective thought and objective things.,,24 Hegel's judgment should be reversed. For, at least in a traditional sense, it was Hegel and, for that matter, some other of Kant's followers like Schelling and Fichte, who in their metaphysical theorizing fell back behind the Copernican revolution in philosophy.25 Speculating about God, providence, and the ~ltgeist, Hegel, as Kant might have put it, clearly tried to rebuild those castles in the empty sky whither the butterfly wings of metaphysics had raised philosophers before Kant. 26 One of the insights of philosophy, as Hegel writes with sovereign contempt for such caveats, is that "world history presents nothing else than the plan for providence": God rules the world; the content of his rule, or the execution of his plans is the history of the world. To grasp this plan is the task of philosophy of world history; its presupposition is that the ideal fulfils itself, that only what is appropriate to the idea has reality ... Philosophy wants to apprehend this content, grasp this reality of the divine idea and exonerate much maligned reality.l7

In spite of the strife and tragic suffering it entails, history "is essentially progress [ist wesentlich Forcschreiten]" rather than "the boring history of eternal return.,,28 No wonder, tragedy provided Hegel with his favorite instances of the kind of dialectical conflict, resulting in human suffering, through which the ~ltgeist works out its progress-oriented designs. Take Aeschylus' Oresteia or Sophocles' Antigone, to Hegel "two of the most sublime, and in every respect most consummate work[s] of art human effort ever produced."29 In either play, the dialectical conflict is between "the family as the natural ground of moral relations" and "the ethical life in its social universality.,,30 A thesis, "the family-right in so far as this is rooted in

172

The genealogy of aesthetics

the blood relation,"3! collides with its antithesis, the "public law of the State ... as the realization of the free and rational will.,,32 Next, an integrative compromise subsumes the thesis under its superior antithesis, forming a synthesis or the next thesis, one step up toward the ultimate self-realization of the spirit. In the Antigone, this takes the form of a conflict between the "public law of the State and the instinctive family law and duty towards a brother": "Each of these two sides realizes only one of the moral powers, and has only one of these as its content ... and the meaning of eternal justice is shown in this, that both end in injustice just because they are one-sided, though at the same time both obtain justice toO.,,33 Tragedies like Antigone and Oresteia present a special case of how art reveals God or the r.%ltgeist, as it unfolds through history. Meanwhile, all great art, to Hegel, offers perceptions of the divine in one way or another. More bluntly stated, "the content of art," as Hegel puts it, "is the Idea,,,34 while its beauty is "the sensory appearance of the idea.,,35 The crucial word here is "sensory," and with it comes the old Platonic rub. For the appearance of the idea, as it is bodied forth in art, is contaminated by art's "sensuous element.,,36 Hence Hegel's ranking of art's five major categories - architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry - follows the lessening of such contamination, with architecture pegged lowest and poetry highest. 37 Such generic divisions go hand in hand with a historical categorization according to which the development of art, like history itself, serves the progressive self-revelation of the ~ltgeist. Here Hegel distinguishes three stages - the symbolic, the classical, and the Romanticor "three relations of the Idea to its embodiment in the sphere of art.,,38 He might have counted in a prior fourth stage, that of a formless art which conveniently includes all that is non-European. "So, for example, the Chinese, Indians, and Egyptians in their artistic shapes, their forms of deities, and their idols, never got beyond a formless phase, or one of a vicious and false definiteness of form, and were unable to attain genuine beauty; because their mythological ideas ... were as yet indeterminate in themselves, or of a vicious deterrninateness.,,39 But such formless art, as it allegedly lacks all proper grasp of the Idea, is simply nonart. As Hegel puts it, "defectiveness ofform arises from defectiveness of coment.,,40 Properly, that is, Eurocentrically speaking, the beginning of art coincides with "the Symbolic form of art" in which "the abstract Idea has its outward shape external to itself.,,41 Symbolic art, par excellence, then, is the fine art of building structures of stone, which, progress-oriented as all else, pioneers the next stage or "way for the adequate realization"42 of the divine in sculpture. This happens when God, in a "lighming-flash of individuality," enters the temples which had "endowed [the external world] with symmetrical order and with affinity to mind."43 In classical sculpture,

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

173

the divine takes human shape which, for reasons stated as apodictically as all else, is "the sole sensuous phenomenon that is appropriate to mind."" At this point, art comes up sharply against its old Platonic limits. So far, Hegel had avoided Plato's condemnation of art as an imitation offalse reality by following leads from both Plotinus and Aristode. Repudiating the notion of mimesis,45 he makes art embody the Idea,46 and judges its success according to whether or not it manages to bring out its subject maner's teleological drive toward self-perfection by way of supplementing the "defect[s1 of nature.,,47 Hence art must never present us with a "vision of absolute evil and depravity" like Shakespeare's King Lear, nor indulge in "the humor of the abominable thing" like the narratives by Hegel's contemporary E. T. A. Hoffmann.48 Yet for all of Hegel's efforts to give art a positive function in the service of the mitgeist, his distaste for art's "sensuous element" is as powerful as Plato's. Though art, like religion and philosophy, is "simply a mode of revealing to consciousness and bringing to unerance the Divine Nature,"49 its truths, Hegel warns us, are "contaminated and infected by the immediate sensuous element,,50 of its subject maner and medium. Art, then, is the more perfect, the more it minimalizes such contagion. The "sensuous aspect of the work of art," in other words, has a right to existence by mere default, that is, "only in as far as it exists for man's mind.',51 Rather than just avoid arousing the senses, it must actively suppress such arousal. ';2 It must tame the art consumer's savageness by delivering him "from the power of sensuousness.,,53 In his fervor, Hegel even revitalizes the nonsensical split behind the higher and lower senses which Kant's more conscientious thinking had successfully eluded. Since art's sensuousness presents us with a mere "semblance of the sensuous," Hegel argues, the so-called "sensuous aspect of art only refers to the two cheoretical senses of sight and hearing, while smell, taste, and feeling remain excluded from being sources of artistic enjoyment. For smell, taste, and feeling have to do with matter as such, and with its immediate sensuous qualities; smell with material volatilization in air, taste with the material dissolution of substance, and feeling with warmth, coldness, smoothness, etc.,,54 To Hegel, art's tension-ridden existence between spirituality and sensuousness partakes of a more general rift cutting across human life in general, namely the old "batde of the spirit against the flesh."55 Allegedly, this struggle has "disquieted the human consciousness" since time immemorial. But it was only modern culture which forced it up "to the point of most unbending contradiction.,,56 Modern culture here means Kant's neo-Calvinistic concept of duty, according to which man has to realize an ultimately unfathomable and unanainable absolute.

174

The genealogy of aesthetics

Hegel catches the Kafkaesque paradoxicality of this concept in defining Kant's duty as "the law of the will, which man nevertheless lays down freely out of his own self, and then is supposed to determine himself to this duty for duty'S and its fulfilment's sake, by doing good solely from the conviction which he has attained that it is good."57 Equally Kantian, to a fault, is Hegel's characterization of this duty for duty'S sake as "the direct antithesis of nature, the sensuous impulses, the self-seeking interests, the passions, and of all that is comprehensively entitled the feelings and the heart.,,;8 However, there is a major difference. Kant, at least in Hegel's view, proposes a "fixed antithesis,,,s9 in Which the practical accomplishment of duty remains "a mere ought deferred to infinity.,,60 By contrast, Hegel himself would like to see this "fixed antithesis of the will in its spiritual universality to its sensuous natural particularity,,61 resolved here and now. In fact, it is philosophy's task to show how such a resolution is accomplished by the dialectical dynamics of world history, helped along partly by the ~ltgeist and partly by human effort. 62 To Hegel, this task not only spelt "the reawakening of philosophy in general," but a similar renaissance for art and aesthetics. For it is "this reawakening to which alone aesthetic as a science owes its true origin, and art its higher estimation."63 Contrary to such claims, the results derived from Hegel's dialectical philosophy for art, as we know, are more disheartening ones. For how could art, given the ineluctably sensuous components of medium and content, possibly keep up with the mitgeist's increasingly spiritual selfrevelation in human history? Granted that art, by way of adapting itself to this process, can deemphasize, expunge, purge, or repress its "sensuous element" to the point of mere nonexistence. For instance, it can move away from earthbound, three-dimensional media like architecture and sculpture, toward the two-dimensional, strictly visual medium of painting,64 thus liberating "art from the sensuous completeness in space which attaches to material tbings"65 as it happened after the classical period. Pursuing the same trend toward spiritualization even further, it can put prime emphasis on the "temporal ideality" of music 66 as well as on "the abstract spirituality of poetry.,,67 This, according to Hegel, is what happens in Romantic art which allegedly expresses the Christian sense of "god as Spirit," just as classical art bodied forth the less advanced, anthropomorphic sense of the divine in human shape current among the Greeks. Yet at this point, with art's "sensuous appearance" sunk into virtual "worthlessness,,,68 we have also reached the stage of art's self-elimination. It is as if the Platonic repudiation of art were celebrating its ultimate triumph. Art, though seemingly salvaged from Plato's strictures, is made

Hegel, Fcuerbach, and Marx

175

to commit suicide in the very effort to emulate the spiritual. Meanwhile, aesthetics, suddenly superior to art itself, celebrates art's demise in a resounding funeral oration. Art has outlived its usefulness vis-a-vis the Christian conception of truth, and even more so, regarding "the spirit of our modern world."69 It has become incompatible with "the highest mode assumed by man's consciousness of the absolute."7o It bas become "a thing of the past."7) To make us realize this fact, a proper, that is, Hegelian "science of art is a much more pressing need in our day than in times in which art, simply as art, was enough to furnish a full satisfaction."72 We bave entered the age of modem aesthetics, with Hegel, in up-to-date Platonic fashion, providing his followers with what, to Heidegger, remains "the most comprehensive reflection on the essence of art that the West possesses."n No wonder Engels called the Hegelian system "a colossal miscarrlage."74 The reasons are well known. Hegel, following a transvaluation of values going back to Plato, had turned things upside down. 75 "Hegel was an idealist ... and completely reversed the actual connection of things in the world.,,76 One of Marx's major achievements, to Engels, had been to revaluate what was transvaluated, reverse what had been inverted. As Engels recalled in 1886, "it had become necessary to abolish this ideological inversion. Rather than viewing real things as copies of this or that step of the absolute idea, we once again understood the copies in our beads ... as copies of real things." As a result, "Hegel's dialectic was turned on its bead, or rather turned back on its feet from baving stood on its bead.,m Marx, in The Holy Family of 1845, explains the "mystery of speculative ... Hegelian construction" in detail. "If from real apples, pears, strawberries and almonds I form the general idea 'Fruit,'" he writes, I ... declare apples, pears, almonds, etc., to be mere forms of existence, modi, of "Fruit." My finite understanding supported by my senses does of course distinguish an apple from a pear and a pear from an almond, but my speculative reason declares these sensuous differences inessential and irrelevant ... Particular real fruits are no more than semblances whose true essence is "the substance" - "Fru;r.',78

Circumstantial and sardonic, the example shows Marx's transformational or, as he put it, "ruthless criticism ofeverything existing"79 at its best. How does the speculative Hegelian philosopher find his way back from the reductive abstraction "Fruit" to the real pears, apples, and almonds of the world? By relinquishing the abstraction, "but in a speculative, mystical fashion - with the appearance of not relinquishing it."sO The abstraction "Fruit," he tells us, "is not dead, undifferentiated, motionless, but a

176

The genealogy of aesthetics

living, self-differentiating, moving essence." In other words, the "different ordinary fruits" become "different manifestations of the life of the 'one Fruit''': in the apple "the Fruit" gives itself an apple-like existence, in the pear a pear-like existence ... Hence what is delightful in this speculation is to rediscover all the real fruits there, but as fruits which have a higher mystical significance, which have grown out of the ether of your brain and not out of the material earth, which are incarnations of" the Fruit," of the Absolute Subject. 81

The development which led Marx to transvaluate such philosophizing was full of its own reversals, with poetry and art being central to his early intellectual concerns. As a student in Bonn, he frequented a poets' circle around Emanuel Geibel, and wrote a tragedy, part of a humoristic novel (a la Laurence Sterne and E. T. A. Hoffinan),82 numerous poems, ballads and romances, as well as a few satiric epigrams. The latter depict Hegel as a "pigmy,"83 singling out his aesthetics for special derision. 84 A poet about to discover the distant fairy palace in the realm of true poesy,85 and deeply committed to the ideals of German Romanticism, Marx: resented Hegel's conformity to the status quo as well as his obscurantist verbiage. "Words 1 teach," as Marx makes Hegel say, "mixed in a demoniacally confused machinery / So that each can think what he likes." "1 tell you everything, in telling you 'Nothing.' ,,86 Philosophically convincing or not, Marx: thus had found his way toward an inverting ofidealist metaphysics ala Hegel before coming under the influence of another onetime Hegelian, Ludwig Feuerbach. 87 Nonetheless, the latter's Essence of Christianity (1841) struck both Marx: and Engels as a major revelation. As Engels remembered in 1886: "The spell was broken: the 'system' was shattered and thrown aside ... No one can have an idea of the liberating influence of the book unless he himself experienced it. The enthusiasm was universal: instantly, we all turned 'Feuerbachians.",88 Writing in January 1842, Marx: registered the immediacy of this impact with even greater, quasi-Nietzschean emphasis. 89 Feuerbach, contrary to what he thought of his own philosophy,90 is hailed as the Antichrist. "Shame on you, Christians," Marx: writes, "that an Antichrist has to show you the essence of Christianity in its true, undisguised appearance! ... there is no other way towards truth and free~m for yOU than through the Fire-brook. The Firebrook is the PurgatoriUtn of the present time.,,91 Such praise which Marx reiterated over se\7eral yearS seems exorbitant considering Feuerbach's semimystical preachiness, lack of terminological precision, and his mania for defining and redefining a handful of concepts like God and love. But Feuerbach offered something Marx: had been

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

177

searching for without fully attaining his goal - a radical blueprint for a transvaluation of values in the area of religion which Marx could carry into other fields like economics, general ideology, and aesthetics. To Feuerbacb, Christian religion and philosophy stem from a fundamental estrangement or self-division of man. 92 Man rejects his body, his senses, and his sexuality in order to posit himself as a strictly spiritual homo positivus in God. He humbles himself in the body so as to raise bimselfup in the spirit. 93 He repudiates the joys of life, hoping for the joys of the hereafter. 94 The founding notion of Christianity, to quote Heine's proto-Feuerbacbian phrase, was the "annihilation of sensuality."95 As Feuerbach put it (refunctioning Hegel's notion of man's estrangement from the Spirit), man had become alienated96 from the body. Feuerbach's major endeavor, then, was to dis alienate man by reversing what had been inverted. His favorite expressions for the Nietzschean "revaluate [umwenen]," are "to turn around [umkehren],,97 and "to substitute [austauschen]." Hegelian terminology provides him with the parameters of his inversions. Christianity's subject (or God), to him, becomes the predicate, and the predicate (or man) the subject. 98 In search of the truth, the oracles and countertruths ("or truths disguised as their opposites") have to be turned around. 99 So-called theology - de facto, a mystical and erroneous anthropology - has to be replaced by real anthropology and psychology, even pathology. 100 Where traditional philosophy like Hegel's had necessarily lapsed back into theology, the new philosophy amounted to a "complete, absolute, and uncontradictory dissolution of theology into anthropology."IOI Primary in this endeavor was the demystification of the traditionally posited supremacy of mind over matter, soul over body. Given this basic assumption, Feuerbach rarely engages in argument. Instead, he announces his findings in quasiprophetic fashion, or turns inside out key formulas of his philosophical predecessors. "Cogitacur Deus ergo est."102 "Religion is a dream in which our own imaginings appear as creatures outside ourselves.,,103 "Personality, Selthood, consciousness outside nature is nothing or an empty abstraction without existence ... The body is the ground, the subject of persOPIa/icy." 104 What is the secret of nature other than the secret of the body? Do you know any other existence, any other essence of nature than bodily existence, than bodily essence? But isn't the highest, the most genuine and vital body the body ofjlesh and blood? ... But isn't the strongest ... drive of nature the sex drive? ... Whoever then declares . .. the sensual pleasure [l.usc] felt with the mingling of the Besh to be the result of hereditary sin ... only acknowledges the dead, not the living flesh. lOS

178

The genealogy of aesthetics

Feuerbach thought of his philosophy as a radical departure from the old. The traditional philosopher, in his view, constantly quarreled with his senses so as to protect his abstract concepts from bodily pollution, arguing, "I am an abstract, exclusively thinking creature. The body does not belong to my essence." The new philosopher starts from the opposite premise: "I am a real, a sensual being." He tells himself: "the body belongs to my being; nay, the body in its totality is my ego, it is my very essence." 106 Not without reason, Marx later criticized Feuerbach's "contemplative materialism" as being unduly limited to religion and as failing to "comprehend sensuousness as practical activity.,,107 Meanwhile, there are isolated passages, obviously overlooked by the critic, in which Feuerbach, especially when talking about art, suggests both a broadening of his approach as well as a proto-Marxist understanding of praxis. According to The Essence 0/ Christianity, for instance, all our so-called mental powers, including wit, ingenuity, phantasy, emotion, perception, and reason are cultural products, or, more specifically, products of human society. Thus personal encounters and conflicts produce wit and originality; linguistic exchanges engender reason; emotional relations bring forth sentiments, phantasy, and poetry. lOS Feuerbach also makes an astute analysis of traditional depictions of the Madonna as expressions of a repressed sexuality. 109 More generally speaking, our traditional understanding of art, he suggests, has to be subjected to the same transvaluation of values as religion and philosophy. His essay entitled "Against the Dualism of Body and Soul, Flesh and Spirit" suggests a strategy for such inversion by first quoting from and then commenting upon the "Dualism" entry from a contemporary encyclopedia. "What a difference," states the latter, "between the feeling for the good and beautiful and the feeling for the sweet and sour on the tongue." A difference indeed, counters Feuerbach, but hardly one to make us attribute one feeling to a sensual, the other to a supersensual being! "For doesn't the stomach of an educated human being differ from that of a primitive one? Where the fine arts flourish, do not the culinary arts flourish there as well?" 110 Altogether, idealistic aesthetics had to be substituted by its opposite. The former, like Hegel's, defined art's subject matter as mind, the absolute, the divine. It only tolerated art's sensualness as an inevitable evil. The new aesthetics had to endorse the very opposite - art's appeal to the senses and emotions, as well as its revealing a "truth of sensuality," in which even the divine, as in Greek art, becomes an object of sensual embodiment and contemplation. III Marx's discovery of Feuerbach's Essence of Christianity, which in late January 1842 he hails as the book of the Antichrist, coincided with the

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

179

high point of his collaboration with Bruno Bauer (with whom he shared lodgings in Bonn during the earlier pan of the same year).lI2 Already, Marx had helped Bauer put together The Trumpet 0/ the Last Judgment Denouncing Hegel the Atheist and Antichrist (1841), a book that sharpened his critical understanding of Hegel while convincing him of the need for a radical transvaluation of Hegelian values. For in its back-handed fashion, Bauer's book had provided just such a reversal. Thus its author assumes the disguise of a pietist warning his spiritual brethren that Hegel's doctrine constitutes a worse threat to religion than that posed by the New Hegelians like David Strauss and Bruno Bauer himself. 1l3 In the same vein, Hegel is said to have been a "a great friend of Greek religion" precisely because Greek religion was no religion at all. "He calls it the religion of beauty, of art, of freedom, ofhumanity."114 Bauer voiced similar ideas in Hegel ~ Doctrine 0/ Religion and A rt (1842), to which Marx was supposed to contribute the section on an. liS Christian religion, Bauer writes, struck the real Hegel as too somber, the Christian God as too much of a "surly, ominous, and jealous tyrant," and his worshipper as too much of "a self-serving slave." The only true religion, to this radicalized Hegel, was "the religion of art, in which man worships himself." 11 6 More generally speaking, Greek religion was as favorable to an as Christianity was inimical to it. Man's slavish dependence on a despotic Christian God deprived him of his human freedom - the true prerequisite for the creation of beauty, art, and form. Sacred art neglects form, having the divine reveal itself in the fetishistic materiality of an unformed object. I 17 Nothing came of Marx's contribution to Bauer's volume, except an independent essay "on Christian an," subsequently changed into one "about religion and an, in special relation to Christian an." Meanwhile, Marx was increasingly trying to free himself from the "irksome captivity of Hegel's mode" as well as from Bauer's peculiar "trumpet sound." I IS Towards the end of April 1842 we find him writing two further articles, one "about the Romantics," the other, a piece approaching booksize proportions, about "religious art," which, as he wrote to Ruge, had sidetracked him into multiple areas of investigation that would need more time to complete. 119 None of these efforts survived in manuscript, let alone print. All that has come down to us are notices of the books which Marx, then and earlier as a student, studied in the process. 120 Later attempts at formulating an aesthetics and lor writing literary criticism remained similar non sequiturs but left behind an ever growing trail of reading lists, excerpts from the books Marx studied, or marginal notes, comments, and underlinings in tomes from Marx's own library. Such abortive projects include a study of Balzac, whose socioeconomic insights

180

The genealogy of aesthetics

he valued beyond those of any other novelist,121 an extensive review of Heine's book about Borne,122 and, most notably, an entry on aesthetics for the New American Cyclopedia of 1857. \23 The latter project made him resume his systematic research via various encyclopedias as well as original works like F. T. Vischer's three-volume Aesthetics or Science of the Beautiful (1846-57) and E. Miiller's history of ancient Greek aesthetics (1834-37). Back in 1841-42, his excerpts had focused on comments on religious fear as a destroyer of artistic creativity, as well as on Rumohr's and de Brosses' observations on fetishistic art as circumscribed by an object's crude materiality, observations later applied to capitalist society's semireligious relation to its cOllHllodities. 124 Now in 1857, Marx concentrated on the aesthetic theorizing of a host of thinkers like Batteux, Dubos, Hutcheson, Hogarth, Burke, Baumgarten, Jean Paul, Sulzer, and especially Kant. Via Eduard MUller he also acquired an astonishingly comprehensive lmowledge of the ideas about beauty and art put forward by Xenophon, Plato, and Aristode. But once again he failed to produce the planned results. There has been debate as to whether the 1857 "Aesthetics" entry in the New American Cyclopedia was or was not written by Marx. To argue that it was presupposes a degree of opportunistic and/or perverse self-misrepresentation on Marx's part not borne out by any of his nonapocryphal writings. The existing encyclopedia piece ostensibly reflects a mindset prior to the general transvaluation of values which by the mid-forties had begun to determine all of Marx's philosophical speculations, including his random observations on beauty, art, and literature. What is "really beautiful or a work of art," it states, must "betray ideas, [and1 have an ideal background." Though the anonymous author complains about the lack of a "complete and satisfactory work on aesthetics," he is convinced that the laws of taste are "capable of being reduced to a scientific system." This can be done on the "same foundation of human nature" determining the laws oflogic and ethics; that is according to a tripartite division of human nature, "recognized by the soundest psychologists" - into "the capacities of knowing, acting, and feeling, or the intellect, will, and sensibility, to which correspond respectively the ideas of the true, the good, and the beautiful." Following this blueprint of human nature, a science of aesthetics would bear "the same relation to sensibility, that logic does to intellect, and ethics to will." Thus logic determines the laws of thinking; ethics the laws of acting; and aesthetics the laws of feeling. Truth is the ultimate aim of thought; good the ultimate aim of action; and beauty the ultimate aim of sensibility. 125 As we shall see, there is hardly an idea here that is not completely at odds with their transformational counterparts in Marx. What is more, the

Hegel, Feuerbach, and Marx

181

anonymous author of the encyclopedia piece shows no awareness of how concepts like truth, goodness, and beauty, short of being mere nonsense words, have to be traced back to their scientifically documentable or, at least, imagined origins in the mind/brain. The passage also lacks a sense of how our traditional understanding of the good, true, and beautiful stems from a reversal of earlier, nonessentialist valuations - a transvaluation associated with Platonism and the rise of Christianity. It is in the first of these areas, that of the genealogy of our aesthetic notions, that Marx and Engels made their most fruitful contribution to a yet to be formulated, nonascetic aesthetics.

13

Marx's Nietzschean moment

There are corpOTeal states- only: the mental ones are mere symptoms and symbols. X,358

In short, perhaps the entire evolution [Entwicklung] of the mind hinges upon the body. It is the history, rising into sentUmcy [die /iihlbar werdmde Geschichte), of the formation of a high4r body. The organic rises to even higher elevations. Our desperate longing [Gier) to understand nature is a means by which the body strives to penect itself. Or rather, hundreds of thousands of experiments are being carried out to modify the body's sustenance, dwelling conditions, and mode of life. Its consciousness, concomitant value judgments, all kinds of pleasure and displeasure are symbols [Anzeichen) of these modifications and experiments. X, 655

Marx's counterpart to the Nietzschean will to power, in defining human nature, is man's conscious labor and production. His self-awareness in pursuing his life-activity distinguishes man from his animal ancestors. "The animal is immediately one with its life-activity. It does not distinguish itself from it. It is its life-activity. Man makes his life-activity itself the object of his will and of his consciousness ... Conscious life-activity distinguishes man immediately from animal life-activity." I Even man's awareness of this productivity is originally a product of this animal life-activity. What comes first is body, not mind - man's feet, legs, arms, and especially his hands, man "appropriat[ing] the materiality of nature in a form useful to his life.,,2 Then, at some point, man stands back realizing what he has achieved: how he has learnt to repeat his strategies, developed so-called skills, and harnessed them to his intents. As a first theoretical act of reason, he has begun to count, to measure, to form mental concepts, to relate them to each other, to conceive of the products of his labor in terms of how he created them, and finally to produce the objects according to such preconceived "ideal" forms. In that sense, the poorest architect, as Marx. was to put it in Das Kapital, is "categorically distinguished from the best of bees by the fact that before he builds a cell 182

Marx's Nietzschean moment

183

in wax, he has built it in his head. The result achieved at the end ofa labor process was already present at its commencement, in the imagination of

che worker, in irs ideal form.,,3 Even at this late stage, Homo faber's creative imagination, his emotions, general sensitivity, including the functioning of his five senses, continue to be formed, refined, and altered by the bodily labors that gave rise to them to begin with: not only the five senses but also the so-called mental senses, the practical senses (will, love, etc.), in a word, human sense, the human nature of the senses, comes to be by virtue of irs object, by virtue of humanised nature. The forming of the five senses is a labor of the entire history of the world down to the present. 4

Via productive labor, man's nature undergoes a sea change. His inner being is turned into a battleground of multiple drives, desires, delights, and aversions. His five senses become more alert, self-consciously covetous, pleasure-driven, sophisticated. The evolution of an aesthetic sense for the beautiful at the core of all such refinement is part of the same process. HomerJaber turns Homo aesthetXus. 5 Yet even at the point where man isolates the beautiful as a primary rather than secondary quality of the manufactured object, the latter continues to enlarge, refine, and change his aesthetic sensibility. "The art object - just like any other product creates an aesthetically refined public capable of relishing beauty."6 A striking color contrast, a memorable turn of phrase, an innovative rhythm, a catchy melody create a desire for more of the same, or, if the latter has turned stale, a craving for change. 7 Such ideas, all of which Marx had developed by 1844, cry for further elucidation and expansion, which he unfortunately did not provide. Instead, the task fell to Engels, who by the late 1870s expatiated on his friend's protoevolutionary aesthetics in light of Darwin's and others' findings. Thus, consciously productive labor according to a deliberate sense of planning and measure, Engels suggests, would have started with Haeckel's Alali, a speechless ape-man Eugene Dubois would later equate with the Pithecanthropus erectus found in Java. 8 Drawing on Darwin's The Descent of Man (1871), Engels' essay "The Part Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man" (ca. 1876) gives a speculative account of the decisive moment when "the first flint was fashioned into a knife by human hands.,,9 This feat stems from a first division of labor, namely between the hands 'Vis-a-vis the feet as well as the rest of man's body. Homo erectus, in assuming an habitually upright posture, starts to perform countless new activities that no ape could carry out even today: "the hand had become free and could henceforth attain ever greater dexterity and skill, and the greater flexibility thus acquired was inherited and increased from

184

The genealogy of aesthetics

generation to generation."IO Looked at from a different angle, human labor diversified the skills of the hand before it gave birth to the more specifically human attributes of consciousness, intelligence, language, and artistic creativity. II Rather than via language and intelligence, ape evolved into man through manual labor. Thus, manual labor begot a more skillful hand which begot all else. In other words, "the sense of touch, which the ape hardly possesses in its crudest initial form, has been developed only side by side with the development of the human hand itself, through the medium of labor." 12 Recent research has thrown doubts on Engels' contention that "no simian hand has ever fashioned even the crudest of stone knives." 13 Tool manufacturing, presumably, was common both among early hominids and chimpanzees. The so-called Oldowan stone tools, dating back to over 1.5 million years ago, may have been produced by Homo habilis or by the more apelike australopithecus robustus. What seems to spell out the decisive divide between man and ape is the much later jump from strictly use-oriented manufacturing toward productions carrying the ostensible signs of a new awareness of, and delight in, attractiveness, measure, and fitness per se. This was a sensibility first developed by late Homo sapiens some 30,000 years ago. 14 How does this earliest evolution of civilization and art link up with the transvaluation of values discussed earlier? Nietzsche, in order to explain a similar development, talks about the dynamics of ressentiment; Marx, at least in his early phase, talks about the process of alienation (Enifremdung). To suggest such a parallel is not to ignore the in many ways oppositional connotations of the two concepts. Put most simply, ressentimenl is vindictiveness born from repression, self-torment, and envy. It causes the oppressed to invert the original valuations ofgood noble and bad slavish, and, after the overthrow of the nobility, to impose that inversion (good = slavish; evil = noble) on their former masters as well as on society at large. By contrast, Entfremdung results from the division of labor as well as the rise of private property. Its first victims are the dispossessed as they carry out increasingly mechanical tasks and become more and more estranged from the fruits of their labor. Yet ultimately, alienation spares no one. Largely unconscious like ressentimenl, it causes the powerful to dream up moral, religious, legal, philosophical, and aesthetic valuations which, though primarily justifications of the status quo, are forced upon society as objective, or divinely sanctioned, truths. Like Nietzsche, Marx repeatedly rejected such eternal "ideas" as mere fabrications,15 just as he was eager to ferret out their secularized equivalents in contemporary philosophy and economic theory. Following Feuerbach, he holds that "philosophy is nothing else but religion

=

=

Marx's Nietzschean moment

185

rendered into thought," and hence just another mode of the alienation of human nature. 16 He argues that even Pierre Proudhon, whose Qu'est-ce que La propriere he considered epoch-making even after he had subjected Proudhon's PhiJosophie de la misere to his scathing Misere de La philosophie,17 remained caught in the alienated ideologizing of more traditional economists such as Adam Smith or David Ricardo. 18 Both Nietzsche and Marx also highlight the strong antibody bias of traditional idealism, though once again for different reasons. To Nietzsche, ressentime711, if deprived of an active outlet, breeds self-mortification which is ultimately raised to the level ofa virtue (as is evident in Plato's notion of the prison house of the body from which we have to free ourselves in order to liberate our soul). To Marx, man's estrangement from the body stems from the division between corporeal and mental labor which, after men lost track of how their mental powers arose from bodily skills, is misrepresented as the prime mover and origin of all cultural achievements. Engels explains how the diversification of production caused "the more modest productions of the working hand" to retreat "into the background," making it appear as if all human creations were in the first place products of the mind. 19 Actual history under the aegis of Entfremdung and ressentiment displays similarly striking parallels. To both Marx and Nietzsche, albeit for different reasons, the transvaluation of values dominating western ideology to date, occurred around the "end of the ancient world," and is due to the ascendance ofJudeo-Christian over Greco-Roman values. A Jew himself, Marx proposed a revaluation of this earlier transvaluation by searching for "the secret of [Judaic] religion in the real Jew" rather than by seeking "the secret of the Jew in his religion."2o What, in other words, is "the profane basis of Judaism?" Marx's answer: "Practical need, self-inurest," and, as a result, "the supreme practical expression of human self-estrangement,,21 manifest in money, "the jealous god of Israel.,,22 Christianity, rather than being the opponent of Judaism, is the latter's ultimate fulfillment, and has in its secularized form turned back to its origins.23 Art and beauty have not been exempt from these processes. Originally the targets of a primarily corporeal praxis and appreciation, they came to be misconceived in ideational terms. Art and beauty suffered the contortions of an original inversion of values which coincides with the dawn of the JudeoChristian era and "the end of the ancient world,,24 and which continues into Marx's own era. Thus Marx ridicules Bruno Bauer's "polemic against Feuerbach's sensuousness.,,25 Bauer's prurient puritanism 26 serves Marx as a welcome example to show how, what parades itself as forward-looking and enlightened, merely presents the old Judeo-Christian transvaluations in a new

186

The genealogy of aesthetics

disguise. Thus caricatured, criticism Ii La Bruno Bauer stands revealed as an exercise in Christian asceticism which Marx sums up in a collage of some twelve biblical citations. 27 Needless to say, Marx himself wholeheartedly endorsed Feuerbach's endeavor to rehabilitate sensuousness. He only differed about the methods. For Feuerbach had failed to comprehend sensuousness in its human and historical totality, as "practical, human-sensuous activity.,,28 Thus, antisensuousness had to be tackled at the roots; that is, alienation had to be disalienated by abolishing the present social order including private property. What had been transvaluated toward "the end of the ancient world,,29 had to be retransvaluated. The same applies to art and aesthetics. One step toward a retransvaluarion in that area had been taken by Locke's French disciple Condillac, who, in his Essai sur l'origine des connaissances humaines, had argued that "the art of sensuous perception," "the art of creating ideas," the senses themselves, and even the soul "are matters of experience and habit.,,30 Another, more influential, step was taken by Goethe, whose greatness, according to Engels, consisted in having accomplished the "emancipation of art from the fetters of religion.,,31 Goethe, and, to a lesser degree Heinrich Heine and Georg Werth, excelled in the "expression of natural, robust sensuousness and of the joys of the flesh (FleischesIUSl] ."32 The dreary alternative was the petit bourgeoisie's moral prudery, which, more often than not, was a mere disguise for subliminal obscenity. Reading the poet Freiligrath, one might convince oneself that "human beings had no genitals at all," Engels joked. And yet no one took greater pleasure in dirty little jokes than the man who was so ultravirtuous in his poems. It was high time, the 63-year-old Engels concluded, that at least the workers got used to talking about things they did daily and nightly - things that were natural, indispensable, and extremely pleasurable - with the same lack of embarrassment found in Homer, Plato, Horace, Juvenal, and the Old Testament. 33 Except for a few snide remarks, Marx and Engels said next to nothing about Kantian and Hegelian aesthetics. 34 Yet their general theorizing, as well as more specific hints like their mocking a Schiller-type escape from reality "into the Kantian ideal,,,35 allow us to conclude what they thought of it. Just like religion, philosophy, or jurisprudence, traditional aesthetics was the outgrowth of their age's socioeconomic conditions and, in capitalist society, the expression of an alienated consciousness justifying the status quo. Particularly self-serving in this respect was German idealistic thought, with its insistence on man's goodwill, disinterestedness, and obedience to categorical imperatives. Hidden behind such notions was the virtual impotence of the German burghers, with Kant, their whitewashing

Marx's Nietzschean moment

187

spokesman, providing the ideological equivalents of their wishful thinking. The Critique of Practical Reason, to Marx and Engels, more than all else reflected the politically oppressed "state of affairs in Germany at the end of the last century.,,36 No doubt, Marx and Engels viewed Kant's "disinterested pleasure" from a similarly caustic perspective. Much has been written about Marx's and Engels' theorizing that need not detain us here, like their endorsement of a realism a la Balzac and Shakespeare going beyond Tendenzliteratur or partisan writing; their neoHegelian sense of tragedy as dialectical confiict; or their hope for a postrevolutionary, communist society in which disalienated Homo ludens and aestheticus would enjoy full Selbstbetiitigung (or the free play of man's physical and psychological faculties).37 What, by contrast, has gained little or inappropriate attention are their critical readings of several texts and authors - a polemic plus parodistic activity that, especially during 1842-52, took up a large part of Marx's and Engels' literary endeavors. To mention a few of the major texts subjected to such "retransvaluative" probings, there is Hegel's Grundrisse tier Philosophie des Rechts,38 Max Stirner's Der Einzige und sein Eigentum,39 Pierre Proudhon's PhiJosophie de la misere,40 Ferdinand Lassalle's tragedy Franz von Sickingen,41 Carlyle's The Present Time and Latter-Day Pamphlets,42 Eugene Sue's Les Mysteres de Paris, as well as a review of that best-seller novel by a certain Szeliga. 43 For several reasons, his reading of Eugene Sue's Mysceres de Paris is Marx's most stunning piece of such analysis. The most detailed interpretation of any literary text in his amvre, it covers some seven dozen pages, roughly one-third of The Holy Family, his 1845 collaboration with Engels. Its multipronged strategies simultaneously unmask, parody, and dismantle, first, the novel's ideological subtext, second, the "speculative aesthetics,,44 informing a review of the novel by Bruno Bauer associate Szeliga, and, third, the metaphysical and/or theological parameters of that aesthetics as found in Hegel, Kant, and others. Perhaps the simplest one of these strategies is a fidelity of textual analysis that would have done any New Critic proud. One of several passages subjected to such close reading is from a monologue spoken by the maitre d'ecoie, a criminal and murderer. After having been blinded by the protagonist, Rudolph, Prince of Geroldstein, the schoolmaster finds himself chained in a dungeon, starved, tom at by rats, and maddened by his tormentors, goblin Tortillard and old witch Chouette, a person the maitre d'ecole had thought would stand by him to the end. However, by a reversal of fortune, Chouette is suddenly placed in the hands of the giantbodied criminal by the evil-intentioned Tortillard. The maitre d'ecole is about to murder Chouette. But, as he explains to her in great detail,

188

The genealogy of aesthetics

he will postpone that deed by a long-drawn-out ritual of torture, which includes gouging out her eyes. 45 Marx's close reading of the monologue reveals "a whole gamut of moral casuistry": His first words arc a frank expression of his desire for vengeance. He wants to give torture for torture. He wants to murder Chouette and he wants to prolong her agony by a long sermon. And - delightful sophistry! - the speech with which he tortures her is a sermon on morals. He asserts that his dream at Bouqueval [in which he saw the ghosts of all his murdered victims1 has improved him. At the same time he reveals the real effect of the dream by admitting that it almost drove him mad and that it will actually do SO:IO

Marx's textual analysis is informed by several theoretical premises he shared with Engels. Both favored an art unencumbered by ideological matrices, and both opposed the more program-oriented, or "tendentious" views and endeavors of some of their associates. 47 To Marx, John Milton produced Paradise Lost for the same reason for which the silkworm produces silk.48 Ruge's suggestion that Shakespeare was not a dramatic poet because he lacked a philosophical system like Kant-disciple Friedrich Schiller, aroused his unmitigated contempt. 49 Engels agreed. There was more "life and reality" in the first act of The Merry Wives of Windsor than in all of German literature. 50 Balzac presented a special case of such nonideological objectivity and insight. According to Engels, one learnt more about recent French history from the Comedie humaine than from all the "professed historians, economists, and statisticians of the period taken together.,,51 And what "revolutionary dialectics in his poetic justice!,,52 Similarly, Balzac's Paysans, to Marx, accurately described the increasing victimization of the small peasant, who, in order to secure the benevolence of his moneylender, performed for him numerous labors free of charge. These, he erroneously thought, did not cost him, whereas they defacto decreased his potential for salaried labor and hence enmeshed him more and more deeply in the deadly spider's web of usury. 51 Such sociopolitical understanding, to Engels, was the more puzzling since Balzac clearly sided with the old feudal order. His greatest insights, then, arose in spite of himself. His poetic genius compelled him "to go against his own class sympathies and political prejudices.,,54 Balzac's tales were greater than their teller. At least at times, the same applies to a lesser novelist like Sue, who for the most part projects his petit bourgeois philanthropic views with allegorical explicitness. Thus he has his characters reiterate the identical sentiments to indicate their role in this nineteenth-century psychomachia. He puts notices (Zettel) in his characters' mouths, as Marx puts it. 55 His personages, like Chorineur (whom Rudolph transformed

Marx's Nietzschean moment

189

from a murderer into a moralizing and self-sacrificing valet) or the maitre d'ecole, "must express, as the result of their thoughts, as the conscious motive of their actions, his [i.e. Sue's] own intention as a writer, which causes him to make them behave in a certain way and no other. They must continually say: I have reformed myself in this, in that, etc.": Having reponed the salutary effect of his Bouqueval dream, the mailre d'ecok must explain why Eugene Sue had him locked up in a cellar. He must find the novelist's procedure reasonable. He must say to Chouette: by locking me up in a cellar, causing me to be gnawed at by rats and to suffer hunger and thirst, you have completed my reform. Solitude has purified me. 56

Yet occasionally, even Sue's tale causes its teller to rise "above the horizon of his narrow world outlook.,,57 The schoolmaster's monologue offers a case in point. Thus, his behavior, even some of his earlier and later utterances - "the beastly roar, the wild fury, the terrible lust for vengeance with which [he] welcomes Chouette are in complete contradiction to this moralising talk. They betray what kind of thoughts occupied him in his dungeon."58 These contradictions multiply as the schoolmaster proceeds with his harangue. Realizing his own confusion, he now "declares that the 'infinite joy' of having Chouette in his power is precisely a sign of his reform, for his lust for vengeance is not a natural one but a moral one.,,59 Before he finally tortures Chouette to death, the maitre d'ecole goes through more reversals of the same kind. Pious, authorial sentiments and uncompromising expressions of the sadistic pleasure he hopes to reap from revenge swap places in ever more bizarrely conuadictory fashion. After a brief skuftle with Chouette, who unsuccessfully tries to get away from him, the schoolmaster resumes his sermon. 60 "Chouette must hear how he came by degrees to repentance.,,61 Sue's authorial hypocrisy compounds itself where his character is made to say that the salutary influence of his moral sermon has caused his fury to calm down. "So the maitre d'ecole now admits that his moral wrath was nothing but profane rage" - which lands Sue with yet another problem of motivation he proceeds to resolve as haphazardly as all previous ones. "Chouette wounds the maitre d'ecole with a dagger just in time. Eugene Sue can now let him kill her without any further moral casuistry."62 He scratches her eyes out, then, raging and raving like a frenzied beast, kills Chouette. 63 So far, Marx's close reading of the schoolmaster's monologue amounts to little more than the unveilirlg of certain authorial inconsistencies resulting in what could be read as a portrayal of sadistic impulses assuming the disguise of moral sentiments. However, his analysis does not stop there.

190

The genealogy of aesthetics

The schoolmaster, in what he tells Chouette, utters sentiments learnt in a process which has subjected his original nature to a complete transvaluation of values. In this, he and other of the novel's characters, such as Chorineur and Fleur de Marie, serve as guinea pigs to Prince Rudolph's philanthropic, social, and penal experiments. These transformations, which Sue and his reviewer Szeliga extol as models of humanitarian endeavor, but which Marx subjects to a protoNietzschean analysis, are most obvious in the story of Fleur de Marie. We first meet her as a prostitute in bondage to the proprietress of a tavern, surrounded by criminals. Yet in spite of her debasement, she has preserved "a human nobleness of soul, a human unaffectedness and a human beauty."64 Marx goes to considerable lengths in characterizing Fleur de Marie in the "original un-Critical form" preceding her "Critical reform,,,65 bursting, in spite of her frailty, with "vitality, energy, cheerfulness, resilience of character.,,66 Her original valuations of good and evil have little in common with "moral abstractions of good and evil.,,67 Evil about her is her situation. And why should she feel guilty about that? For good reason, Marie "measures her situation in life by her own individuality, her essential nature, not by the ideal of what is good.,,68 As yet, she has not learnt Christian morality. To Marx, author, we recall, of a doctoral thesis on Epicurus, the original Marie stands for a pre-Judeo-Christian worldview and morality. "She insists that she is not one 'to have fits of tears' ... Contrary to Christian repentance, she pronounces on [her] past the human sentence, at once Stoic and Epicurean, of a free and strong nature: 'Enfin ce qui est fait, est !ait.",69 For all of Marx's emphasis on Marie's human rather than aristocratic qualities, her transformation from a stoical and life-affirming pagan into a person "enslaved by the consciousness of sin,,7o follows strikingly Nietzschean lines. In this, Marx has his genealogy of morals begin where the Nietzschean ascetic priest has taken full control of society. As we recall, Nietzsche's ascetic priest is both the engineer and guardian of the transvaluation of values born from ressentiment. As such, he "must be sick himself, he must be deeply akin to all the shipwrecked and diseased.'>71 At the same time, he "must also be strong, master over himself . .. with a will to power that is intact.'>72 The result is a subtle compound of semiconscious hypocrisy, perversion, sadism, and, above all, vindictiveness. "Beside the brilliance of priestly vengeance all other brilliance fades,.. n Nietzsche writes. Dressed in the garb of quiet, virtuous resignation, lips overflowing with "noble eloquence" and "grandiose words,,,74 these "black magicians,,75 manage to distill the "white milk of loving-kindness out of every kind of blackness.,,76 In pursuit of their "rancorous machinations,"77 they love "hide-outs, secret paths, and back

Marx's Nietzschean moment

191

doors," in short, "everything that is hidden.,,78 "What dissimulation, in order not to betray that this is hatred!"79 And yet how much they "long to be the executioners! Among them are vindictive characters aplenty, disguised as judges, who carry the word justice in their mouths like a poisonous spittle."80 How does the ascetic priest make convertS and, then, take care of them? Naturally, he first and foremost vents his vindictiveness on whatever is "generally felt to be most sure and most real,"81 his "pursed lips, ready to spit on all who do not look discontent, on all who go cheerfully about their business."S2 Another trick is to make these happy and healthy ones attribute whatever human misery they may experience to a sense of sinfulness and guilt. The future convert, ready to blame such unhappiness on someone else, is told: "'You are quite right ... somebody must be at fault here, but that somebody is yourself. You alone are to blame.' ,,83 Where they helped themselves or got assistance from others, converts are urged to look for salvation in an ever intensifying spiral of repentance, consciousness-vivisection, and self-loathing. For "only the suffering, sick, and ugly," as their shepherd will tell them, are "'truly blessed.'" Those they used to be, '''will be, to all eternity, the evil, the cruel, the avaricious, the godless, and thus the cursed and damned!,,84 In making convertS, the ascetic priest aggravates rather than remedies his followers' illness. Everything around him "that is sound becomes sick and all that is sick tame." "To be sure, he carries with him balms and ointments, but in order to cure he must first create patients. And even as he alleviates the pain of his patients he pours poison into their wounds."s') Marx says similar things of Fleur de Marie's conversion at the hands of her "saviour" Rudolph. The Prince first transforms the young woman "into a repentant sinner, then the repentant sinner into a nun and finally the nun into a corpse."S6 In addition to the Prince - the first to instill Marie with "a vague consciousness of [her] degradation,,87 - Marx notes at least three further embodiments of the ascetic priest in Les Mysteres de Paris. First and foremost, there is the "grey-headed slave of religion"88 and "wretched priest"S9 Laporte, then the "unhappy, hypochondriacal religious woman,,,90 Madame George, and, last but not least, Eugene Sue himself, who after briefly rising "above the horizon of his narrow world outlook,,91 in portraying the unreformed Marie, hands her over to his hero Rudolph so that the latter may reap his guaranteed applause "from all old men and women, from the whole of the Paris police, from the current religion and from 'Critical Criticism,,92 ala Szeliga. It is especially the "heartless priest,,93 Laporte who prefigures most of the characteristics of his Nietzschean counterpart. Brimming over with

192

The genealogy of aesthetics

"unctuous eloquence,,94 and "hypocritical sophisuy,"95 he is full of inhuman brutality96 and vindictive spite. Before he starts reforming Marie, "he has already condemned her.,,97 His successive strategies are to deprive Marie of her natural joyfulness, to make her feel shame and sinfulness, convince her of the need of penance, as well as to plunge her into a despair of knowing herself damned in a way redeemable by God's grace alone. 98 "The priest must soil her in her own eyes, he must trample underfoot her natural, spiritual resources and means of grace, in order to make her receptive to the supernatural means of grace he promises her.,,99 The process is slow, but relendess, working its way through Marie's unsuspecting good nature like a deadly poison. Understandably, she finds it difficult to fathom "the evil meaning of the priest's exhortations," as when he tells her about God's infinite mercy. But the priest is quick "to desuoy [her] unorthodox illusion"loo of being able to reunite herself with God by merely thinking so. Even after Laporte and Madame George have all but completed the "religious transformation of her thoughts" in making her realize the "infinite depth of [her] damnation," 101 Marie keeps protesting. Why, since her new "consciousness of good and evil had to be so frightful for" her, was she not left to her "wretched lot,,?102 Though Laporte's "priestly curse uttered in ... honeyed tones" leaves her deeply wounded, she is "not yet stupid enough to be satisfied with eternal bliss and forgiveness up above," exclaiming: "Pity, pity, my God! ... I am so young ... [siC) Malheur a moil,,103 This is the decisive turning point. As Laporte moves in for the final kill, "the hypocritical sophistry of the priest reaches its peak." Each of her sufferings, he tells Marie, will be "counted up above." God abandoned her to the path of evil "only to reserve for [her] the glory of repentance and the eternal reward due to atonemenc."I04 Marie's "Christian crucijixWn,"105 of which the gold cross earlier given to her by Rudolph was only a symbol, has been completed. Marie has been "enslaved by the consciousness of sin ..,106 All of Marie's original nature has been turned inside out, all her values inverted and perverted. Her "immediate naive pleasure in the beauties of nature" has been changed "into a religious admiration. For her, nature has ... become devout, Christianised nature, debased to creation. The transparent sea of space is desecrated and turned into the dark symbol of stagnant ezernity.,,107 Likewise with everything else. "She has ... learnt that all human manifestations of her being were 'profane,' devoid of religion, of real consecration, that they were impious and godless."I08 In the care shown to her by others, "Marie must not see a natural, selfevident attitude of a related human being to her ... She must see in it an extravagant, supernatural, superhuman mercy and condescension." 109

Marx's Nietzschean moment

193

Along lines Marx's interpretation borrows from Feuerbach's "brilliant expositions" on religion,llo she "must ttanscendentalise all human and natural relationships by making them relationships to God."lll As a result, her former Stoicism and Epicureanjoie de vivre is uprooted by "continual hypochondriacal self-torture" and "remorse."l12 "Her human love must be transformed into religious love, the striving for happiness into striving for eternal bliss, worldly satisfaction into holy hope, communion with people into communion with God."113 Most of all, Marie learns to reverse her pagan concepts of good and evil. She is made to take part in the vaudeville show of Rudolph's psychomachia, with the Prince playing the self-appointed role of providence, dividing people into good and evil, persecuting the "evil" and rewarding the "good,,;114 or she is coerced into associating the good with Rudolph's catalog of hypocritical values such as "chance," "devouement," and "abnegation." 115 As a result, Marie enters a monastery where, thanks to Rudolph's intrigues, she is promoted to abbess. But ultimately "convent life does not suit Marie's individuality - she dies." The real aim of Rudolph's philanthropic endeavor has been accomplished. He has changed Marie from a life-affirming, strong, and uncomplaining young woman, first, "into a repentant sinner, then the repentant sinner into a nun and finally the nun into a corpse.,,116 The effect of Rudolph's cures on others is similar. Just as he "kills Fleur de Marie by handing her over to the priest and consciousness of sin," and "Chorineur by robbing him of his human independence and degrading him into a bulldog, so he kills the maitre d'ecole by having his eyes gouged out in order that he can learn to 'pray.',,117 Marx's German for "kill" is "entleiben," which literally means "deprive of the body." For Rudolph's (alias Sue's) new penal theory prioritizes spiritual discipline over corporal punishment. It aims at disciplining the body mainly in order to save the criminal's soul. Both Sue and his hero want "to link vengeance on the criminal with penance, and consciousness of sin in the criminal, corporal punishment with spiritual punishment, sensuous torture with the nonsensuous torture of remorse. Profane punishment at the same time must be a means of Christian moral education."118 One method to achieve this is the "complete and absolute application of solitary confinement," 119 another, its physical equivalent, the blinding of the criminal who, like the maitre d'ecole, will thereby be plunged "into impenetrable night" and left "alone with the memory of [his] ignominious deeds."l2o What Sue hails as the latest achievement of humanitarian enlightenment, draws on some of the oldest western traditions, such as "Methodist solitary conjinement,,121 and the widespread blinding practiced "in the thoroughly Christian empire of Byzantium" or in early Germany, France,

194

The genealogy of aesthetics

and England}22 In Marx's view, "cutting man off from the perceptible outer world, throwing him back into his abstract inner nature in order to correct him - blinding - is a necessary consequence of the Christian doctrine according to which the consummation of this cutting off, the pure isolation of man in his spiritualistic 'ego; is good itselj.,,123 What hides behind such inverted values is a perversion of human nature most clearly manifest in those who subject others to their dubious cures. While his friend, the negro doctor David, blinds the maitre d'ecole, Rudolph "is seated in a most comfortable study in a long, deep black dressing gown."124 Rudolph, in short, is a far more genuinely evil person than all the sinners and criminals he reforms. "Burning with desire for revenge, thirsting for blood, with calm, deliberate rage, with a hypocrisy which excuses every evil impulse with its casuistry, he has all the evil passions for which he gouges out the eyes of others." 125 What do Rudolph's magical cures accomplish, except that they send their beneficiaries like Chorineur and Fleur de Marie to an untimely grave? Le maitre d'ecole, who has the misfortune to survive his cure, ends up acting and talking like the specular image of his pervert savior. We have seen how, in preaching morality to the person he is about to torture to death, he "copies the hero Rudolph not only outwardly, by scratching out Chouette's eyes, but morally too by repeating Rudolph's hypocrisy and embellishing his cruel treatment with pious phrases.,,126 Needless to say, the mirror image is a distorted one. For Rudolph's schizophrenic sentiments are endorsed by society, and hence strengthen his sense of self. The schoolmaster's sentiments are not, and hence drive him mad, incidentally suggesting a "connection between Christian consciousness of sin and insanity."127 The schoolmaster's final descent into madness also provides Marx with a proto-Freudian example of the dangers of repression. Instead of Freud's ~rdrangung, equally absent from analogous analyses in, say, The Genealogy of Morals, Marx uses the more Nietzschean asketisch iibermannen ("ascetically overpower"). The parallels are remarkable. Too much repression entails all the more turbulent eruptions of the repressed emotions, argues Marx. "When the nature of the maitre d'ecole, which has been only hypocritically, sophistically disguised, only ascetically repressed (asketisch iibermannt) by Rudolph's cure, breaks out, the outburst is all the more violent and terrifying." 128 In sum, Marx unmasks diverse moral, religious, and social valuations forming the silent and/or explicit subtext of Sue's novel. More specifically, he shows how Rudolph, in playing the providential Christian savior, 129 reenacts a former transvaluation of values whereby original pagan, or, as Marx suggests, Stoical and Epicurean, values are transformed into

Marx's Nietzschean moment

195

the alienated, hypocritical, and perverted Judeo-Christian pseudovalues enjoying their ultimate flowering in capitalist, bourgeois society. No wonder, Eugene Sue himself, as the creator ofhis hero Rudolph as well as the direct and/or indirect spokesman of the "humanitarian," "social," and "philanthropic" schemes proposed by his novel, is subjected to a similar unmasking process. To the "hypocritical M. Sue," 130 writing is a vicarious acting out of his bottled up, sadistic vindictiveness. He "satisfies his monkish, bestial lust in the self-humiliation of man to the extent of making the maim d'ecole implore on his knees the old hag Chouette and the little imp Tortillard not to abandon him."l3l Could Sue be oblivious of the fact that in humiliating the schoolmaster, he hands Chouette a Baudelairean "Bower of diabolical self-gratification [Blume eines teuflischen Selbstgenusses],,?132 In similar vein, he ropes the reader, his "semblable etjrere," into complicity with the values promoted by himself and his hero Rudolph. There he repeatedly urges us to enjoy what we read, in the same way as Rudolph and his aristocratic associates relish "the piquancy of a novel, the satisfaction of curiosity, adventure, disguise, enjoyment of his or her own excellence, [and] violent nervous excitement.,,133 A further victim of Marx's ideological vivisection of Les Mysreres de Paris was Szeliga, alias Franz Zychlin von Zychlinski (1816-1900), reviewer of Sue's novel for Bauer's Allgemeine Literatur-Zeitung. Szeliga is nothing if not complicit with Eugene Sue and his protagonist Rudolph. He blows his trumpet of approval (Herr Szeliga blast Tusch) 134 when Rudolph proposes a law that would punish the father of a child murdered by its unmarried mother. Szeliga, Marx points out, is simply ignorant of existing English legislation to the same effect, or of Fourler's ideas about the emancipation of women. 135 Similarly, the reviewer praises Rudolph's clearly impractical "model farm at Bouqueval" as certainly nonutopian; 131! he in principle endorses Rudolph's diverse moral cures including the blinding of the maitre d'ecole;137 and he backs Sue's proposal that human justice, by way of anticipating its heavenly counterpart, should not only reward the good, but implement "the supposed effects of heavenly wrath [in order to] deter the wicked.,,13S Novelist and critic are equally at one in busily justifying and/or exculpating the values and vices of their caste. Sue hastens to explain the half-breed Ceci1y's easy seduction at the hands of a wicked man as occasioned by her "Indian blood." "This the hypocritical M. Sue, for the sake of douce morale and doux commerce, is bound to describe as 'perversire naturelle.",139 In turn, Szeliga turns the adulterous escapades of the Marquise de Harville and the Duchess of Lucenay into inescapable calamities incurred by their loveless lives. Victims of unfulfilled marriages,

196

The genealogy of aesthetics

writes Szeliga, '''lack satisfaction of the heart.' They have not found in marriage the object oflove, so they seek it outside marriage." "The merit of this dialectical reasoning," mocks Karl Marx, "is to be assessed all the higher as it is of more general application!"140 Szeliga's dialectical deduction also exemplifies his bias toward gratuitous moralizing and pseudophilosophical speculation. Like critics then and now, he likes to either sit in judgment on the fictitious characters under review, or to turn them into embodiments of his pet ideas. Thus, Szeliga as puritanical priest, severely reprimands the "selfish" Sarah MacGregor for her infidelity with the protagonist; 141 then, as speculative theologian, he construes Rudolph into the "realisation of man's essential perfections" in striving for "the salvation of mankind"j142 and Fleur de Marie into a semiaUegorical figure in whom '''the universal guilt of the time, the guilt of mystery,' becomes the 'mystery of guilt."'143 Szeliga's "aesthetic prologue" had outlined some of the more general, though hopelessly garbled, premises of his "speculative aesthetics"1"4 intimating a gap (RijJ) 145 between the novel's transcendent events and its eternal critical contents, as unearthed by Szeliga himself. Now the same Rij3 is translated into the contrast between the "divine element" (Rudolph), embodiment of "all power and freedom," "the only active principle," on the one hand, and "the passive 'world system' and the human beings belonging to it,,,146 on the other. But how could the former possibly impact the latter? So as not to lapse into a total subject-object dualism - with Criticism (Rudolph, the divine) and a dead mass (ordinary mankind, the world) facing each other as irreconcilable antipodes - Szeliga has to find a mediator. He is "obliged to concede some attributes of divinity to the world system," which he accomplishes by the "speculative construction" of positing Fleur de Marie as "the unity of the two, Rudolph and the world." 147 Far-fetched and confused as it may be, Szeliga's account of the novel's "critical" content is easily read back into Hegelian metaphysics, which The Holy Family subjects to a similarly scathing critique. We have already seen how Marx compares the "mystery of the Critical presentation of the Mysteres de Paris" (or for that matter, "the mystery of speculative . .. Hegelian conscruction,,148) with the process of reducing various real entities, like the pear, the apple, and so forth, to the common denominator "Fruit," and of recreating "the real natural objects, the apple, the pear, etc., out of the unreal creation of the mind 'the Fruit.''' 149 Exchange pearapple for law-civilization, reduce the latter to the common denominator "Mystery," declare the activity by which you pass from "Mystery" (or Absolute Subject) to law-civilization (or Substance) "to be the self-activity of the Absolute Subject," and you get Szeliga's basic

Marx's Nietzschean moment

197

interpretive method. The latter, by way of rising to truly speculative, Hegelian heights, thus "transforms 'Mystery' into a self-existing Subject incarnating itself in real situations and persons so that the manifestations of its life are countesses, marquises, grisettes, porters, notaries, charlatans, and love intrigues, balls, wooden doors, etc."ISO Marx loses few opportunities for caricaturing this basic "Critical" strategy which, in emulating "the essential character of Hegel's method," comprehends "Substance as Subject, as an inner process, as an Absolute Person."l51 Generally speaking, the method has the great advantage of enabling the critic who uses it to solve any major question of the day by first putting the said question into its right, that is "Critical" perspective. "IT it were a question of the Code Napoleon, it would prove that it is properly a question of the Pentateuch." Once again this derives from Hegel, who "had to transpose all questions from the form of common sense to the form of speculative reason and convert the real question into a speculative one to be able to answer it."152 Yet another of the many mysteries Szeliga finds in Sue's novel prompts Marx to show how easily man, via the speculative, critical method, can be shown to become master over the animals. Take half a dozen animals, like the lion, shark, snake, bull, horse, and pug, regard the six as "incarnations, of the' Animal,'" and you'll see how the "'Animal' of your abstraction," which in the lion tears you to pieces, in the shark swallows you up, in the snake stings you with venom, in the bun tosses you with its horns, and in the horse kicks you, only barks at you when it presents itself as a pug, which converts the Animal's fight against you "into the mere semblance of afight"153 easily handled by a cane. A last example takes us back to Szeliga's main construction of Sue's Mysteres de Paris, as proposed by the critic's "aesthetic prologue." The question raised there is how one can mediate the novel's schism (RijJ) between transient mundane and everlasting critical content. To Marx, the question recalls another one of how a house-owner relates to his house, a question which "mystical speculation, and speculative aesthetics," with their distaste for the extensive circumstantiality of real relations, answer by positing a "concrete, speculative unity, a Subject-Object which is the house and the house-owner in one." Similarly, Szeliga's review, by way of construing Sue's novel into a "'really single whole' and 'real unity'" via Fleur de Marie, "replaces the natural and human connection between the world system and world events by a ... mystical Subject-Object." And once again this is JUSt what Hegel did; that is, replace "the real connection between man and nature by an absolute Subject-Object which is at one and at the same time the whole of nature and the whole of humanity, the Absolute Spirit." I S4

198

The genealogy of aesthetics

Whatever its progressive, avant-garde pretenses, the review is that of an Hegelian "theologian ex projesso," a country parson, old priest, and puritan writing in the spirit of "Christian reform," to the effect of "changing man into a ghost and his life into a life oj dream.,,155 Or more generally speaking, "critical criticism" a la Szeliga and his confreres around Bruno Bauer, practices a general transvaluation of values prompted by ressenciment, or, in Marx's words, "represents ... its spiteful rancour [Rankune] at the progress of the world outside itself as the rancour of the world outside itself at progress.,,156

14

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

The concept of Being! As if it didn't reveal its most pitiful empirical origin in the very etymology of the wordl For esse basically only means to "breathe." Humans. in using it for all other things. transfer their conviction that they breathe and live, via a metaphor, that is to say in illogical fashion, onto the other things, and hence comprehend their existence as a breathing in analogy to themselves. Even though the original meaning of the word soon becomes fuzzy, enough of it survives to make humans conceive of the being [DaseinJ of other things in analogy to their own. I, 847/"Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks," 11

We knowof Fenollosa'sendeavors, so influential to Ezra Pound, to rescue traditional Japanese art from being misappropriated by western aesthetics. A similar effort was made by Martin Heidegger, who around 1953-54 raised questions about the teachings of one of his former disciples, Japanese art historian Count Shuzo Kuki. To the latter, the Japanese Iki was to be interpreted in terms of aisthlton or sensory appearance, which, via its beautiful appeal, lets shine through the supersensible or nolton. 1 This distinction entered Christian thought via Romans 1: 19-20, incidentally by way of resolving Augustine's guilt-ridden quandary about his fatal attraction to the "beauty in material things.,,2 As we recall, Augustine's simultaneous reading of St. Paul and "certain books of the Platonists" made him catch sight of God's beauty per ea quae facta sunt, 3 a formula which, at least according to Heidegger, has dominated western thinking about art ever since. As far as traditional western aesthetics is concerned, art's sensory appeal or aistheton, in other words, is justified by its transparency toward God, truth, goodness, or, in sum, the noiron. 4 Hence the distinction between content and form which, in one way or another, has provided "the cOnceplUal matrix par exulJence for all arltheory and aesthetics.,,5 Hence the equally ubiquitous dichotomy between "sensory image [sinnliches BUd]" and "higher meaning [Sinnbild]" whereby the mere BiJd becomes a SinnbiJd, symbol, allegory, or parable. 6 But can such metaphysical theorizing really do justice to a nonwestern concept like the Japanese Ik,? Heidegger, who by 1953-54 had long been 199

200

The genealogy of aesthetics

studying Buddhism and Taoism, translated portions of the Tao Te Ching with the help of a Chinese student, and witnessed the success of Sein und Zeit in Japan, answered by way of opposing Count Kuki's efforts. To determine Iki metaphysically within European aesthetics and hence within an uncongenial ideational framework could easily obscure the true nature of East Asian art. 7 How about European art? Aesthetics, to Heidegger, suffered from the limitations which a subject-anchored determination of truth as adaequatio intellectus et rei 8 had imposed on the understanding of being and, more specifically, of art since Descartes. In its more recent variants as, say, in W. Dilthey's Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, this meant that art was a truthful representation or rather expression of the artist's experience. 9 In sum, western aesthetics might misrepresent not just nonwestern art, but western art as well. As Heidegger would say in one of his more daring moments, it in fact amounted to a misconception about art per se. In order to get to grips with the true nature of art and poetry, he told his Freiburg students during the 1931132 winter semester, "philosophy has to shed its habit of addressing the problem of art as one of aesthetics." 10 Whatever else it might be, art certainly was neither an "expression of experience" - with the work of art serving the artist to body forth the life of his psyche - nor a peculiarly detailed representation of external reality, let alone something brought forth to provide pleasure of an elevated kind. II While quick to question traditional aesthetics, Heidegger took some time working out an alternative. What, ifwestern art theory failed to capture it, was the essence of art and poetry? A lecture course on Holderlin's "Germanien" and "Der Rhein," held during the winter of 1934135, raises precisely this question. The immediate answer, once again, lists what art is not. If anything, that negative catalog has widened in scope. Needless to say, there is the time-honored view that art's sensory component merely points to a higher meaning,12 as well as the concomitant distinction between content and form. The latter, Heidegger points out, parades itself as an "absolute, supertemporal principle while de facto [being] exclusively Greek and only pertaining to the Greek sense of being [Dasein] and therefore questionable.,,13 There follow some more specifically poetological misconceptions: 1. The poem is more than a given verbal construct equipped with meaning and beauty. 2. Poetry is not the psychological process of producing poems. 3. Poetry is Dot the linguistic "expression" of psychological experiences. All the above partake of the poem and poetry, yet they fail to capture their fundamental essence. 14

Compared with such negative decisiveness, Heidegger's simultaneous efforts to determine the true nature of art remain vague, to say the least.

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

201

What is more, they are moored in a mishmash of occult pronouncements and pro-National Socialist rhetoric ominously reminiscent of his rectorship address of May 27, 1933. 15 Then, he had hailed Adolf Hitler as the one who "is the German reality, present and future, and its law.,,16 Now he oracles about how the "true and absolutely unique FUhrer in his Seyn points toward the realm of the demigods.'tl7 For" Fuhrersein is a destiny and hence ultimate Seyn." In this, Hitler is found to be kin to Holderlin, the poet of the future German Seyn. 18 The notion of Kampf is everywhere. A poem like "Germanien" has sprung from the battle fought with poetry. Our own interpretive battle over the poesy in this poem oUght to be a "battle against ourselves" or of fighting off the stultifying everyday routines we are caught in: However, this battle [Kampf] against ourselves is by no means a curious, souldissecting gawking at ourselves; nor is it a contrite "moral" self-admonition; instead this battle [Kampf J against ourselves is the working through [d£r arbeirende Durchgang] the poem. 19

More generally speaking, "poetry is the fundamental event in the occurrence of Being [Seyn J." "It grounds Being," such grounding being nothing except "the clanging of nature's weapons [Waffenklang der Nalur] .',2U In Holderlin's Heraclitean vision - adumbrated by Meister Eckhart, paralleled by Hegel, and rearticulated by Nietzsche - such Kampf-ridden self-revelation of Seyn - Being giving birth to itself in the word 21 - points to the "primordial might [Urmachl] of Occidental Germanic historical Dasein, and that in its confrontation [Auseinandersetzung] with its Asiatic cOUDterpart.,,22 It comes as something of a surprise when Heidegger, in the midst of all this, suddenly derides the then fashionable rhetoric about WJlkslum, blood and soil. 23 In the long run, Heidegger clarified his sense of the true nature of an, not in his unfortunate musings over Holderlin's two hymns, but in a renewed "querying after the thing," his major preoccupation during the following winter semester, 1935/36. 24 The Origin of lhe W'brk of Art, first delivered as a public lecture on November 13, 1935, certainly takes the same approach. As we know, the treatise sets aside the traditional view that art's sensory concrete points to an either symbolically or allegorically abstract meaning, in order to first explore the artwork's thingly element. For even "the much vaunted aesthetic experience," Heidegger insists, "cannot get around,,25 the fact that a painting, e.g., the one by Van Gogh that represents a pair of peasant shoes, travels from one exhibition to another. Works of an are shipped like coal from the Ruhr and logs from the Black Forest. During the First World War Holderlin's hymns were packed in the soldier's knapsack together with cleaning gear. 26

202

The genealogy of aesthetics

But what, then, is a thing? The answers provided by traditional metaphysics pose dilemmas similar to those of aesthetics in its failure to grapple with art. All of them, in one way or another, miss our true sense of, say, grabbing, feeling, anticipating the use of, or actually using a piece of chalk, which whatever we do with it - break it in half, grind it to white dust - eludes our probing after its W7zat (or essence) by merely revealing its ever-changing How Much. 27 More abstractly speaking, Heidegger distinguishes three traditional "modes of defining thingness,,,28 all of which have obscured their true thingliness while setting the metaphysical frame for an aesthetic misrepresentation of art. One, quickly dispensed with by the transcendentally minded philosopher, ascertains the thing "as the unity of a manifold of sensations."29 The thing, in this empiricist perspective, "is the aistheton," or what "is perceptible by sensations in the senses belonging to sensibility.,,30 To Heidegger, this definition is misleading, since we always already have a concept of a thing which we impose upon the throng of sensations to the point of screening out a lot of the latter as soon as we recognize the thing. "In order to hear a bare sound," he explains, "we have to listen away from things, divert our ear from them, i.e., listen abstractly." For instance, we "hear the door shut in the house and never hear acoustical sensations or even mere sounds.,,31 A second, traditional mode of "defining thingness" attempts to capture its subject "as a bearer oftraits.,,32 It boasts a long tradition, reaching back to Greek philosophy, and particularly to Plato. 33 Accordingly, each thing has a core, to hypokeimenon, or "something lying at the ground of the thing, something always already [immer schon] there.,,34 It also has characteristics, ta symbebekota, or a "manifold of ever changing qualities,,35 also "always turned up already [immer auch schon] along with the given core and occurring] along with it.,,36 What reinforced the to hypokeimenon-ta symbebekota dichotomy in Greek thought was the simultaneous discovery of sentence structure. 37 In this way, to hypokeimenon was taken to be the sentence's subject, and to symbebekon to be its predicate. Truth, then, happens when "a predicate is accruing to the subject and, thus accruing [zukommend], is placed and enunciated in the sentence.,,38 This raises other questions. Did man copy the structure of syntax from the structure of things; or did he project the structure of syntax on to things?39 Is there a deeper root, something unconditioned (ein Un-bedingtes),40 a something that has always already been there, but that has been ignored, even buried by western thought, a mysterious something which itself gave rise to this parallel development? Whatever the answer, that third question clearly points to a domain beyond the beginnings and actual scope of western metaphysics. 41

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

203

As a general scheme underlying most traditional ontological as well as aesthetic determinations,42 the third traditional mode of "defining thingness," namely, the form-matter or morphe-hyle dichotomy, raises questions similar to those posed by the subject-predicate relationship. Where, in other words, "does the matter-form structure have its origin in the thingly character of the thing or in the worldy character of the artwork?,,43 Predictably, Heidegger's answer is: neither in the one nor in the other. For both derive from man's sense of manufactured equipment (Zeug), something particularly close to human thinking because it is brought forth by civilized production. 44 Take a pair of peasant shoes like those in Van Gogh's paintings. To properly serve their wearer, the material (leather, nails, thread, and laces) has to be of a special kind (robust yet flexible for the soles, supple yet impenetrable for the upper part, the form given to the material adjusted to the wearer's feet as well as to other, particular purposes). Thus, even among the Greeks, the conceptual pair form-matter sprang "from the area of manufacture of tools or utensils." Only thereafter did it become the "principal schema for all inquiry into art and all further definition of the work of art.,,45 However, this only happened when the great art of the Greeks, "and also the great philosophy that flourished along with it,,,46 were already on the decline. Plato's understanding of being,47 that is, his conceiving of things in terms of their immediate, outer appearance or eidos,48 was a major catalyst in making the form-matter conceptual pair acquire its all-powerful predominance over aesthetics and metaphysics generally.49 The formmatter matrix received an additional boost from medieval theology, as it absorbed the impulses of an "alien," Greek philosophy. so For according to the biblical faith, "the totality of all beings is represented in advance as something created." This ens creatum, in the Thomistic interpretation of Genesis, became a "unity of materia and jorma.,,51 Ever since, "the interpretation of 'thing' [and for that matter of the work of art] by means of matter and form, whether it remains medieval or becomes Kantian transcendental, has become current and self-evident."s2 Heidegger proposes to do away with such spurious self-evidence. Rather than allowing the thing its "self-containment" and "steadfastness," the form-matter dichotomy, to him, really perpetrates an "assault [Uber/all]" on it. 53 The same is true of definitions of the thing as a "bearer of its characteristic traits,,,54 and as "a manifold of sensations."55 All three modes, instead of revealing the thing's genuine qualities, make us "equally blind to the original essence of truth."S6 Instead of revealing the truth of being, or aletheia,57 they make it vanish. 58 Instead of revealing its beauty or ekphanestaton in the original sense of "what properly shows itself and is most radiant,"59 the traditional modes of defining

204

The genealogy of aesthetics

thingness reduce beauty to a formal characteristic pointing to a higher truth. All of it, Heidegger seems to say, amounts to a general dissociation of sensibility, to a splitting apart of an original wholeness of thinking and creating, truth and beauty, knowledge and productivity, at precisely the time when, with the decline of Greek art, philosophers like Plato and Aristotle began thinking about art. Before that, both artist and thinker let truth shine forth in its beauty. Now, as the philosopher lays claim to the truth or logos as his sole domain, the artist is assigned the role of either a mere copier of outward appearances or as a craftsman-like producer of beautiful things. The eventual degeneration of great art into either an expression of experience or into an art for art's sake is already adumbrated in this initial dissociation of sensibility. The breaking apart of the original unity between thinking and creating is already foreshadowed in these early meditations on art. Modern aesthetics, as it arose some 300 years ago, was necessarily caught in this earlier forgetting or entombment of the original harmony between art and thought, beauty, truth and being. As such, it involves "our entire history,"60 as it moves into modernity with Descartes, man's "taste" becoming "the court of judicature over beings.,,61 In sum, aesthetics, just like the metaphysics of which it forms a part, resulted from a transvaluation of ordinary concepts like truth (aletheia) and beauty (ekphanestaton), of which one finds traces in Pre-Socratics like Heraclitus, Protagoras, and Parmenides, even in Plato and Aristotle themselves. As we know, Heidegger intended to tell that story of general Seinvergesssenheit or oblivion of Being in part two of Sein und Zeit in the form of "a phenomenological destructuring [Destruktion] of the history of ontology.,,62 His failure to do so went hand in hand with his unwillingness to ever publish section three of part one ("Time and Being") that was to lay bare "the horizon for an understanding and a possible interpretation ofBeing,,63 by way of thinking the thoughts western metaphysics had left unthought. Heidegger decided to suppress that section while visiting Jaspers in Heidelberg during January 1927. Their debates over the galleys of Sein und Zeit convinced him that, whatever "of this most important section (1,3)" he had managed to put down on paper, "would remain incomprehensible,,64 to his readers. Some thirty years later, he recalled the main reason for this decision, namely his failure to find a language "for what had never been spoken before [etwas zur Sprache zu bringen, was bislang noch nie gesprochen wurde].,,65 Be that as it may, Heidegger even refused to have the existing drafts included in the posthumous edition of his works. 66 His plans for a systematic Destruktion of western metaphysics fell victim to a related dilemma. How could he succeed in such an endeavor while

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

205

comprehension of what was to give direction to it eluded him? What we find instead is a host of more or less sporadic comments in his works from both before and after Sein und Zeit (1927), to the effect that western metaphysics, starting with Greek philosophy and continuing ever since, had obscured the primordial sense of being, truth, and beauty. More generally speaking, that history begins "with the forgetting of being,"67 or, more specifically, with the forgetting of the difference of beings vis-a.-vis Being. (U?rgessenheit des Unterschiedes des Seins zum Seienden. 68 ) The main culprit here is logic, which, "sprung from metaphysics while at the same time dominating it," has brought matters to the point where the semantic wealth harbored by the originary key words denoting Being was buried. Following the first glimmer (erstes Aufleuchten) or faint dawn (leichte Dammerung) of an originary time-related understanding of Being in Greek philosophy, all sunk back and vanished into the night in which the blind logic of reason held nocturnal sway.69 Greek thought as the beginning of western philosophy, then, was to be reinterpreted in the sense that original Greek philosophy came to an end before it became that beginning, and that by burying that originary beginning (anfanglicher Anfang).70 To bury, cover up (verdecken) , 71 veil (verhUllen) , 72 distort (verbiegen) ,73 block (verstellen),14 wall in (verbauen),15 destroy (zerstoren),16 strangle (erwurgen),77 dislodge (verschieben),18 relocate (verlagern),19 displace (verlegen) , 80 level (einebnen) , 81 smudge (verwischen) , 82 wilt (verblassen) , 83 omission (U?rsaumnis),84 oblivion (U?rgessenheit):85 Heidegger deploys a colorful array of verbs, nouns, semiallegorical narratives, and escalating hyperboles to evoke this active, though in part unwitting, oblivion of primary Being. The original meaning of aletheia has not just been buried (verschuttet): if that were so, it would be easy to "remove the rubble and clear the area.,,86 It has been "walled in by the gigantic bulwark"87 of the diverse meanings of the Roman veritas. However, even that image hardly does the process justice. "The bulwark in which the essence of truth as veritas, rectitudo, and iustitia consolidated," had more than just obscured aletheia. 88 Aletheia "has been immured into the bulwark's wall," when this word, via its reinterpretations, was turned into "a specially hewn building block."89 And with the immuring of aletheia, western metaphysics lost the original sense of art as a self-revelation of aletheia, and of beauty or ekphanestaton as a "way in which truth essentially occurs in unconcealment. ,,90 Heidegger's first cycle of Nietzsche lectures, started during the 1936/37 winter semester while completing The Origin of the Wbrk of Art, expands on the treatise's summary account of traditional western art theory. Here, the eighteenth-century emergence of aesthetics (properly speaking) forms stage three in a six-point history of western art theory. Before that, there was the formation of the matter-form dichotomy (stage two), and

206

The genealogy of aesthetics

even earlier (stage one), the great period of Greek art and poetry which managed without aesthetic theorizing precisely because artists then had "such a passion for knowledge, that in their luminous state of knowing they had no need of aesthetics."91 A fourth stage, culminating in Hegel's Asthetik - "the most comprehensive reflection on the essence of art the West possesses"92 - concurrently marked the "decline of great art.,,93 As we recall, Hegel had said so himself. Art, in losing its "immediate relation to the basic task of representing the absolute," was and remained to him, "with regard to its highest determination, something past [ist u"d bleibt die Kunst nach der Seite ihrer hochsten Bestimmung ... ein U1rgangenes] .',94 Both in the 1936/37 Nietzsche lectures and in the epilogue to The Origin of the m,rk of Art (though not in the treatise itself), Heidegger agrees with Hegel. Great art has been dying ever since aesthetics reduced it to "the object of aisthisis, of sensuous apprehension," or what more recently has come to be caUed "experience.,,95 To the aesthetician, lived experience is the "standard not only for art appreciation ... but also for artistic creation.',96 To Heidegger, by contrast, experience is more likely to be "the element in which art dies," even though the "dying occurs so slowly that it takes a few centuries.',97 Where does such agreement with Hegel leave Heidegger's prior attempts, in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes and his earlier writings, to reassess the nature of art per se? Should not Hegel's and, for that matter, Kant's aesthetics, be included in his claim that "philosophy has to shed its habit of addressing the problem of art as one of aesthetics,,98 before it can reach a genuine new understanding of art itself? Assuming that Heidegger had already embraced the Hegelian prophecy about the imminent death of art at the time of writing Der Ursprung, why, in that case, would he have chosen Van Gogh's paintings of peasant shoes and C. F. Meyer's "Der romische Brunnen" as prime examples of great art, as he does, rather than use them in order to demonstrate its decline? What is said about these works leaves little doubt about the answers. Rather than arouse in him thoughts of the decline of art, C. F. Meyer's poem and Van Gogh's paintings seem to remind Heidegger of what is wrong with traditional aesthetics including that of Kant and Hegel. 99 First of all, Van Gogh and C. F. Meyer help Heidegger document why the understanding of art as "an imitation and depiction of something actual" should have turned into a "fortunately obsolete view [gliicklich uberwundene Meinung]."IOO For all too long, mimesis, first grounded in the Aristotelean homoiOsis then in the medieval adaequatio intelkctus et rei, had "been taken to be the essence oftruth."lol Should that induce us to

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

207

understand art in such a mimetic fashion, as much of western aesthetics does? For instance, should we argue "that this painting by Van Gogh depicts a pair of peasant shoes somewhere at hand, and is a work of art because it does so successfully? Is it our opinion that the painting draws a likeness from something actual and transposes it into a product of artistic production?" Heidegger's answer could not be more emphatic: "Keineswegs [By no means] ."102 Heidegger is equally peremptory in negating the even older assumption that a work of an like Van Gogh's oUght to point to some suprasensible something or noeton l03 in terms of a "reproduction of things' general essence." In the first place, "where and how is this general essence, so that an works are able to agree with it?"I04 C. F. Meyer's "Der romische Brunnen" provides neither "a reproduction of the general essence of a Roman fountain," nor "a poetic painting of a fountain actually present." 105 Needless to say, the notion ofa transcendental "copy-relation [AbbiJdverhiilmis]" between the thing depicted and an allegedly ideal essence it is supposed to point to, becomes even more absurd if we were to assume that Van Gogh had wanted to capture some Platonically ideal pair of shoes behind the peasant shoes. I 06 Finally, Heidegger also rejects the theory that an artist like Van Gogh, in creating his painting, was a mere craftsman exercising his skill, or a philosopher-technician providing copies of reality that are either naturalistically precise or that show, in the Aristotelean sense, how things "ought to be" by finishing the job that nature left incomplete. 107 The artist is a technician, only in the original Greek sense of techne or alitheuein,108 that is, of "bring[ing] forth what is present as such out of concealment." Originarily, techne "never signifies the action of making," 109 let alone the imposition of any preconceived notion of higher reality, essence, or realistic accuracy regarding what is imitated or represented. So what is great an? Heidegger's answer in Der Ursprung des KunslWerkes leaves no doubt that Van Gogh's paintings or C. F. Meyer's poem, rather than exemplifying a moribund art in decline, belong to art as much as his frequently invoked Greek temple, which does neither "copy anything [bildel niches ab],,110 nor stand for a supranatural noiton,lll idea or eidos. "With what essence of what thing should a Greek temple agree? Who could maintain the impossible view that the Idea of Temple is represented in the building?" I 12 What, then, are the characteristics of great art so obviously manifest in the Greek temple as much as in C. F. Meyer's poem and Van Gogh's paintings? So far we have only learnt that the answer must utterly forego what traditional aesthetics, as well as the metaphysical "interpretation of

208

The genealogy of aesthetics

all beings" underlying it, have to say about such matters regarding either the "worldy in the work, the equipmental in equipment, [or the] tbingly in the thing [das mrkhafte des WUkes, das Zeughafte des Zeuges, das Dinghafte des Dinges)."113 For even though the artwork partakes of such Ding- and Zeughaftigkeit, the traditional notions regarding the latter, insofar as they were appropriated by aesthetics, are of no use in determining the true Werkhaftigkeit or workliness of the artwork. Before all else, then, it is necessary that these "barriers of our pre-conceptions fall away and that the current pseudo-concepts be set aside."u4 Philosophy, before it will be able to ascertain the true nature of art, in other words, has to first "shed its habit of addressing the problem of art as one of aesthetics."U5 Heidegger had said so in 1931132, and in slightly different form, repeated the same demand in The Origin 0/ the Wbrk ofArt oflate 1935. The pro-National Socialist alternative proposed then, we remember, defined art as a Kampf-ridden self-revelation of Being in general, and of the "primordial might [Urmacht] of Occidental Germanic historical Dasein,,,116 in particular. What new alternatives, if any, do we find in The Origin of the Wbrk ofArt? The artwork, the treatise proposes, "opens up in its own way the Being of beings." 117 Once again, Van Gogh's painting of peasant shoes serves Heidegger as his prime example. Truth happens in it, not in the sense "that something at hand is correctly portrayed, but rather that in the revelation ofthe equipmental being of the shoes' beings as a whole." 118 It is manifest neither in some kind of ideal shoe or Ding an sich, nor in the photographic likeness of an actual phenomenon. Instead, it reveals how the shoe or thing affects us in our thrownness (Geworjenheit) into a life towards death. Already in Sein und Zeit, Heidegger had given shoes 119 as an instance of this worry-fraught taking care of things (besorgender Umgang). Der Ursprung's long description of Van Gogh's peasant shoes, just as that of the Greek temple,I20 tries to capture precisely that particular mode of being by letting it speak for itself. Van Gogh's painting has "spoken,"121 Heidegger adds, or become poetry, which, in his neo-Romantic persuasion, is the "essence of art" in the sense of founding truth. 122 Van Gogh's painting has spoken in the way that all true art and philosophy speak to us - not in the mode of practical communication, but in that of primal poetry. As such, "language alone brings beings as beings into the open for the first time. Where there is no language, as in the Being of stone, plant, and animal, there is also no openness of beings, and consequently no openness of nonbeing and of the empty.,,123 Even "building and imaging [Bauen und Bilden] ... always happen already, and happen only, in the open region of saying and naming."124 Van Gogh's painted peasant shoes speak to us like the Greek temple.

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

209

Heidegger's view of art as a poetic language revealing true Seyn, and poetry as "the elementary coming into language, that is, the self-disclosure of existence as a being-in-the-world [das elementare Zum-Wbrt-kommen. d. h. Enukcktwerden tkr Existenz aJs tks In-der-W<-seins],,,125 enables him to subsume under the poetic even those nonartistic phenomena which, in one way or another, have found their place in twentieth-century art. The only proviso here is that the artist or poet make visible or legible to us the true world of Being beyond our everyday perceptual schemes. A passage from Rilke's Malte Laurids Brigge, which is too long to quote here, serves Heidegger as an example. Describing the inner wall of an otherwise demolished apartment block, it reads the sordid, passionate, and tragic lives of its former tenants out of rusty sewer pipes, wallpaper scraps, and stained walls. Heidegger's comments stress the self-revealing, objet trou'Ve-like nature of these phenomena. What Rilke evokes is not poetically read into the wall. On the contrary, "his description is only possible in so far as it explicates and illumines what is 'real' in the wall.,,126 In other words, Rilke's description captures what Heidegger means by existence as a "Being-in-the-world.,,127 It spells out directly what Heidegger, in Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes, evoked in describing the Greek temple and Van Gogh's peasant shoes. What else does the treatise have to say about art? As in Heidegger's earlier interpretation of Holderlin's "Germanien" and "Der Rhein," his emphasis is on Kampf. By now, he may prefer the word Streit to the one rendered infamous by Hitler's autobiography, but without avoiding Kampf altogether. "In the tragedy," to quote an example, the battle [Kampf J of the new gods against the old is being fought. The linguistic work, originating in the speech of the people, does not refer to this battle [Kampf]; it transforms the people's saying so that now every living word fights the battle [Kampf] and puts up for decision what is holy and what unholy, what great and what small, what brave and what cowardly, what lofty and what flightly, what master and what slave.l28

Heidegger coyly adds a bracket to suggest one of Heraclitus' fragments as the source for this definition of tragedy. He might just as well have referred to Mein Kampf or to the Nietzsche misappropriated by the Nazis pace the philosopher's sister. Heidegger's characterization of the truth of art as occurring in struggle, fight, altercation, or conflict (Streit) "between clearing and concealing in the opposition [Gegenwendigkeit] of world and earth," 129 may avoid the direct mention of a Kampf for supremacy between the "primordial might of Occidental Germanic historical Dasein ... in confrontation with its Asiatic counterpart.,,130 But the general allusiveness to some major themes of National-Socialist rhetoric

210

The genealogy of aesthetics

remains strong enough. Thus: Truth wills to be established in the work as this strife [Semi] of world and earth. The strife [Srreit) is not to be resolved in a being brought forth for that purpose, nor is it to be merely housed there; the strife [Srreit), on the contrary, is started by it. This being must therefore contain within itself the essential traits of the strife [Streit). In the strife [Srreit], the unity of world and earth is won. As a world opens itself, it submits to the decision of a historical humanity the question of victory and defeat, blessing and curse, mastery and slavery. J3I

Nonetheless, Heidegger's new definition of the artwork as born from the strife between earth and world, raw matter versus a truth revealed by the artist's "ecstatic entry into the unconcealment of Being," 132 yields some fruitful insights. For one, it allows him to answer his initial question about the thingly character of the thing, a question raised in the anempt to arrive at a reevaluation of the artwork's work-character. We remember the reasons for such failure: all traditional modes of thought about the thing subject it "to an interpretation of beings as a whole."l33 This amounts to a violent kind of attack which, in tum, makes it impossible to apprehend the essence of either the equipment (Zeug) or the work, as much as it blinds us to the originary nature of truth. For in order to determine "the thing's thingness," as Heidegger reminds us, "neither consideration of the bearer of properties, nor that of the manifold of sense data in their unity, and least of all that of the matter-form structure regarded by itself, which is derived from equipment, is adequate."l34 But Heidegger's redefinition of the artwork as born from the strife between earth and world allegedly changes aU that. By a reversal of perspective, it enables us to approach the thing from the side of the work, as the latter transforms earth into world. 135 Meanwhile, Heidegger's redefinition of art, and with it of equipment and things, unwittingly draws on a central theme of the tradition it purports to deconstruct. As the thingliness of the thing and the equipment character of the equipment are subswned under the work's work-being, the laner's conceptual dimension is not just enlarged, but given universal scope. It now denotes not just the activity of the artist, but any activity in which things, via the original sense of techni, or "the bringing forth of the unconcealment of beings [das Hervor-bringen der Unverborgenheit des Seienden]," are brought forth out of their concealment in the earth and into the unconcealment of their appearance in the world.136 Behind aU this, however, looms the notion of an analogous activity through which nature and its phenomena or things were created by a supreme architect. New in Heidegger may be the struggling, wresting,137 and thrustingl38 that surrounds this general notion of the artist's werk, but his grounding

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

211

such artistic work in the work of a Supreme Maker has a time-honored lineage which, via Kant and Shaftesbury, reaches back to Plato's Timaeus.139 Heidegger accesses this tradition via a saying by DUrer, who prefigured his use of RijJ and reij3en: "For in truth," the painter had said, "art lies hidden within nature; he who can wrest it from her, has it."140 "Hidden in nature," Heidegger adds, lies "a rift-design [RifJ], a measure and a boundary and, tied to it, a capacity for bringing forth - that is, art."141 Recalling the Kantian demiurge artist whose mighty imagination "creates, as it were, another nature,.. 142 one wonders what role the artistic imagination might play in The Origin of the Wbrk of Art. Certainly, it would have to be even mightier than in Kant's GritiJ!ue ofJudgment. This is suggested by Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics in which Heidegger, as early as 1929, had explicitly dealt with the issue. Kant's transcendental power of imagination deserves the rank of a third basic faculty functioning as a source to the other two, he then argued, of pure sensibility and pure understanding. It thus amounts to what Kant, who allegedly was only half aware of this hierarchy, called the "unknown common root" of both sense and apperception. 143 It is the "formative center of ontological knowledge.,,144 Even independently of experience, this "pure productive power of imagination ... makes experience possible for the first time."145 Yet surprisingly, Der Ursprung des IWnstwerkes skirts the whole issue. It merely raises the somewhat gratuitious question as to whether "the essence of poetry ... can be adequately thought of in terms of the power of imagination [von der Imagination und Ei7zbildungskraft her]." 146

What, apart from throwing new light on things and equipment, does the struggle between earth and world tell us about art itself? It "thrusts open" the awesome and simultaneously thrusts down "what is long familiar."H7 There is no notion on which Der Ursprung des Kunstwerkes insists with greater frequency and emphasis. The setting-into-work of truth [in art] thrusts up the awesome and at the same time thrusts down the ordinary and what we believe to be such. The truth that discloses itself in the work can never be proved or derived from what went before. What went before is refuted in its exclusive actuality by the work. 148

Herein also lies art's historical mission. Art, in a double thrust, points both backward and forward. By its thrusting "displacement [Vemickung]" of vision, it urges us to jettison our habitual modes of perception, to "transform our accustomed ties to world and earth and henceforth to restrain all usual doing and prizing, knowing and 100king."149 By thrusting open the unknown, it forces us to peer into the as yet "undisclosed

212

The genealogy of aesthetics

abundance of the awesome" 150 which future generations will have to come to terms with. All great art, in this sense, is a repeated beginning and founding. As for western culture, both happened for the first time in Greece. 151 At that time was set to work what later was called Being. A standard was set as again in the Middle Ages and in modernity. "At each time a new and essential world irrupted."152 Does modem art in the narrower, post-Romantic sense, starting with, say, Holderlin and including figures like C. F. Meyer, Van Gogh, and Rilke, amount to another such irruption? Der Ursprung and his earlier works clearly suggest it. Certainly, nowhere that I am aware of, does he associate these artists with the decline or future death of art predicted by Hegel. On the contrary, great art as a "foundational act [Stiftung]" then and earlier is declared to be "essentially historical. ... Art is history in the essential sense that it grounds history.,,153 Ultimately, Der Ursprung leaves it undecided as to whether contemporary art merely looks back on a greater past or whether it is poised toward a new great future. As far as Heidegger's Germany was concerned, however, the treatise's final lines clearly point to the second of these two possibilities. 154 Heidegger's view of post-Romantic art seems to have changed between the completion of Der Ursprung - toward the end of 1936 155 - and his first cycle of Nietzsche lectures delivered in 1936/37. The latter, as we recall, discuss and, in principle, agree with Hegel's verdict about the imminent death of art. "Concurrent with the formation of a dominant aesthetics," as Heidegger puts it there, "is the decline of great art.,,156 Perhaps remembering what he had said about C. F. Meyer, Van Gogh, or Rilke in the treatise, he even allows for possible exceptions: One cannot refuse these statements ... by objecting against Hegel that since 1830 we have had many considerable works of art which we might point to ... The fact of such individual works, which exist as works only for the enjoyment of a few sectors of the population, does not speak against Hegel but for him. It is proof that art has lost its power to be absolute, has lost its absolute power. I ~7

The "Afterword (Nachwort)" to Der Ursprung which, at least in part, was "written after" I 511 the actual treatise, reiterates these Hegelian sentiments as well as some of the citations from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics in partially verbatim fashion. The judgment that Hegel passes in these statements [it says] cannot be evaded by pointing out that since Hegel's lectures on aesthetics ... we have seen the rise of many new artworks and new art movements. Hegel never meant to deny this possibility. 159

Heidegger's "destruction" of traditional aesthetics

213

For all that, Heidegger's "AftelWord" to The Origin of the Wbrk of Art, sounds less pro-Hegelian than his Nietzsche lectures. The question raised by Hegel, it suggests, remains undecided: Is art still an essential and necessary way in which that truth happens which is decisive for our historical existence, or is art no longer of this character? If, however, it is such no longer, then there remains the question as to why this is so. The truth of Hegel's judgment has not yet been decided. 160

Evidently, Heidegger continued to waver on the issue. One of several interpolations in the 1960 Reclam version of the Nachwort (once again suppressed in subsequent ones and in the Gesamtausgabe) bears evidence to this. Here he explains that having said that "perhaps lived experience is the element in which art dies,"161 he did not mean "that art is positively at an end [daft es mit der Kunst schlechthin zu Ende sez]."162 The latter would only be the case if "experience" continued to be the element of art par excellence. Hence, it is of absolute importance that we advance from "experience" to Dasein, that is, to a "totally different 'element' for the evolution of art"163 - the goal for contemporary art which Heidegger's actual treatise suggests all along.

15

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

"Thinking" under primitive (pre-organic) conditions amounts to the imposirion of forms [Gestalten-Durchsetzen], as in the crystal. The main thing in our thinking is the orderly arrangement of the new material under old schemata (= Prokrustes bed), the making equal of what's new. XI, 687-881 The Will to Power, 500

Profound explanations. - If someone explains an author's text in a "profounder sense" than intended, slhe does not explain the author, but obscures him. Our metaphysicians thus relate to the text of nature; or even worse. In order to palm off their profound explanations, they often have to rearrange the text accordingly first; that is to say, they spoil it. II, 551-521 Human, All Too Human, II, 17

Nietzsche's earliest impact on Heidegger happened long before the 29-year-old Privatdozent renounced the Catholic faith so as to answer his new "inner call to philosophy."! A later, autobiographical reminiscence has him read the new 1911 edition of Nietzsche's Will to Power along with translations of Kierkegaard and Dostoevsky during 1910-14, 2 years otherwise spent "in hot pursuit ofthe chair of Catholic theology"3 at Freiburg University while working on a second doctoral dissertation dealing with Duns Scotus' Doctrine of Categories and Meaning. We also know of Heidegger's early fascination with a crucial phrase from Nietzsche's preface to the second, 1886 edition of The Birth of Tragedy. "The main task of that book and a deep concern ever since," the preface tells us, has been "to view science under the optics of the artist, but art under the optics of life.,,4 Heidegger's lifelong concern with the same issues stems in part from what he perceived as a misinterpretation of Nietzsche's words taught routinely at German universities during 1909-14. The sciences, according to this misreading, had to be "shaped 'artistically'" rather than "conducted in an arid, humdrum manner."s There simply was no one capable of providing a "correct reading" of Nietzsche's works at the time, because that would have required reasking the "grounding question of Occidental philosophy.,,6 214

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

215

This confronted Heidegger with a triple task: (1) the reappraisal of Being which Heidegger wrestled with in Sein und Zeit; (2) the systematic study of Nietzsche's works; and (3) gaining clarification over the essence of an, which Heidegger attained by the fall of 1936. In this way, Nietzsche's words from the 1886 Birth of Tragedy preface, as Heidegger told his 1936/37 winter semester students, both got his lecture course started as well determined the «direction of its inquiry.',7 What is more, the proper interpretation of Nietzsche's words was to devolve from the entirety of the lectures. Heidegger's struggle with Nietzsche resulted in the largest work he ever published. 8 To all appearances, it also involved him in his first indepth study of Hegel's ~rlesungen aber die Asthetik and of Kant's Kritik der Urteilskra/t. The results are astounding for someone who only half a decade earlier had proclaimed that philosophy, in order to be able to come to grips with art and poetry, first had to shed its habit of treating the latter in terms of aesthetics. They amount to no less than a volte-face. Der Ursprung basically reiterates Heidegger's earlier antiaesthetic stance, never mentions Hegel's Asthetik, and in passing dismisses Kant's transcendental determination of the thing as an "assault" on its "thingness."9 Now, in the first cycle of Nietzsche lectures, "the fact whether and how an era is committed to an aesthetics" is suddenly called «decisive for the way art shapes the history of that era - or remains irrelevant for it";10 Hegel's Asthetik is hailed as the "final and greatest ... in the Western tradition"; II and Kant is credited with having, in a fundamental way, laid bare the "essence of the beautiful and of art." 12 Where does that leave the Nietzsche who claimed that, since Kant, "all talk of art, beauty, knowledge and wisdom [had] been smudged [vermatlscht] and besmirched [beschmulzt] by the concept 'devoid of interest.' ,,13 Clearly, Heidegger takes the remark as a personal affront on behalf of Kant's "magnificent discovery."14 "What is it that besmudges [vermanscht] here?," he wonders: "Who that arbitrarily substitutes trivial notions and vulgar concepts [AlltagsvorsteOungen und Begriffe von tier Stra'pe] for a major insight and thereby falsifies everything?" I; To Heidegger, the answer is obvious. "It would be inexcusable for us," as he puts it, "to allow [this] prevailing misinterpretation ofKantian aesthetics to continue."16 Meanwhile, Nietzsche is granted extenuating circumstances, his damaging remark on Kant's disinterested pleasure being blamed on the influence of Schopenhauer, one of Heidegger's bites noires. The Wbrld as Will and Representation, Heidegger argues, turned Kant's "disinterestedness" into mere "indifference [GleichgUltigkeit],"17 which, Heidegger sneers, hardly amount to "an aesthetics ... even remotely comparable to that of Hegel." "10 terms of content, Schopenhauer thrives on the authors

216

The genealogy of aesthetics

he excoriates, namely, Schelling and Hegel. The one he does not excoriate is Kant. Instead, he thoroughly misunderstands him."18 And Nietzsche? He, too, fell victim to Schopenhauer's "smudging [lkrmanschung]"19 of Kant. For that reason his own effort is smudged (vermanscht), not only in the questioning after the essence of beauty, but also wherever Nietzsche, regarding matters of cognition and truth, reads Kant through Schopenhauer's turbid perspective. 20 Heidegger next proceeds to explain the true meaning of Kant's phrase "devoid of interest." His method for doing so derives from his 1929 Kant and the Problem of Metaphysics. There he had laid bare the "innermost intention"Zl of Kant's thinking (which Kant was only half aware of), by way of a violently "wring[ing] from what the words say, what it is they want to say."22 In the same, "destructive" vein, Heidegger's Nietzsche lectures rephrase Kant's definition of the beautiful as that quality of an object which elicits our "pure disinterested liking"23 and thus lets the object "come to shine forth [zum Vorschein kommen] as a pure object."24 Predictably, Heidegger's phrasing here reminds us of Der Ursprung, where it defines the beautiful as a "shining forth [Scheinen] " or "mode of how truth occurs as unconcealment."25 Meanwhile, Heidegger omits the fact that Kant, in defining the beautiful, uses precisely the words indifferent or gleichgilltig which he attributes to Schopenhauer's misreading. 26 "In order to play the judge in matters of taste," we read in the third Critique, "we must be not in the least biased in favor of the thing's existence but must be wholly indifferent [ganz gleichgiUtig] about it."27 While ignoring one thing, Heidegger's "destructive" reading also puts undue stress on another. Since of the three kinds of liking for the agreeable, the beautiful, and the good, "only the liking involved in the taste for the beautiful is disinterested and free," writes Kant, "one might say [kiinnte man sagen] that [the term] liking, in the three cases mentioned, refers to inclination or to favor [Gumt] , or to respect.,,28 Introduced as a subjunctive afterthought, Gumt is neither elaborated upon nor resumed in later definitions of the beautiful. But to Heidegger, it becomes a core concept in Kant's theory of the beautiful. Read thus, "comportment toward the beautiful as such" becomes "unconstrained favoring [freie Gunst] ."29 A few pages later, die freie Gunst is even equipped with quotation marks 30 to suggest a direct, though to the best of my knowledge, invented citation from the Critique of Judgment. To confound, not to say smudge, matters further, Kant's Gunst is pronounced to be in essential agreement with Nietzsche's own comments on the beautiful. Had Nietzsche enquired of Kant himself, instead of abandoning himself to Schopenhauer's guidance, Heidegger explains,

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

217

"he would have had to recognize that Kant alone grasped the essence of what Nietzsche in his own way wanted to comprehend concerning the decisive aspects of the beautiful.,,3! One should note Heidegger's wording. The alleged agreement is not between what Kant and Nietzsche thought and wrote, but rather between what each in his own way, wanted to, rather than did, comprehend. As a result of this two-pronged exegetic maneuver, Nietzsche and Kant are made to agree on almost everything. If the beautiful, to Nietzsche, is that which "is visible in the most honored men" or "what is most worthy of honor," 32 then that is exactly what Kant denoted as "the essence of the beautiful."33 When Nietzsche says that "the beautiful exists just as little as does the good,"34 then that too "corresponds exactly to the opinion of Kant.,,35 "In another place Nietzsche says ... such 'getting rid of interest and the ego,' is nonsense and imprecise observation: on the contrary, it is the thrill that comes of being in our world now, of getting rid of our anxiety in the face of things foreign! Certainly such 'getting rid of interest' in the sense of Schopenhauer's interpretation is nonsense," Heidegger quips.36 But Nietzsche's "thrill" is what Kant meant by the "pleasure of reflection" or "the basic comportment toward the beautiful, in The Critique ofJudgment, sections 57 and 59," Heidegger explains. 37 What could Nietzsche's Los-sein von der Angst vor dem Fremden, which Nietzsche explicitly juxtaposes to the Kantian Los-sein von Interesse und ego, possibly have in common with Kant's Lust der Reflexion (discussed in neither §57 nor 59, but in §39),38 which Kant contrasts with the Lust des Genusses ("pleasure of enjoyment,,)?39 It does not matter. After all, Nietzsche failed to see the parallel himself, a fact which, to Heidegger, confines him within a boundary on the other side of Kant and German Idealism - a demarcation allegedly shared by his entire era. 40 How might Nietzsche have responded to Heidegger's allegations? To start with, he could be imagined to say that Heidegger read him poorly, or worse, omitted arguments of his that did not fit his own. For instance, Heidegger alleges that Nietzsche, in repudiating Kant's "devoid of all interest," entrusted himself to the guidance of Schopenhauer's misinterpretation 4 ! of disinterestedness as indifference - a state of mind "in which the will is put out of commission and all striving brought to a standstill," a mindset in "pure repose, simply wanting nothing more, sheer apathetic drift.,,42 In fact, there was no harsher critic of such lassitude than Nietzsche himself. Schopenhauer's contention that the aesthetically contemplative individual turns into a pure subject of cognition without will or pain,43 to him, had to be counted among the philosopher's most deplorable though widely parroted excesses and vices. Elsewhere, we find Nietzsche wonder why Schopenhauer, in spite of his being "so much closer to the arts than Kant . .. could not escape from the spell

218

The genealogy of aesthetics

of Kant's definition."" Obviously, the 31-year-old Schopenhauer who published The Ifbrld as Will and Representation must have yearned for disinterestedness in a different way than did the 66-year-old Kant of the third Critique. What we have here, most obviously, is a contrast between sexual compulsiveness and sexual atrophy: "There are few things about which [Schopenhauer] speaks with such assurance as the effect of aesthetic contemplation. He claims that it counteracts the sexual 'interest' (like lupulin and camphor), and he never tires of glorifying this release from the will as the great boon of the esthetic condition.,,45 But even ifSchopenhauer had been 100 percent right in thus characterizing the effect of beauty on himself, did he thereby contribute anything to our general understanding of it? Whatever the answer, Nietzsche clearly sides with Stendhal ("no less sensual a man than Schopenhauer but more happily constituted"), who stresses the very different effect that beauty had on him.46 To Stendhal, as to Nietzsche himself, "it is precisely the excitement of the will, of 'interest,' through beauty that matters.,,47 What is more, Nietzsche would have readily agreed with Heidegger that Schopenhauer misinterpreted Kant's "pure disinterested liking" in making it his own. Only that his reasons for saying so are somewhat more psychologically astute than Heidegger's unsympathetic dismissal. Schopenhauer, as far as aesthetics is concerned, Nietzsche argues, "was quite wrong in seeing himself as a Kantian." For if ever someone "responded to beauty from an interested motive," it was Schopenhauer. Only that in his case such an incentive was "the strongest, most personal interest, that of the tortured man seeking release from his torment.,,48 Heidegger's distortion of Nietzsche's stance vis-a-vis Kant's and Schopenhauer's "disinterestedness" forms pan of a larger maneuver comprising four separate strategies. One involves arguing that everything "depends on conceiving Nietzsche's philosophy as metaphysics,,;49 a second, that this alleged metaphysics can only be fathomed "in the essential contexl of the history of metaphysics,,50 via Plato, Descanes, and Kant; a third, that Nietzsche is shown to be "the last metaphysician of the West,,;51 a fourth, that Nietzsche, as such, paved the way for the first western philosopher to have raised the question as to the true nature of Being,52 namely Heidegger himself. To the latter, this course of events has the inevitability of a task imposed by destiny itself. 53 In other words, if we fail to recognize how Nietzsche's two main metaphysical concepts of will to power and eternal return inform his demand for a general transvaluation of all values, "and if we do not go on to comprehend this fundamental formulation as one which is also necessary in the course of Western metaphysics, then we will never grasp Nietzsche's philosophy. And we will comprehend nothing of the twentieth century and of the centuries to come, nothing of our own metaphysical task.,,54

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

219

To accomplish his first objective, Heidegger steers clear of less sympathetic Nietzsche interpreters like Karl Jaspers,55 as well as the host of learned Thebans concealing their "hopeless ineptitude" behind an "inflated pedantry,,56 or twaddling about their "scholarly 'theory of knowledge.' ,,57 As for himself, Heidegger proposes to take us "in an orderly fashion through the entire labyrinth of Nietzsche's thoughts,,58 until penetrating to its core. Major goals in this pursuit include digging for "the hidden, underlying sense,,59 of certain concepts, going "beyond everyrhi"g that isJataUy contemporary in Nietzsche,,,60 and, in sum, elaborating not so much what Nietzsche actually thought, but what he "properly wanted to think.,,61 To retrace how Heidegger pursues these goals in detail is foreign to our main concern, and, in a sense, unnecessary. After all, western philosophy, to Heidegger, is metaphysical, not only where it follows the lead of Plato, but also where it repudiates or inverts metaphysics. Matters are simply self-evident here. "All metaphysics, including its opponent, positivism," Heidegger asserts, prefiguring a position later borrowed by Derrida, "speaks the language ofPlato.,,62 To the best of my knowledge, he never explains how. Instead, he simply reiterates the equation as if it were an indisputable fact, or extends it to, say, the British empiricists, to modem science, and, of course, to Nietzsche. 63 In sum, western philosophy, to him, is Platonism. Metaphysics, idealism, and Platonism mean essentially the same thing. They remain determinative even where countermovements and reversals come into vogue. In the history of the West, Plato has become the prototypical philosopher. Nietzsche did not merely dnignau his own philosophy as the reversal of Platonism. Nietzsche's thinking was and is everywhere a single and often very discordant dialogue with Plato.64

Students of Heidegger critical of this or his assumption that Nietzsche consummated western metaphysics 65 are reminded that the person saying so is allegedly the first to have started revealing the true nature of being, which metaphysics as such throughout its entire history from Plato to Nietzsche had left "unthought.,,66 Nietzsche's interpretation of truth and knowledge, from this perspective, is seen as "the most hidden and extreme consequence oj the first beginning oj Wistern thought."67 Nietzsche, by way of thinking "the configuration of knowledge and truth" through "his role thought ofwill to power, became the one who completed Western metaphysics.,,68 For all that (or rather because of it), Nietzsche is found erring on all fronts. He frequently uses trite and exaggerated statements or ostensibly lacks in "conceptual clarity.',69 More damagingly, he nowhere poses the question of truth proper,70 ironically for the same reason for which

220

The genealogy of aesthetics

Heidegger hails him as the philosopher who consummates western metaphysics, that is, by allegedly defining Being as will to power in essence and as eternal return in existence. 7I This is what "blocks him from the path that leads to thinking Being as such,,,72 a path finally opened up by Sein und Zeit. Nietzsche, in this way, is awarded the role of Heidegger's last major forerunner, Heidegger casting himself in the role of the first philosopher to have made the crucial decision of stepping outside western metaphysics. 73 Nietzsche's incomprehension of the metaphysical tradition he unwittingly brought to its consummation is equal to his blindness toward the future he helped prepare. As little as he was able to foresee the new, Heideggerian understanding of truth, as poorly did he peneuate "to the essential content to the traditional and fundamental metaphysical conception of truth.,,74 Heidegger lists several reasons for such lack of acumen: Nietzsche having gone through a positivist phase (1879-81);75 his epistemological bias, or what Heidegger calls the "twaddle of scholarly 'theory ofknowledge',,;76 Nietzsche's suessing logical and physiological perspectives regarding metaphysical issues, or his having been "led on the leash of British empiricism,,77 in attempting to provide a psychological explanation of how "(the categories) arise from associations and habits of thought.,,7B What, in any case, was there to expect from "the victim of an exaggerated drive for immediate recognition and impact" which "robbed him of the peace of mind necessary to go his own way" and diverted him "into a kind of agitated literary 'production,,,?79 What could one expect from a philosopher utterly lacking the "gift for thinking in terms of strict proofs and deductions in broad contexts?"SO While endorsing such criticisms in principle ("These and other explanations for the fact that the 'work' [i.e., The Will to Power] never got written are correct"),81 Heidegger also invokes them so as to criticize those who, in their eagerness to deprecate Nietzsche in general, point to his failure in never completing his major work. 82 The implied sense of completion, he suggests, is all too narrow a concept regarding a philosopher concerned with will to power. Meanwhile, Heidegger's sense of Nietzsche's failure seems even more damning than that of his narrow-minded fellow critics. A "lack of completion," in Nietzsche's case, Heidegger explains, means not just his inability to complete an individual volume, but the fact that "the inner form of his unique thought was denied the thinker."83 This is followed by further disclaimers and counterdisc1aimers. "Perhaps" the inner form of his unique thought was not denied Nietzsche "at all." "Perhaps" such failure exists "only with those for whom Nietzsche walked his path ofthought,,,84 a counterargument seemingly in defense of Nietzsche but portraying him

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

221

as parading before his contemporaries and thereby distorting his real philosophy. While seemingly fending off NietzSche's alleged detractors and misinterpreters, Heidegger ends up drawing a portrait of Nietzsche and his philosophy far more negative than that of any philosopher (such as Plato, Aristotle, Descartes, Leibnitz, Kant, Schelling, and Hegel) he has dealt with in comparable detail. The obvious purpose is to show how Nietzsche was still hovering on the edge of a metaphysical tradition, one Heidegger believed himself to have twisted free from; a role for which NietzSche had to be fitted into a Procrustean bed of ideas he had refuted and transvaluated at every turn. The amount Heidegger wrote about Nietzsche - far more than about any other philosopher - suggests a major obsession. D. F. Krell has stated that Nietzsche's "caustic reduction of Being" to "a last wisp of an evaporated reality [letzten Rauch einer verdunsteten Realitiit],,85 "appears to have provoked almost single-handedly" Heidegger's entire corpus of Nietzsche lectures during 1936-40.86 There is more to the story than that. Despite all protests to the contrary, Heidegger remains far more deeply entangled in the metaphysical tradition he claimed to have deconstructed and twisted free from, than Nietzsche. His effon to prove the opposite rests on a single major claim: Nietzsche's transvaluation of values, which Heidegger reduces to a mere reversal (Umdrehung), resulted in the opposite of what it set out to achieve. Rather than getting rid of metaphysics, it got him more deeply involved in it. At the same time, it blinded Nietzsche to the true nature of the metaphysical tradition, to his indebtedness to it, and to the true nature of his thought. In sum, by his "mere reversal of Greek thought ... Nietzsche only entangles himself all the more, inextricably, in the obverse."s7 Or as Heidegger put it in his essay "Nietzsche's Word 'God is Dead''': As a mere reversal [blojJe Umstillpung] of metaphysics, Nietzsche's reaction against it amounts to an entanglement in metaphysics from which there is no exit, and that in the sense that such a philosophy closes itself off against the essence of such metaphysics, and as a metaphysics, proves incapable of thinking its own essence. 88

Heidegger gives Nietzsche's stance toward Plato as an example. Had not he said himself that his philosophy was an "invened Platonism [umgedrehcer Platonumus],,?89 Yet Nietzsche, so goes the argument, did not even realize the extent to which such inversion committed him to the very notions he repudiated. Thus, his "doctrine of schemata comes so close to the Platonic doctrine of Ideas that it is only a cenain kind of reversal of the Platonic doctrine; that is to say, it is identical with it in essence.,,90

222

The genealogy of aesthetics

Nietzsche's lack of self-understanding vis-a.-vis Plato goes hand in hand with his misinterpretation of Plato's philosophy. In accordance with Schopenhauer, he treats the Platonic doctrine of the Ideas all too superficially, believing he must distinguish his doctrine of the "development of reason [Entwicklung der ~rnunft]" from that of a "pre-existent Idea." Nietzsche's interpretation of reason, too, is Platonism, "albeit transposed to modern thinking.,,91 Nietzsche's relation to other metaphysical philosophers is caught in the same dilemma. Thus, he allegedly "does not know that [his] interpretation of the law of contradiction was expressed by,,92 Aristotle, an oversight entailing disastrous consequences for Nietzsche's transvaluation of values. For it means that Nietzsche grasped neither his indebtedness to metaphysics, nor the scope of his own positions. Or take Nietzsche's alleged failure to appreciate the significance of Descartes' cogito ergo sum which, to Heidegger, results in Nietzsche's own endeavors lacking "a single, consistent focus.,,93 "That Nietzsche posits the body in place of the soul and consciousness alters nothing in the fundamental metaphysical position which is determined by Descartes. Nietzsche merely evades it and brings it to the edge - or even into the realm - of absolute meaninglessness.,,94 This brings us back to Heidegger's criticism of Nietzsche's aesthetics. To the latter, aesthetics, as we recall, had to be grounded in the body rather than the spirit. The beautiful and ugly had to be tied back into what human beings had come to associate with such words, not just since Plato, but over millennia of evolution. In this genealogical perspective, the ugly, for instance, might originally have been linked to the repugnant, the "harmful, dangerous, [the] worthy of suspicion": "the suddenly vocal aesthetic instinct (e.g., in disgust) contains ajudgment. To this extent the beautiful stands within the general category of the biological values of what is useful, beneficent, life-enhancing.,,95 Aesthetics, thus, is "indissolubly connected to these biological predispositions ... the beautiful per se is a chimera [Hirngespinst], just like all ideation.,,96 A separate chapter of Nietzsche's major work (meines Hauptwerkes), as we recall, was to carry the title Zur Physiowgie der Kunst ("Apropos the Physiology of Art,,).97 As Nietzsche mulled over such issues, his view of Plato became increasingly negative. Plato and Socrates were "symptoms of decadence,,,98 Plato himself was a failed wouldbe prophet a la Mohammed,99 a "Dionysokolax" (Epicure) or tyrant's toady,IOO embittered toward the end of his life, I01 a Tartuffe l02 and Cagliostro,103 foisting his pia jraus l04 on his contemporaries, teaching them a totally un-Greek "contempt of the body, of beauty," 105 a coward before reality,106 a moral fanatic 107 disguising his sexual drives under his idealism,108 mistaking his heaving bosom for the "bellows of divinity," 109

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

223

philosophically naive, II 0 in short, a caricature: 111 a poet who had turned against himself and rechanneled his oversensitive vulnerability into a negation of life,112 succumbed to the plebeian Socrates, II J converted, and joined the master's slave revolt against aristocratic taste. 114 Ever since, morality had held sway over thought,115 with Augustine allowing Platonism to enter Christianity via the grand "viaduct of corruption'" 116 Nietzsche's "old aversion to Plato" 117 even extended to the latter's much touted talents as a stylist. Plato had simply made a muddle of styles and was the first decadent among stylists. I 18 More to the point here, Plato had denounced art as well as managed to sever his contemporaries' pagan "instincts from the polis, from contest, from military efficiency, from art and beauty." 119 To Nietzsche, it was high time to redress the balance and revaluate the original Platonic transvaluation. Plato's hierarchical ranking of the artist as below the philosopher or even craftsman had to be called into question. 120 Art and beauty had to be given back their primordial role as the great stimulants oflife l21 in several of its vital areas. "Three elements principally: sexuality, intoxication, cruelty - all belonging to the oldest festal joys of mankind, all also preponderate in the early 'artist .. ,,122 If anything, Nietzsche continued to remember Plato for those more personal idiosyncrasies he had always admired: like his contempt for pity,123 his bachelordom and eventual solitariness,124 his allegedly having died with a volume of Aristophanes under his pillOW,125 or his desperately, though for the most pan unsuccessfully. trying to infuse the plebeian Socrates' slave revolt in taste and morals with some nobility and refinement. 126 As for his doctrines, they had ceased to be of major interest. Whoever, like Nietzsche, had submerged himself in the Dionysian element, could derive no benefits from refuting Plato. 127 Also, for all his emphasis on the need for an anti-Platonic grounding of an and aesthetics in the body, Nietzsche hardly ignored the spiritual and/or formal element in either artistic creativity or aesthetic enjoyment. Instead, he emphatically stressed the importance of both in precisely the kind of art he liked. At the same time he emphasized that such spirituality had nothing to do with sublimation or the repression of the body. Instead, refinement has to evolve out of "sensuality, intoxication, [and] superabundant animality." 128 Form has to function, not as an ideational stranglehold, but as a simple, lawful, unambiguous containment intensifying the energy it contains. 129 There is an overpowering of the fullness of life in it; measure becomes master; at bottom then: is that calm of the strong soul that moves slowly and feels repugnance toward what is too lively. The general rule, the law, is honored and emphasized: the

224

The genealogy of aesthetics

exception, conversely, is set aside, the nuance obliterated. The firm, powerful, solid, the life that reposes broad and majestic and conceals its strength - that is what "pleases."·30

In a way, one might expect Heidegger to agree with this program. Does not he demand a "new interpretation of the sensuous" himself? And does not he advocate a truly Nietzschean balance: "neither abolition of the sensuous nor abolition of the nonsensuous," but rather a "cast[ing] aside" of "the misinterpretation, the deprecation, of the sensuous, as well as the extravagant elevation of the supersensuous"?13J In fact, Heidegger's appeal reads like a paraphrase of Nietzsche's call for "an ever-greater spiritualization and multiplication of the senses,"J32 according to which "we should be grateful to the senses for their subtlety, plentitude, and power and offer them in return the best we have in the way of spirit.,,133 Heidegger's program for a revaluation of sensuousness - despite various attempts he never carried it into effect - seems formulated in similarly Nietzschean terms: The new hierarchy does not simply wish to reverse matters within the old structural order, now reverencing the sensuous and scorning the nonsensuous. It does not wish to put what was at the very bottom on the very top. A new hierarchy and new valuation mean that the ordering structure must be changed. To that effect, overturning [Umdrehung] Platonism must become a twisting free from it [Herausdrehung].114

What else had Nietzsche done? The time when he had admired Socrates and Plato l35 or wrestled with their doctrines had long gone. Inversion and repudiation had been replaced by genealogical revaluation, essentialist notions substituted by evolutionary, psychological, and physiological arguments in every possible field of ontology, epistemology, linguistics, morality, and aesthetics. Plato, derided for either his hypocrisy or naivete, had ceased to be a concern. Where Nietzsche develops his own ideas about art and beauty he hardly mentions him. But to Heidegger, it is entirely the other way around. "During the last years of his creative life," he argues, Nietzsche, "labor[ed] at nothing else than the overturning of Platonism [seine Jetzten Schaffensjahre drehten sich urn nichts anderes als urn diese Urndrehung des Platonisrnus] ."136 These putative labors, in Heidegger's view, were compounded by an alleged, lifelong obsession with the "discordance between art and truth": "It's the relation of art to truth," Nietzsche had jotted down sometime during 1888, "which first caused me to become serious: and even now I stand in holy dread of this discordance."137 Der Entselzen erregende Zwiespalt zwischen Kunst und Wahrheit: henceforth Nietzsche's phrase runs like a leitmotif through the remainder of Heidegger's lecture course. 138

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

225

Predictably, the "hidden, underlying sense of this remarkable phrase,',139 which revealed itself to Nietzsche in his inversion of Platonism, was a dreadful discordance. To press his point, Heidegger predictably draws on a biographical event. Nietzsche, in an unsuccessful, final attempt "to twist free from" Platonism, went insane. 140 The fate is a common one for anyone, Heidegger adds, who thinks that philosophical thought can dispense with history by means of a simple declaration. For any such thinker will be "dispensed with by history; he will be struck a blow from which he can never recover, one that will blind him utterly."141 Alas poor Nietzsche! Gone mad in the futile attempt to overturn Platonism! Thanks to Derrida's defensive comment to the effect that "the thesis ofHeidegger's mighty tome [on Nietzsche] is much less simple than people generally tend to say,"142 the theory has become a popular one in postmodern criticism. 143 Unfortunately, Heidegger's melodramatic account of Nietzsche's lapse into insanity derives, one more time, from misrepresentations of the available textual evidence. Thus, Heidegger both fails to discuss Nietzsche's note about the dreadful discordance between art and truth either in its entirety or in the context of numerous similar comments on The Birth of Tragedy which the note deals with. If read as a whole, the note clearly identifies "den Entsetzen erregenden Zwiespalt" as one to which Nietzsche devoted his first book, an explication Heidegger omits as often as he invokes the phrase. Heidegger equally fails to mention Nietzsche's characterization, in the same jotting, of The Birth of Tragedy as an "immoral [unmoralisch]" book, uninspired by virtue, "the Circe of philosophy" 144 since Plato. Instead, The Birth of Tragedy was sustained by the conviction that "il is not possible lO live with the truth; [and] that the 'will to truth' already constitutes a symptom of degeneracy." 145 This Nietzschean understanding of art in opposition to Plato's "truth" goes back even before The Birth of Tragedy. Plato's "intentionally rough and reckless condemnation of an" in the name of ideational truth, so Nietzsche argues in "Socrates and Tragedy" of 1870, had something pathological. 146 In this strikingly un-Heideggerian perspective, the dreadful discord between truth and art raged in Plato's heart rather than Nietzsche's. Plato trod his deeply artistic nature underfoot and waged war against his own flesh. The very harshness with which he condemned art in the name of his newfound ideal, so Nietzsche suggests, showed that the deepest wound in him never healed. 147 That the discord between art and the Platonic ideal originated from pathological degeneracy is a claim Nietzsche frequently reiterated from then on. It is found in his "Attempt of a Self-Critique" prefatory to the

226

The genealogy of aesthetics

second edition of TIu Binh of Tragedy,I48 in his discussion of this book in Ecce Homo,I49 and in "The Problem of Socrates" section of Twilight of the Idols. 150 The same notion of an early degeneracy prompting philosophers to stray into morality and hence opening up a discord between art and truth also informs Nietzsche's jotting of 1888, but only if we read it in its entirety, instead of tearing part of it out of context, like Heidegger did. To be sure, Nietzsche. in the haste of scribbling down his note, may have thought of yet another kind of discord, namely that between the Apollonian and Dionysian, which indeed would have filled him with holy dread right to the end. Nietzsche ,speaks of it even more frequently than of the other. It is the "antagonism" between creation and destruction, between the beautiful appearance willing itself eternal I 51 and the tragic impulse reaching its highest Dionysian bliss in the annihilation of even the most beautiful Apollonian phenomena. 152 Though more common in his later writings, the idea of this discord appears as early as 1870, when Nietzsche speaks of a "battle" between truth and art or beauty. Never was that battle greater, we read in his "Dionysian World View." than "during the invasion of the cult of Dionysius: Nature revealed itself in it and spoke of its secret with dreadful [entsetzlicher] distinctness, and in a tone which caused the seductive lure [of the Apollonian] to lose almost all its power,"153 Hence, what Nietzsche, in somewhat overcompressed fashion, talks about in his 1888 note, probably is a twofold discord. Chronologically speaking, the first is the original conflict between the Apollonian and the Dionysian, a struggle resolved by tragedy and the Dionysian worldview;154 the second, the battle between the Dionysian principle and logical/aesthetic Socratism l55 which in turn leads to the death of tragedy and to Plato's condemnation of art in the name of ideal truth. Nowhere in his reuvre, including the 1888 note, does Nietzsche mention the kind of discord Heidegger speaks of. If Nietzsche had ever experienced such a discord, there would have been no better place to talk about it than in his "History of an Error" or "How the 'True World' Finally Became a Fable." And this indeed is the kind of admission wrung out of it by Heidegger. To him, the sixth stage in this history of Platonism shows how "the supersensuous, posited by Plato as true being, not only was reduced from the higher to the lower rank but also collapsed into the unreal and nugatory [ins Unwirkliche und Nichtige versank]."156 What could be further from Nietzsche's tongue-incheek "history" than this woeful melodrama of decline and collapse? Even in Heidegger's reading, it comes as a last-minute volte-face. The first stage in the "History of an Error" - a subtitle to be kept in mind throughout - is the properly Platonic one. eel, Plato, am the truth.,,157 The second stage marks what Nietzsche elsewhere describes as

Heidegger contra Nietzsche

227

the error's cooption into Christianity via Augustine's Platonic "viaduct of corruption."158 Heidegger faithfully and perspicaciously paraphrases stage three. Earlier, he noted Nietzsche's complaint to the effect that all traditional aesthetics had been a "woman's aesthetics" insofar as the beautiful had always been defined in terms of the receiver's rather than the artist's experience. 1~9 Now he draws attention to a similarly feminine element in the way Nietzsche characterizes the Platonization of Christianity - the idea of truth "becom[ing] woman [sie wird ~]."160 Simultaneously, the truth has become "unattainable, unprovable," has been turned into a moral "obligation," a "categorical imperative.,,161 "The division," he comments, designates the form of Platonism that is achieved by the Kantian philosophy. The supersensuous is now a postulate of practical reason .,. To be sure, the accessibility of the supersensuous by way of cognition is subjected to critical doubt, but only in order to make room for belief in the requisition of reason [um dem Glauben an die Ulrnunftordnung Platz zu machen]. Nothing of the substance and structure of the Christian view of the world changes by virtue of Kant. 162

Heidegger similarly endorses what Nietzsche, in the following stages, has to say about the post-Kantian period. On the one hand, there is positivism, on the other, a number of "veil-makers" or Schleier-machertheologians like Fichte, Schelling, and Schopenhauer, who continue to build their philosophical systems upon Christian-theological foundations left unshaken, or rather consolidated, by Kant's critiques. 163 However, as Heidegger approaches stages five and six, he suddenly brings his narrative around to the ill-conceived psychodrama of the philosopher going insane after suffering through the dreadful discordance between truth and art in his unsuccessful effort to twist free from Platonism. 164 Nietzsche's phrasing suggests an altogether different story. Stage five continues in the present tense of the previous ones, thus setting what it deals with in the past. "The true world" has been recognized as "an idea which is of use for nothing, which is no longer even obligating - an idea become useless, superfluous, consequmtly, a refuted idea": in almost comic book fashion, Plato is seen to display an "embarrassed blush." 165 Autobiographically speaking, the same stage places Nietzsche at the time he wrote books like Morgenrothe (1881) and Die friJhliche Wissenschaft (1882) - ("Bright day; breakfast; return of bon sense and of cheerfulness ... devilish din raised by all free spirits") - when some of his more radical tasks still lay ahead of him - "the 'true world' ... let us abolish it!"166 With stage six, the tense changes. We have reached the point in Nietzsche's life (ca. 1888) when he wrote down "The History of an Error," originally planned as the introduction to The Will to Power.167

228

The genealogy of aesthetics

Things could not be stated more clearly. Along with the error of Platonic truth, Nietzsche has also abolished its counterpart, Platonic appearance (die scheinbare mit). 168 At this point, even Thus Spoke Zarathustra with its fable of the transvaluation of "the most evil and bad-mouthed notions"WolJust, Herrschsucht, Selbstsucht ("voluptuousness," "lust for power," "selfishness") 169 - already lie several years in the past. As that fable makes clear, the Nietzschean transvaluation of values, as far as his own theoretical efforts are concerned, is a fait accompli. From out of the nocturnal world of rancor and resentment in which Wollust, Herrschsucht, and Selbstsuchc acquired their negative meaning, they have been raised back up into bright daylight wisdom. Most importantly, that process was one, not of simple inversion, but of gradual, multilayered transformation. Selbstsucht, for instance, is only temporarily apostrophized as Selbst-Lust ("self-enjoyment") before being reinstated into its fully transvaluated meaning. Fictionally speaking, the time suggested by the fable in Zarathustra, then, is that of MorgenrOche (or Dawn), title of another of Nietzsche's books published in 1881. The "midday [Mittag]" which Nietzsche, in terms of his philosophical development, reached in 1888 still lies in the imminent future. "But now comes ... the great midday [Mittag]: then many things shall be revealed. And the true prophet who canonizes and blesses the Ego as well as blesses selfishness, also speaks what he knows: 'Behold, it comes, it is near, the great midday [Minag]!'" 170 What Zarathustra predicts as something to happen in the immediate future, has become present reality in stage six of "The History of an Error." "Midday; moment of the shortest shadow; end of the longest error; highpoint of humanity; INCIPIT ZARATHUSTRA." 171 Yet, to Heidegger, there has been little more than an unsuccessful attempt to twist free from Platonism. What Nietzsche, according to his own words, accomplished in the past, is misread as a task still to be resolved in the future. "That Nietzsche appends a sixth division here shows that, and how, he must advance beyond himself and beyond sheer abolition of the supersensuous."I72 Heidegger's introduction to the last section of his first leCture course on Nietzsche (omitted in D. F. Krell's translation) draws an even more negative picture than this. All Nietzsche had managed, so it points out, was a "reinterpretation of the sensuous-supersensuous precisely with the help of a coarsened and inverted Platonism": Hence not a twisting free from [Herausdrehen], on the contrary! ... What in the presentation of the history of Platonism in #6 looked like a complete twisting free, is not that at all. Nietzsche, instead, here once again entangles himself and definitely and in the deepest possible way in what he is trying to invert. 1n

16

Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida

The phenomenalism and perspectivism as I understand them are properly this: the nature of animal consciousness brings it about that the world, of which we can become conscious, is a world of mere surfaces and signs, a world made general and common [vergemeinerr); that everything that becomes conscious consequently turns out flat, thin, dumbly relational, general, a sign, a memory-tag for the herd; that any rise to consciousness entails a great fundamental corruption [~rderbnis], falsification, a making superficial and general ... My concern here, as can be guessed, is not with the antithesis of subject and object: I leave this distinction to the epistemologists who are still caught within the fetters of grammar (i.e., folk-metaphysics). Even less so is it with the antithesis between "thing in itself" and appearance. For we "cognize" far too little to be permitted to make such distinctions. Altogether, we have no organ for cognition, for the "truth." We "know" (or believe or fantasize about) just as much as may be useful in the interest of the human herd, of our species [Gauung]; and even what is caUed "usefulness" here, is ultimately a mere belief, fantasy, and perhaps that most fateful stupidity which will bring about our eventual ruin.

m, 593 / The Gay Science, V, 354

Compared with Heidegger, allegedly provoked into delivering a fourvolume lecture series on Nietzsche by the latter's dismissal of Being as that "last wisp of evaporating reality,"i Heidegger disciple Jacques Derrida has fewer scruples on the same score. Nietzsche's argument that "fundamentally esse means nothing else than 'breathe,',,2 to Derrida, is little more than a deplorable instance of "etymological empiricism,,3 for which he professes little else but contempt. Let us look at matter from the opposite perspective first. To start with, Nietzsche's approach to Being is genealogical, here in the sense of reaching back into prehuman consciousness. 4 Essentially, Being stands for a basic experience of sameness, thanks to which an animal would "identify" whatever furthers or threatens its survival; for example, a doe, leaves it can feed on, or lions that might feed on it. The philosophical fixation on Being, then, is an atavistic superstition going back before the time 229

230

The genealogy of aesthetics

when a few such rudimentary samenesses multiplied exponentially with the advent oflanguage. The latter, ironically, constantly lagged behind as well as obstructed a more and more rapid differentiation of experience. 5 "Being," as Nietzsche suggests in several examples, became the worst leveler among other common denominators like "idea" or "thing." "I can say of a tree that 'it is' in comparison with other things," he explains. "Just so I can say 'it grows' [er wird] in comparison with itself at a different point in time, or finally also 'it is not,' as in, for instance, it is not yet a tree,' for as long as I view it as a bush." In that sense, Words are only symbols of the relationship of things with each other and with us. They nowhere touch the absolute truth: more so, the words "Being" and "Non-Being" only denote the most general relation that links things to each other . .. We shall never get behind the wall of relations, say, into some fabled original ground of things [Urgrund] via words and concepts. 6

In the same vein, Nietzsche dismisses claims that experience always already presupposes a sense of Being; like Hegel contending that "the Absolute is already there, [for] how could we search for it otherwise," or Beneke saying that "Being must somehow be given to, must somehow be attainable for us, since otherwise we could not even have the concept of Being." The notion of Being! In etymological terms, with the Latin esse, for instance, it derives from man's sense of breathing and from projecting this sense onto all other things. 7 Epistemologically speaking, Sein, as a transcendental given, is as illusory as causality, time, space, and the so-called "pure forms of sensibility [reine Formen der Sinnlichkeit] ."8 Here Nietzsche sides with Hume. Being and cognition, if we retain these terms for the sake of the argument, "are the most contradictory of all spheres"; the human subject is absolutely incapable of seeing or knowing anything beyond itself. To pretend otherwise, or even as much as to raise questions of the "foundation for the justification of grounds [of argument] [nach GrandenjUrdas Recht der BegrUndung zujragen],',9 is sheer presumption. If, following Heidegger, we characterize these Nietzschean moves as typically empiricist inversions of the originally Platonic approach to reality and cognition, then Derrida reverses these inversions. In this, he makes common cause with Descartes who, in a letter of March 1638, explains that the proposition '''I breathe, therefore I am' concludes nothing.,,10 For, as Derrida adds, "the meaning of respiration is always [already] a dependent and particular determination of my thought and my existence, and a fortiori of thought and of Being in general." Nietzsche's reduction of Being to breathing accordingly is a deplorable instance of "etymological empiricism" which, incidentally, happens to be the "hidden root of all

Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida

231

empiricism." I I It allegedly ignores "the essential, that is, the thought that respiration and nonrespiration are ... [and] are in a determined way, among other ontic determinations." Thus, empiricism, as Hegel points out, "always forgets, at the very least, that it employs the words to be.,,12 Derrida could not agree more - with Hegel, Descanes, and finally Heidegger. The latter's contention that "the Question of Being as a question concerning the possibility of the concept of Being, springs forth from the preconceptual understanding of Being," 13 to Derrida, has opened a dialogue and a repetition which cannot "cease to deepen,,14 - as it does in Derrida's own theorizing. Thus Being to Heidegger is like "the same" to Derrida. "The same is not a category, but the possibility of every category."IS Derrida rarely gives examples for what he theorizes about in his abstract, esoteric, and neologistic language. Yet this scarcity of examples regarding his equation of Being with sameness can be supplemented by instances provided by Heidegger. To illustrate his anti-Nietzschean contention that our apprehension of an object always already presupposes a sense of sameness and difference, Heidegger choses a tree like Nietzsche - more particularly "a lone tree outside on a meadow slope, a particular birch."16 Experientially, this tree may be "a manifold of colors, shades, light, atmosphere" that "has a different character according to the time of day and year, and also according to the changing perspective of our perception, our distance, and our mood.,,)7 Nonetheless, so Heidegger claims, "it is always this 'identical' tree." And it is not identical "subsequent to our ascertaining the matter through comparisons ... but the other way around [umgekehrt]; our way of approaching the tree always already looks for the 'identical,'" 18 looks for the ever same (dasje Gleiche). Not8s though the changing aspects escaped us. On the contrary: "only if in advance lim 'l.IOraus] we posit something beyond the variability of what gives itself, something that is not at hand in the self - giving given, an 'identity,' that is, a self-same [Bin eGleiches,' eSe/biges'], can we experience the magic of the change of aspects." 19 Not content with assuming a passively innate sense of sameness (as enabling us to "identify," say, a birch tree), Heidegger even posits a projectively creative human mind always already at work, poetically prefiguring what is met with in experience with its categories. He may state it more poetically than Derrida, but in essence the two agree to the effect that Being or sameness, instead of being categories, are the sine qua non preconditions for categories as well as concepts. "To treat Being (and the same) as categories ... is this not to forbid oneself every determination ... in the outset?," Derrida wonders. His answer is unequivocal. "Every

232

The genealogy of aesthetics

determination, in effect, presupposes the thought of Being.'·2o Similarly, the "positing of a tree as the same [als desselben]," to Heidegger, is dependent on our having "already in advance created ['Vorausgedichtet] thinghood, constitution, relation, effect, causality, and size for what is encountered. What is created in such creativity are the categories.,,21 What we are really concerned with here, then, is the creative imagination. Let us look at the same issue from a Hobbesian point ofview. According to the Leviathan, as we recall, the imagination is of two kinds, "'simple' .. . as when one imagineth a man, or horse which he hath seen before .. . [and] compounded; as when, from the sight of a man at one time, and of a horse at another, we conceive in our mind a Centaure.,,22 Both, but particularly simple imagination, are subject to "decaying sense" or the fading of memory, so "that the longer the time is, after the sight or sense of any object, the weaker is the imagination."23 It is the exact reverse with Heidegger. What we imagine ('Vergegenwiirtigen) in our mind's eye can, if we make the proper effort, be visualized "much more clearly and fully than in present, immediate perception ['Viel deutlicher und voller sehen als in der gegenwiirtigenden, unmittelbaren Wflhrnehmung] ."24 Taking a detour from his explication of Plato's "inquiry after the nature of knowledge" in Theaetetus, Heidegger asks that his students temporarily set aside the text and think of an example: walking through the Black Forest, they might come across a well-known tower, the Feldbergturm. They might look at it or talk about when it was built, by whom, and for what purpose. Then back home the same day, or later, like presently in the lecture hall, they remember the tower, make it present to themselves (~rgegenwiirtigung) the way it was actually present (gegenwiirtig) the time they saw it. In carrying out this thought experiment, the students are requested to forget all theorizing, and especially all psychology. The alleged result is miraculous. The Feldbergmrm, thus imagined, allegedly appears to them more truthfully than in actual perception. It is the unproven miracle of transcendentalist epistemology. We suddenly have in front of us, what in immediate, physical perception didn't even strike us, as we say. However, what we have in front of us are not notions, simulacra, bits of images and inner traces of memory or such, but thaI rowards which this having-in-front-of-oneself is oriented, and remains oriented towards exclusively - it is the [ontologically] present tower itself res isl der seiende: Turm selbstV~

Also, such imagining is not necessarily a remembering, Heidegger claims. On the contrary: "Remembering [Erinnern] is a special case of imagining [~rgegenwiirtigung] ."26 Though each act of memory is necessarily one of imagination, not every act of imagination is one of memory.

Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Dcrrida

233

According to Heidegger, Plato suggested that much in comparing the human mind to "a block of wax,,,27 and calling the latter "the gift of the Muses' mother, Memory."28 The gift, Heidegger explains, is the "faculty of mnemoneuein, that is to say, not remembering [Erinnerung) and not memory [Gediichtnis), but being-mindful of [Eingedenk-sein).,,29 He concedes that one's bodily nature (Leiblichkeit) provides the medium through which we perceive what is present (Gegenwiirtigung or aisthisis) as well as what is nonpresent (Vergegenwartigung or mnemoneuein). 30 But how such mediation works, to Heidegger, can only be asked after one has explained the circumstances that make such bodily mediation (leibliche Zwischenschalrung) possible. That is what Plato's parable is all about. Rather than "an attempt at a physiological explanation of memory it clarifies that essence of imagination [~rgegenwartigung] which in the first place renders possible and necessary something like memory:,31 The process of perceiving, remembering, and imagining, as seen from the perspective of an evolutionary or genealogical empiricism, has been turned upside down. Imagination makes possible memory and sensation, not the reverse. The hypemophe of the imagination, observed in Kant, has been escalated even further. No wonder Heidegger felt that Kant had failed to evolve "a pure productive power of imagination" which, as the common root of "pure intuition" and theoretical reason, is supposed to be "the basis for all knowledge a priori ... mak[ing) experience possible for the first time.,,32 Though the first edition of the Critique of Pure Reason groped toward such a concept, Heidegger notes regretfully, the second edition "thrust" it aside. 33 For what interests Heidegger, as we recall, is not what Kant said, but rather what he "wanted to say," that is, Kant's unspoken "presuppositions" and the "innermost intention,,34 of his thinking insofar as he was unaware or only half-aware of them himself. From his deconstructive or "destructive" vantage point, all of Kant's categories, even his transcendental apperception of self, always already presuppose a transcendental power of imagination. In Heidegger's own words, The "I think," however, is always an "I think substance," "I think causality" - or rather, "in" these pure unities (categories), always already "it means": "I think substance," "I think causality," etc. The 1 is the "vehicle" of the categories to the extent that in its preliminary self-orienting toward ... [sic] it brings them along [to a point] from which, as represented, regulative unities, they can unify.35

Derrida substitutes differance and its chain of "nonsynonymous" substitutions like the supplement, pharmakon, mimesis, and so forth as his final ontoepistemological point de repire for Heidegger's transcendental power of imagination to perceive Seyn.36 He tells us so himself. The pharmakon, he writes, "is not a simple thing. But neither is it a composite, a sensible

234

The genealogy of aesthetics

or empirical sunrheton partaking of several simple essences. It is rather the prior medium in which differentiation in general is produced." Pharmakon or d,ifferance, in that respect, is a direct analogon to Kant's transcendental power of imagination as interpreted by Heidegger. Differance, in Derrida's own words, "is analogous to the one that will, subsequent to and according to the decision of philosophy, be reserved for transcendental imagination, that 'art hidden in the depths of the soul.,,,37 By further analogy, Derrida is lead to endorse several related Heideggerian claims, though with a difference. What precedes and makes possible the self and the categories is Seyn as grasped by the transcendental imagination to Heidegger, and differance, allegedly a nonword and nonconcept (with the more mystical connotations that entails), to Derrida. The latter goes as far as to allege that "pure perception," when viewed in light of the ne plus ultra perspective or medium of differance that makes it possible, "does not exist." For "we are written only as we write, by the agency within us which always already keeps watch over perception, be it internal or extemal.,,38 Or: "Without being a predicate itself, 'being' is the condition of aU predicates.,,39 "The word 'transcendental' in its most rigorous accepted sense, in its most avowed 'technicalness,' ... means transcategorical.,,40 Derrida has said so in trying to refute Benveniste's argument that Aristotle, in evolving his categories, was "simply identifying certain fundamental categories of the language in which he thought.,,41 Apart from pointing out minor inconsistencies oftenninology and logic,42 this rebuttal relies on the assumption of an always already priority of transcendental Over empirical determinations throughout. What Benveniste, in distinguishing "categories of thought" from "categories of language" leaves unexamined, Derrida argues, "is the common category of the category, the categorialit.y in general, on the basis of which the categories oflanguage and the categories of thought may be dissociated.,,43 Who more convincingly than Aristotle himself gave the proper answer to Benveniste's anti-Aristotelian allegations in determining that "category of categories" or "root, of the language/thought couple" as Being? Otherwise, Derrida relies on a number of scholars who, like Wilhelm von Humboldt, have noted long before Benveniste that Aristotle had determined his categories "in strict relationship with the categories of language and grammar.,,44 Meanwhile, they had done so without lapsing into Benveniste's error of positing a priority of language over thought. Also, if " 'being,''' as Benveniste concedes, "is the condition of all predicates,"45 how, then, could the transition from categories of language to those of thought possibly take place without that prior "transcategoriality of 'to be,' which 'envelops everything.' ,,46

Heidegger, NietzSche, and Derrida

235

What of the fact that some languages lack words, like esse, sein, or etre, directly denoting Being? Thus "1 am young" in, say, Altaic, reads man yas man, the copula "is" being substituted by a reiteration of the personal pronoun. "You are young" - san yas san. "He is rich - 01 bay 01. Does that mean that Altaic speakers lack a sense of Being? Derrida answers by way of quoting Heidegger to the effect that people without a sense of Being would lack language per se. 47 In other words, a sense of Being is prior to and makes possible languages everywhere, regardless of whether they express such Being through verbs and/or nouns like ist and Sein or via a copula supplement like the repetition of the personal pronoun, as in Altaic. In discussing the more general question as to whether or not "philosophical discourse [is] governed ... by the constraints of language,"48 Derrida has Nietzsche spell out the initial answer, but only by way of documenting that answer's fatal fallacies. In saying that "logic is only slavery within the bounds of language," Nietzsche, we are told, fell into the predictable trap of reinforcing what he tried to transvaluate. "At the most critical or 'overturning' moment of his enterprise," he could not "escape the law of reappropriation"49 whereby his genealogical maneuvers remained caught in the metaphysical discourse they are forced to adopt in the illusion of overturning it. It is the familiar Heideggerian disqualification of anyone who, like Nietzsche, "alleges that philosophical discourse belongs to the closure of language." For they too, "must still proceed within this language and with the oppositions it furnishes. According to a law that can be formalized, philosopby always reappropriates for itself the discourse that de-limits it.,,50 As if we were all hopelessly entrapped in a straightjacket subtext of metapbysical notions forming the inescapable circumference of our language! As if we were all speaking Platonic, Aristotelian, Cartesian, Kantian, and Hegelian rather than Heraclitean, Epicurean, Baconian, Hobbesian, Humean, Darwinian, and Nietzschean! But then all such "empiricist" plus genealogical philosophers remain the pathetic lackeys of the metaphysical masters they presume to overthrow, their anti-Platonic strategies, so Heidegger-Derrida argue, being always already trapped in the same law of reappropriation. Allegedly there is absolutely no way out of this dilemma except the one proposed by Heidegger-Derrida themselves. There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake metaphysics. We have no language - no syntax and no lexicon - which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip [glisser] into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest ... The step "outside philosophy" is much more

236

The genealogy of aesthetics

difficult to conceive than is generally imagined by those who think they made it long ago with cavalier ease, and who in general are swallowed up in metaphysics in the entire body of discourse which they claim to have disengaged from it. ~I

But how, except in Heidegger's anellor Derrida's fantasies, is Nietzsche (or for that matter Darwin) "swallowed up in metaphysics," while, for instance, anticipating insights that are commonplace among today's cognitive scientists? "All thought, judgment, perception, considered as comparison," says Nietzsche, "has as its precondition a 'positing of equality,' and earlier still, a 'making equal.' The process of making equal is the same as the process of incorporation of appropriated material in the amoeba.,,52 Or as we read in a recent encyclopedia, "amoebas can distinguish food (e.g., algae, diatoms, bacteria, and other protozoans) from other material and use different tactics in approaching plant and animal food.,,53 Or is Nietzsche reappropriated by metaphysics in suggesting that the "inventive force that invented categories labored in the service of our needs, namely of our need for security, for quick understanding on the basis of signs and sounds, for means of abbreviation?,,54 Rather than posit an always already priority of Being or dijferance over the categories, and of categories over experience, one might wonder when in evolution Being, dijferance, and the categories made their first appearences in the brains of humans or their animal ancestors. Nietzsche provides us with a tentative answer. What was authoritative in "the formation of reason, logic, the categories," to him, "was need" the need, not to "know," but to subsume, to schematize, for the purpose of intelligibility and calculation - (The development of reason is adjustment, invention, with the aim of making similar, equal- the same process that every sense impression goes through!) No preexisting "idea" was here at work, but the utilitarian fact that only when we see things coarsely and made equal do they become calculable and usable to us ... The categories are "truths" only in the sense that they are conditions oflife for us ... they could have prevailed, after much groping and fumbling, [only] through their relative utility - [Then there1 came a point when one collected them together, raised them to consciousness as a whole - and when one commanded them, i.e., when they bad the effect to command - From then on, they counted as a priori, as beyond experience, as irrefutable. And yet perhaps they represent nothing more than the expediency of a certain race and species. ~~

In this evolutionary sense, even our ontological sense of being as well as

the categories, to Nietzsche, "are of sensual origin: derived from the empirical world. 'The soul,' 'the ego,' - the history of these concepts shows that here, too, the oldest distinction ('breath,' 'life') _ ."56 However, Nietzsche, so Derrida tells us, is indulging in "etyDlologism,"5i "the hidden root of all empiricism,"58 which in turn, as we know, is hopelessly trapped in the metapbysics it so cavalierly claims to reject.

Heidegger, Nietzsche, and Derrida

237

As for Nietzsche's observations on the categories, Derrida does not bother

to mention them - except by invoking Nietzsche's saying that it is precisely the philosophers who prove the most incapable of liberating themselves from viewing "fundamental concepts and categories" as "metaphysical certainties."59 But how about Nietzsche's genealogicaVevolutionary arguments? Are we to suppose that they dodge truly "theoretical" argument, "(the a priori, the scientific, the objective, the systematic, etc.)" by "empiricist and impressionistic rush[es]," or by "empiricist precipitation ,,?60 Of course, one would rather avoid making such blunt equations. For decades now, Nietzsche has been the touchstone of modern and/or postmodern thought. Though he repeatedly stressed his psychological, physiological, biological, in short, empiricist bias, numerous of his aphorisms and asides warn us against misinterpreting such statements of preference as endorsements of what Heidegger-Derrida deign to call a "vulgar" empiricism. Also, there is the ominous precedent ofHeidegger's monumental effort to pressgang Nietzsche into classical ontology by way of dismissing and/or discrediting the philosopher's undeniably empiricist leanings. Derrida skirts both dangers ambidextrously, now condemning, now extolling Heidegger's Procrustean enterprise, or suggesting an even more ambiguous solution to the contradictions involved - that is, that to fully expose Nietzsche to the Heideggerian reading would best bring out Nietzsche's stylistic idiosyncrasy and diversity:61 for the latter, as Derrida's Eperons proposes, constitutes the philosopher's greatest achievement. Be that as it may, the underlying agenda of this bizarre protocol for reading Nietzsche sounds an all too familiar note. After more than once reversing himself in parenthetical afterthoughts, Derrida finally decides that, in the effort to do justice to Nietzsche, Heidegger's reading is uncircumventible after all: "for read otherwise, the Nietzschean demolition remains dogmatic and, like all reversals, a captive of that metaphysical edifice it professes to overthrow. On that point and in that order of reading, the conclusions of Heidegger ... are irrefutable.,,62 Plus fa change, plus c'esc fa meme chose. Meanwhile, the extenuating circumstances granted Nietzsche are hardly extended to other empiricists. Empiricism generally is simply declared a nonphilosophy63 whose single most outstanding fault is precisely that of presenting itself as either properly philosophical or scientific. 64 Otherwise, Derrida's, or for that matter Heidegger's, concern with empiricist philosophers, let alone empiricist arguments, is minimal. Derrida has repeatedly written on Condillac, but mostly limiting himself to the latter's theory of language. 65 Heidegger, who in 1912 grudgingly

238

The genealogy of aesthetics

acknowledged David Hume as the "Spiritus rector of contemporary philosophy,"66 never, to my knowledge, bothered to discuss Hume's challenges to metaphysics in any detail. Even more telling is his repeated, brief encounter with Hobbes. Heidegger's 1927 Basic Problems 0/ Phenomenology praises Hobbes' Computatio Sive Logica for its "unsurpasssable clarity,,67 and importance in elucidating contemporary logic. More recent commentators have noted how Hobbes prefigured Wittgensteinian ideas as well as J. L. Austin's speech-act theory.68 Benveniste, as discussed by Derrida, might have found interest in Hobbes' speculations on languages lacking the copula "is." "There are some peoples, or there certainly could be," Hobbes writes, "which have no vocal sound at all corresponding to our word 'Is' but form propositions only by the position of one name after another, as if for 'Man is an animal' we said only' Man an animal!' ,,69 Needless to say, the conclusions derived from this are neither Derrida's nor Heidegger's. To Hobbes, there is a distinct advantage to such a lack of the copula "is" in that it stops people from fantasizing about so-called ontological issues, or rather "the confusion of vocal sounds derived from [say] the Latin word 'est,' such as 'essence,' 'essentiality,' 'entity,' 'entitative,' 'reality,' 'somethingness,' and 'whatness.' ,,70 But this is hardly what Hobbes is allowed to argue in Heidegger's "destructive" reading. Instead, the British nominalist is strong-armed into admitting that the copula "is" posits the ground of possibility for our relating two terms (Namen) to the same thing. 71 Crucial in this reading is a phrase - "CopuJario autem cogitationem inducit causae propter quam ea nomine illi rei imponumur>72 - to which Heidegger returns in the winter of 1929/30 in the course of a much briefer and less complimentary discussion of Hobbes' Logica. According to the latter, Heidegger argues, "the copula is not the mere sign of a mere connection between words, but points to that in which the connection is grounded. 'And wherein is it grounded?' In that which is its matter [Sache], in its quid, ... in its quidditas."n Nothing could be further from Hobbes' ideas. If he argues that the copula "induces the thought of the cause on account of which those names were imposed on that thing,,,74 his stress is on the ontological fallacy of searching for causes in things where none can be ascertained. For instance, in hearing "Body is moveable," the human mind, not being content with just stating this possibility, "seeks further for what it is to be a body or to be moveable . .. looking in things for the causes of those names," while ignoring the fact that "abstract name [s]" such as corporeitaS or mobililas, "denote the cause of a concrete name, not the thing itself.,,75

Heidegger, NietzSche, and Dcrrida

239

Accordingly, the proper use of abstract terms should be circumscribed by the fact «that without them we cannot reason, that is, compute the many properties ofbodies.,,76 Meanwhile, their misuse, to Hobbes, stems from our separating properties from bodies and then having the copula "is" mislead us into assuming that abstract names have an independent validity - which is why people lacking that copula are less likely to lapse into ontological vagaries. These meaningless vocal sounds, "abstract substances," "separated essence," and other similar ones, spring from the same fountain. Also, the confusion of vocal sounds derived from the Latin word "est," such as "essence," "essentiality," "entity," "entitative," "reality," "somethingness," and "whatness," could not have been heard among peoples for whom copulation is not effected by the word "is," but by adjectival words such as "runs," "reads," etc. or by the mere juxaposition ofnames. 77

What Heidegger fails to comment upon, Derrida can be imagined denouncing (as he does regarding Nietzsche and others) as a case of "etymological empiricism," that "hidden root of all empiricism," that "renunciation of the concept, of the a prioris and transcendental horizons of language," that naIve «nonphilosophy" ignorant of its ineluctable complicity with the metaphysics ofpresence. 78 For has "not the concept of experience always been determined by the metaphysics ofpresence,,?79 Does not empiricism, in the very process of professing to refute metaphysics, let the metaphysical discourse "be dictated to itself a tergo,,?80 But what does this fatal complicity, which Derrida invokes on numerous occasions, actually consist of? The answer lies in his lumping together two different issues. The basic disagreement between transcendentalists and empiricists is over the origin of ideas. The former allege that ideas are innate andlor a priori in a nonevolutionary sense and that they even perhaps correspond to the true nature of things in the sense of an adaequatio rei et intelJectus. Empiricists dispute these claims, and search for experiential andlor genealogical priorities to explain the functioning of thought as well as the emergence of the metaphysicians' erroneous fantasies. As for the fact that both transcendentalists and empiricists share a representational understanding of language, it has never been in dispute, that is for as long as the disagreement over the origin of ideas or their adequation with the "true" nature of things per se remain separate issues. For instance, the word birch points to or evokes the mental concept of a specific tree acquired evolutionarily through having seen such items delimited by a memorable sameness (the white bark) marking it off from other "trees," or alternatively, through having learnt about such a tree; meanwhile, it

240

The genealogy of aesthetics

does not stand for "something given in either nature, the human mind or both," like "always this 'same' birch-tree,,81 of Heidegger's. To put it in Hobbes' terms, there is "nothing in the world Universal but Names," just as the "True and False" are strictly "attributes of Speech, not of Things.,,82 Do such empiricist determinations remain caught in a metaphysical understanding of language? But why bother with such problems once one has convinced oneself that empiricism merely transforms "transphilosophical concepts" into "philosophical naivetes"?83 To Derrida, an empiricist understanding of language simply cannot be taken seriously. Above all, how can one affinn the empiricity of the movement which leads to signifying in general and to signifying within a language, and that does so with recourse to an organization of forms, a distribution of classes, etc.? Finally, on the basis of what system, and also from whence historically, do we receive and understand - before even positing the empiricity of signification - the signification of empiricity? On this matter no analysis will either circumvent or exclude the tribunal of Aristotelianism. 84

Most importantly, empiricism, because of its complicity with metaphysics, as Derrida never tires of telling us, will never do in deconstructing metaphysics. This is doubly true, in his view, since the "breakthrough toward radical otherness ... always takes, within philosophy, the form of a posteriority or an empiricism."85 Thinkers driven by their resistance to metaphysics into having recourse to empiricist arguments, allegedly do not realize that what is prompting them to do so is "the specular nature of philosophical reflection, philosophy being incapable of inscribing (comprehending) what is outside it otherwise than through the appropriating assimilation of a negative image of it.,,86 Worse still, empiricism, being a nonphilosophy, can never be properly called to account for its naivetes or, in Derrida's phrasing, "called to appear before the tribunal of any law."87 For such a tribunal would always have to be constituted by metaphysics, or by its by now deconstructed, that is, metametaphysical successor ala Heidegger and Derrida.

17

Dijferance, Freud, Nietzsche, and Artaud

N.B. Comparing is not an originary activity, but making equal is! Originally, the judgment is not the belief that something is such and such, but the wiU that something must [soU] be such and such. xn,256

In sum, we have no other choice than to deconstruct metaphysics from within metaphysics itself. "There is no sense in doing without the concepts of metaphysics in order to shake metaphysics. We have no language - no syntax and no lexicon - which is foreign to this history; we can pronounce not a single destructive proposition which has not already had to slip into the form, the logic, and the implicit postulations of precisely what it seeks to contest." I Once again, Derrida has repeatedly stressed the same point. Deconstruction is a Sisyphean labor. "Operating necessarily from the inside, borrowing all the strategic and economic resources of subversion from the old structure, borrowing them structurally, that is to say without being able to isolate their elements and atoms, the enterprise of deconstruction always in a certain way falls prey to its own work.,,2 All we can be sure of is the sheer hopeless enormity of the task and the constant risk of "falling back within what is being deconstructed.,,3 As for tangible results, the hopes are but faint. Conscientious as we may be in surrounding our "critical concepts with a careful and thorough discourse - [marking] the conditions, the medium, and the limits of their effectiveness and to designate rigorously their intimate relationship to the machine whose deconstruction they permit," the prospects of ever being able to step outside this formidable labyrinth of metaphysics are limited to our trying to "designate the crevice through which the yet unnameable glimmer beyond the closure can be glimpsed [designer ... la faiDe par /aquelJe se laisse entrevoir. encore innommable, la lueur de l'outre-clOzure).,,4 We can only suggest in passing how deconstruction, with its obvious Augustinian andlor Kafkaesque connotations of a pursuit of the sheer impossible, draws on Heideggerian roots. Derrida has pointed out how the concept derived from Heidegger's De.srruktion or Abbau,; a notion 241

242

The genealogy of aesthetics

with strong religious affiliations from its inception. The publication of Heidegger's early lectures reveals that what prompted his earliest endeavor in dismantling onto-theo-ego-Iogy6 in light of his own Ontoehronie7 was a number of Christian concepts. More important than Kierkegaard here was the early Christians' agitated expectations of the kingdom to come. Their unprecedented sense of selfhood (Selbscwelt) was subsequently deformed as well as buried with the infiltration of ancient science and philosophy into Christianity. However, once in a while that earlier sense reemerged in gigantic eruptions, as in Augustine, medieval mysticism, the early Luther, and Kierkegaard. Augustine's meditation on time in his Confessions, his Crede, ut intelligas, or his vision of the great incessant unrest of life, encapsulated in the phrase inquietum eor nostrum, offer instances. 8 Heidegger found more examples in Luther before the latter succumbed to the pressures of dogmatism, like Augustine before him. This is evident in Luther's comments on Romans 1:20, a biblical passage, which, as we saw, served Platonism as a major port of entry into Christianity. 9 As St. Paul's assumed endorsement of Platonism, this crucial sentence InvisibiJia enim ipsius, a ereatura mundi, per ea quae facta SUnE, intelleeta, eonspiciuntur - "constantly recurs in Patristic writings, indicating the direction of the (Platonic) ascent out of the sensual into the suprasensual world,,10 and thus distorting the early Christian sense of life. Three of Luther's forty Heidelberg theses, according to Heidegger, corrected that misinterpretation by way of retrieving Paul's original Christian meaning. Luther decided that whoever perceives God's invisibility in his creation is not worthy of the name theologian, but inflates, turns blind, and hardens. He calls good what is bad, and bad what is good. What Heidegger extracts from this "destructive" reading of Romans 1:20, though in essential agreement with the reformer's, is more general. "The model for the subject matter of theology can not be attained via a metaphysical view of the world."l1 Be that as it may, early Christianity's sense of life, which was glimpsed at again in Augustine and Luther, also was the young Heidegger's starting point toward the planned "destruction of Christian theology and Occidental philosophy."12 It equally informed some of the major concepts in Sein und Zeit, and more generally speaking, his "building a rival Heilsgesehichte to the biblical,,13 and theological one. For all the claims of deconstrllcting teleology and ontotheology, Heidegger and, even more so, Derrida follow their own kind of "retrospective teleology,,14 in looking back upon the history of metaphysics as well as in limiting the historical role of immediate precursors. As eagerly as Heidegger condemns Nietzsche for remaining caught in the metaphysics he tried to transvaluate, as zealously Derrida labels

Dij/erance, Freud, Nietzsche, and Artaud

243

Heidegger as still caught in the ontology he attempts to "destrUct.',I' Part of Heidegger's complicity with what he dismantled was his sense of living "in an 'epoch' of being-in-deconstruction,"16 which Derrida dismisses as unconvincing in one place, only to make it his own in another. There, the general decentering of philosophy is deemed "no doubt part of the totality of an era, our own," which always already "begun to proclaim itself" in pioneering ventures like the "Nietzschean critique of metaphysics," "the Freudian critique of self-presence," and, "more radically, the Heideggerian destruction of metaphysics, of onto-theology, of the determination of Being as presence.,,17 In noting that "all these destructive discourses ... are trapped" 18 in a kind of vicious circle, Derrida, in one sense, is speaking from a vantage point beyond Nietzsche's, Freud's, and Heidegger's alleged dilemmas. In another, he openly confesses to being caught in the same dilemma himself. Thus he distinguishes between his "internal mode, working from within metaphysics" ("by using against the edifice the instruments or stones available in the house"), and an external, more Nietzschean mode, of "brutally placing oneself outside," yet only so as to reaffirm his basic conviction that by dint of such more violent displacement one ends up inhabiting "more naively and more strictly than ever the inside one declares one has deserted." Even working internally, however, "one risks ceaselessly confirming, consolidating, relifting [relever], at an always more certain depth, that which one allegedly deconstructs." 19 It might be more appropriate to say that Derridean deconstruction, as much as its forebear, Heideggerian destruction, is actually practicing what here Derrida calls a risk: deconstruction as a de facto refurbishment of the philosophies written off as erroneous and obsolete by Nietzsche; deconstruction of metaphysics as an unprecedented metametaphysics vastly more encompassing than its logocentric and oDtotheological predecessor; deconstruction as a mega transcendentalism claimed [0 always already have been there before and beyond tranScendentalism in the classical sense; deconstruction as a thinking of transcendental thoughts that Heidegger's and Derrida's metaphysical predecessors simply were not able to think - or rather could think only in the troubled, contradictory, and aporetic fashion in which the Freudian patient experiences what he has repressed in the bizarre distortions of his neuroses. Anti-Freudian as he was, Heidegger lacked the Derridean notion of such ontotheological repression, and instead talked about an obscuring, burying, and forgetting of an originally more time-oriented sense of Being evinced by pre-Socratic philosophers or early Christianity. However, he and Derrida are one in claiming that this buried or repressed wisdom of Seyn or differance can be retrieved only from the great texts of western

244

The genealogy of aesthetics

metaphysics andlor literature in which such wisdom lies buried like a fettered but rebellious prisoner, who, being ultimately more powerful than his captors, makes his disruptive presence felt throughout his captivity. Hence Derrida calls writing (in the largest, nonliteral sense in which it becomes a substitute for differance) "a debased, lateralized, repressed, displaced theme, yet exercising a permanent and obsessive pressure from the place where it remains held in check."2o Hence, the contradictions, tensions, aporias, and dissonant metaphors haunting the great texts of the metaphysical tradition while at the time alluring the deconstructive critic to dig up21 and liberate what glimmers through these fracture lines and fissures. For example, Aristotle's inconclusively conflict-ridden discussion of time as essentially different from space at one point takes the form of an "enigmatic articulation" centered around the small word hama ("together," "all at once," simul). Though "lodged in his text, hidden, sheltered," hama reaches out beyond the text's aporias. It is "the small key that both opens and closes the history of metaphysics." Without Aristotle being aware of it, he has hama point both to the before and beyond of that history: "He says it without saying it, lets it say itself, or rather it lets him say what he says.,,22 Formerly critics used to worry about various fallacies, but Derrida and deconstructivists generally have few such scruples. On the contrary: where Wimsatt-Beardsley warned us against speculating about authorial intentions in interpreting a text,23 Derrida not only tells us what the author intended to say, but also what the fettered prisoner forced him to say or imply against his conscious intentions. The unearthing of such unconscious intentionality amounts to an interpretive violence already familiar from Heidegger who, for instance, "wrings" from Kant's words "what it is they [really] want to say."24 Deconstructing Rousseau's writings on language, Derrida, in a similar vein, repeatedly tells us what Rousseau "says ... without wishing to say it"j25 he documents how Rousseau "describes," but does not "declare," something impinging upon differance, that is, a supplementarity beyond his comprehension;26 or he shows us how Rousseau unwillingly points to "that within which metaphysics can be produced but which metaphysics cannot think.,,27 While warning that deconstruction has to operate without an "available set of rule-governed procedures, methods, accessible approaches,,,28 Derrida feels an obvious need for a "general, theoretical, and systematic strategy" to stop his textual irruptions from "falling by the wayside into excess or empirical experimentation, and, sometimes simultaneously, into classical metaphysics."29 What, then, allows him to steer clear of the Scylla of empiricism and the Charybdis of metaphysics? It is no other than our indomitable Samson differance, who by his unruliness

Differance, Freud, Nietzsche, and Artaud

245

causes cracks to appear in his logo-phallo-phonocentric goal, or who, in other words, constrains, wrenches, and derails his captors' language into aporias, contradictions, and unwitting admissions of their coercive narrow-mindedness. Hence, the deconstructivist's "systematic strategy" of probing into said fissures and inconsistencies by way of liberating what, say, "Plato-Rousseau-Saussure tr[ied] in vain to master ... with an odd kind of 'reasoning,' ,,30 without ever properly getting it under their control. Derrida's "general, theoretical, and systematic strategy of deconstruction," then, presupposes an equally general, theoretical, and systematic vantage point, as well as technology of metametaphysical radiography enabling him to x-ray traditional texts in search of those unresolved tension lines and conflict points beyond what their authors describe and/or are fully aware of. In one of his more Heideggerian, that is to say destinyconscious, and messianic moments, Derrida said so himself: given the conflict-ridden, philosophical climate of our time, with some continuing to dream of deciphering "a truth or an origin," others following Nietzsche "beyond man and humanism," we have little choice except "to conceive of the common ground, and the differance of this irreducible difference [penser Ie sol commun, et La differance de cette difference irreductible] ."31 What is differance? Heidegger proselytes convinced that their master had reached ne plus ultra extremes in this "meditation of metaphysics upon metaphysics,,32 were in for a surprise when Derrida, from the fifties onwards, began talking about "une interminable differance du fondement theorique.,,33 In the early sixties, we find him pondering various affiliations. How about differance vis-a-vis God, for instance? Should the two be equated?34 Or should God, like all other ontotheological concepts such as the book of life, be subjected to "the interrogation of all possible interrogations."35 Such quandaries were resolved with the publication in 1966 of "Freud et la scene de l'ecriture." The essay introduces the concept of archi-trace and differance, deploys numerous subsidiary terms including "logocentric repression" and "logo-phonocentrism," and prophesies the "immense labor of deconstruction" to come. 36 Differance, at this point, is said to constitute "the essence of life," which "must be thought of as trace before Being may be determined as presence.,,37 Guided by Freud's breakthrough (fa percee freudienne), 38 and particularly by his Nachtriiglichkeit and Tkrspiitung- concepts which allegedly "govern the whole of Freud's thought and determine all his other concepts,,39 differance totalizes its domain in a process of escalating hyperbole not unfamiliar from mystical texts, both western and nonwestern, but also from Plato. Though independent of any "sensible plenitude," it is "the condition of such plenitude." "Although it does not exist," it is the sine qua

246

The genealogy of aesthetics

non of existence "It permits the articulation ofspeech and writing - in the colloquial sense - as it founds the metaphysical opposition between the sensible and the intelligible."4o How about the divine? At least its Judeo-Christian, even western mystical variety, would clearly be posterior to differance. Hence, Derrida sympathizes with Anaud's description of God as "the proper name of that which deprives us of our own nature";41 as well as with George Bataille's "atheology," "a-teleology," and "aneschatology," especially insofar as these elude the pitfalls of Nietzschean reversals and of lapsing into a "negative theology" or "'super-essentiality' beyond the categories of beings, a supreme being and an undestructible meaning.,,42 Or how about differance and Seyn? Seyn, as Heidegger explained in his final Nietzsche lecture of 1940, "is both utterly void and most abundant, most universal and most unique, most intelligible and most resistant to any concept, most in use and yet to come, most reliable and most abyssal [Ab-grundigste], most forgotten and most remembering, most said and most reticent."u Such a nonconcept, reminiscent of the Sanskrit sunyata, had a strong appeal to Derrida, especially since Heidegger, realizing the ultimate paradoxality of Being, put the word under erasure. 44 Derrida's differance also owes an acknowledged debt to Heidegger's rediscovery of the ontico-ontological "difference between Being and beings [Unterschiedes des Seins zum Seienden],"472 M. Tomasello and J. Call agree to the effect that "there is no solid evidence that nonhuman primates understand the intentionality or mental states of others." However, all three authors advise a "healthy agnosticism,,73 regarding such conclusions. Perhaps these are simply due to our "weak methods," "relatively thin ... findings,,,74 and to the deplorable scarcity of "rigorous empirical research on nonhuman primate theories of mind.',75 Whatever efforts may one day remedy this situation, they ought to focus on social play and sexual selection in both animals and humans. In doing so, they might also determine the origins, via the gradual development of a theory of mind, perhaps in animals,

314

The genealogy of aesthetics

yet more probably in early Homo sapiens, of conscious artistic creativity. Darwin sketched such a research program some 130 years ago. To him, sexual selection clearly was the main driving force behind it all. Via "the nervous system," it had "indirectly influenced the progressive development" not only of "various bodily structures," but also "of certain mental qualities.,,76 New research might also bring us closer to a rough date for the possible origins of bodily self-decoration and then art in the wider sense of the word. The earliest "pieces of red ochre and hematite" possibly "used for coloring and marking bodies" may go back some 300,000 years; and even if the earliest Mousterian (Neanderthal) uses of black and red color were for tanning hides, such "utilitarian" practice might easily have served the ulterior aim of social self-enhancement in sexual selection. In any case, shaped ocher pencils for drawing and marking came into use over 100,000 years ago, that is roughly 70,000 before the well-documented "creative explosion" during the Upper Paleolithic. 77 But let us look more closely at the prehistory of this, our third behavior pattern involved in the transition from animal aisthesis to what Ellen Dissanayake calls "perhaps the first art," as well as the "prototype for visual art" in general. 78 The species probably closest to humans consciously painting, tattooing, or decorating their bodies is the male Red Giant Kangaroo or Macropus rufus, which during the mating season excretes a bright red substance with which it smears its body in order to attract females. Being semibipedal, it uses its forepaws for this purpose. 79 No doubt such self-daubing functions at an instinctual level without the support of a theory of mind. The same probably holds true of most other animal self-decoration practices. Even primates like chimps or orangutans (though not, in general, gorillas), who recognize themselves in a mirror, are not known to practice systematic facial make-up to attract mating partners subsequent to discovering that, while unconscious, coloured marks have been placed, say, above their right eyebrows and left ears. What, in any case, is involved here? First of all, an awareness of the particular, primary sexual characteristics in oneself that are likely to stimulate the desired mating partner. A chimp like young Dandy, who first displayed his erect penis to a coveted female, but quickly dropped his hands over his erection when noticing an aggressive older male unexpectedly turn around the corner,80 suggests that such awareness is within the range of certain animals. But would this include secondary sexual characteristics, let alone their conscious display and postural enhancement in the mirror of the mating partner's imagined attraction toward them? Or how about what seems like a quantum leap from all this, namely the awareness that

Afterword

315

by deliberately enhancing these sexual characteristics (through, say, the application of an artificially procured coloring substance) one could stir up the mating partner's feelings of attraction toward oneself. Given what is known along these lines, this seems even further out of reach to nonhuman species. There is the isolated case, reported and photographed by Frans de Waal, of a juvenile bonobo who, in a possible act of selfbeautification, "draped banana leaves around her shoulders";81 or there are several orangutans who have placed vegetables on their heads to "size up the effect" on others. 82 But in neither case does the self-decorator seem intent upon making her/himself attractive to a possible mating partner. To meet these requirements we would have to imagine a primate with a theory of mind allowing her/him to activate several highly elaborate as well as mentally internalized physical, social, and psychological scenarios in looking for a coloring substance, applying it to herihis body, test the results, cope with humiliating failure, engage the help of grooming partners to overcome it, and so forth. Ernst Haeckel's claim that ontogeny (i.e., the development of an individual organism) recapitulates phylogeny (i.e., the evolutionary development of the species to which the organism belongs), as far as it retains some basic validity,83 bears out Our assumption. Thus, human children begin recognizing themselves in a mirror (the way, say, chimps and orangutans do) at around the age of twO. 84 Already at age two and a half, they start to outdistance their most accomplished ape competitors like Kanzi, Chimp sky, Austin, and Sherman in the handling of language and, particularly, of syntax. And yet, they still are at least eighteen months away from developing a theory of mind, as shown by several elegant experiments. Does this suggest that the awareness of and ability to act upon what others think, believe, and desire (required for the possibly first form of art, namely bodily self-decoration), depend on an at least basic command of human language? The fact that language precedes theory of mind in child development seems to suggest it. In the continuing absence of a consensus regarding the evolutionary origins of language,85 this still leaves us without a terminus post quem regarding the emergence ofliterature. Would it have paralleled the gradual acquisition of a theory of mind which also predisposed humans toward practicing deliberate self-decoration sometime between 300,000 and 30,000 Be? Whatever the case, prehuman social play behavior, the prime cognitive motor in promoting such a theory, also, no doubt, performed a major role in advancing the uniquely human efflorescence of literary activity. Ontogeny once again can fill the gaps in our phylogenetic speculations here. All children, as we know, "play at make believe ... [or] 'let's pretend'" from a "very tender age ... For example, they can pretend to be

316

The genealogy of aesthetics

a doctor and try to convince you that they have a hypodermic needle and are going to give you a shot,,,86 while being fully aware of the real facts. Recent research has shown that the ability to "understand that pretending to be a rabbit is different from being one" emerges around three, an age when children have long been conducting "spontaneous conversations about mental states" (from one and a hal0 87 as well as telling "rudimentary narratives" (from two). This in turn enables them to voiceover their pretend play in the form of a basic, though germinal, kind of dramatic creativity. The latter, along with their ability to tell "increasingly coherent stories" of their own making, ironically reaches its peak around five, that is shortly after children develop a full theory of mind. This is because "socialisation has begun to curb invention.,,88 Incidentally, this throws some interesting light on the continuing nature of literary creativity. While most of us, upon growing up, reduce the freewheeling let's pretend scenarios to a narrower stream of counterfactual worrying, lit- . erary artists continue to live in a world of free fantasy which others can afford only through their services. No wonder we are willing to pay them for these. Let us sum up: animal and human aisthisis, as foreseen by Nietzsche and documented by contemporary cognitive science, reaches back to the very origins of life. The philosopher, as we know, traced it to a "positing as equaf' of what is either good or bad for a given organism, and, earlier still, to a "making equaf' analogous to the "incorporation of appropriated material in the amoeba.,,89 Distinctions like true and false, good and bad, beautiful and ugly, accordingly "betray certain conditions of existence and enhancement ... of any kind of firm and enduring complex which separates itself from its adversary.,,9o Nietzsche's general idea was recently revived by D. C. Dennett, a philosopher known for his work on the "intentional stance." Dennett invites us to consider "a simple organism - say a planarian or an amoeba - moving nonrandomly across the bottom of a laboratory dish, always heading to the nutrient-rich end of the dish, or away from the toxic end. This organism is seeking the good, or shunning the bad - its own good and bad.,,91 Randy Thornhill makes a similarly Nietzschean observation in his "Darwinian Aesthetics." "All mobile animals from amoeba to primates," he writes, "are environmental aestheticians."92 As for contemporary cognitive science, the rest of my narrative about the evolution of animal aisthesis within sexual selection, and, out of it, of human artistic creativity following the development of a theory of mind prompted by animal play and similar consciousness inducing behavior patterns, has been sketched in sufficient detail. Hence we ought to let Nietzsche have the last few words. Evidently, he was unaware of

Afterword

317

"sexual selection" in the proper sense of the word. But he nonetheless had a firm "Darwinian" sense of the crucial role sexuality played in the genealogy of both the "aesthetic disposition" and artistic creativity. Thus, he equated both with that seeing and "making perfect . .. typical of the cerebral system [when] overcharged with sexual energy." Inversely, "every perfection and beauty" to him, served as an "unconscious reminder of that enamored condition and of its manner of seeing - every perfection, all the beauty of things, reawakens through contiguity [this] aphrodisiac bliss. Physiologically: ... The craving for art and beauty [as] an indirect craving for the ecstasies of the sexual instinct as it communicates itself to the cerebrum. The world become perfect, through 'love' - .',93 To Nietzsche as to Darwin before him, the "aesthetic dispositUm" was an essentially female attribute,94 while its male counterpart was a "Dionysian intoxication" born from "sexuality" and "voluptuousness." The latter, he stressed, was "strongest in the mating season." Typically, he saw it survive right into the art of a Raphael whose accomplishments, to Nietzsche, were unthinkable "without a certain overheating of the sexual system.,,95 The feeling of intoxication ... strongest in the mating season: new organs, new accomplishments, colors, forms; "becoming more beautiful" as a consequence of enhanced strength. Becoming more beautiful as the expression of a victorious will, of increased co-ordination, of a harmonizing of all the strong desires. 96

Reading elsewhere about the extent to which sexuality, via the development of nervous system and brain, "has indirectly influenced the progressive development of various bodily structures and of certain mental qualities," one feels tempted to attribute these words to Nietzsche as well. Courage, pugnacity, perseverance, strength and size of body, weapons of all kinds, musical organs, both vocal and instrumental, bright colours and ornamental appendages, have all been indirectly gained by the one sex or the other, through the exertion of choice, the influence oflove and jealousy, and the appreciation of the beautiful in sound, colour or form. 97

The words are not Nietzsche's but Darwin's, and that from the conclusion to the work dealing with the descent, or what elsewhere in the same tome he calls the "Genealogy of Man.,,98

Notes

-The Nietzsche mottoes introductory to the different sections of this book and the note citations from or references to the complete and/or collected works of some of the main authon under consideration, are listed by volume, section and page number without the author's name and/or the work's publication date, except where such omission might lead to confusion. These authon and their works, as listed in the bibliography, are: Aquinas (1964); Aristotle (1991); Augustine (1947- ); Bacon (1857-74); Boethius (1844--64); Coleridge (1995); Erigena (1844-64); Hegel (1970); Heidegger (1976-); Hobbes (1966); Hwne (1964); Kant (1910-55); Mandeville (1988); Marx-Engels (1975-92); Nietzsche (1988); Plato (1973); Shaftesbury (1981).

INTRODUCTION 1. m, 73 I Nietzsche (1997), 45 - amended. 2. V, 102/ NietzSche (1966), 92 - amended. 3. cr. XII, 253 I Nietzsche (1968), 308. 4. cr. V, 356; VI, 26; XII, 246, 284; XIII, 508, 509, 516, 529, 538; XIV, 396, 424. 5. V, 402-03 I Nietzsche (1956), 290 - amended. 6. XIII, 516. 7. XIV, 396. 8. cf. XII, 341£., 393f., 433f., 522f., 554f.; XIII, 498f. 9. xm,355. 10. cf. XIII, 529-30. 11. VI, 50 I Nietzsche (1967), 190. 12. cf. 487. 13. XII. 580. 14. VI, 156 I Nietzsche (1990), 117 - amended; cf. XIII, 625. 15. cr. XI, 162: "Paulus wuBte schwerlich, will sehr a1les in ibm nach Plato riecht." 16. XIV, 447: "Verpobelter Platonismus ... zurecht gemacht fUr SklavenNaturen." See also VI, 248. 17. VI, 248 I Nietzsche (1990), 195 - amended. 18. XI, 21. 19. 1,444. 20. cr. Freigeisterei, XI, 159.

xm.

318

Notes to pages 3-5

319

21. cf. ill, 73. For Montaigne, whom Nietzsche respected for his insuperable candor (RedJichkeil) (cf. Xl, 28; cf. I, 348) and "subtle audacity" (IX, 450) of spirit and whom he ranked with other favorite authors like Horace, Lucretius, Machiavelli, La Rochefoucauld, and Stendhal (cf. II. 591; IX, 329; X, 243, IX, 28, 267), Nietzsche felt a personal affinity of temperament and "mischievousness (MurhwiOe] in spirit ... perhaps also in body" (XIV,476). 22. VI, 251 1 Nietzsche (1990), 197. 23. VI, 174,361. See also IX, 329; XI, 121; and V, 347. 24. cf. VI, 74, 110. 25. V,365. 26. VI,121. 27. VI,176. 28. "ein hinterlistig[er] Christ zu guterletzt," VI, 79; see also Nietzsche (1968), 64, about the "subterranean Christianity in [Kant's] values," who, in pursuing his major task of "sublating [aufheben] knOfJJkdge in order to make room for !airh" (cf. Caygill [1995]. 193) became a major opponent of the Enlightenment; cf. also ill, 172. 29. V,52. 30. cf. X, 243. 31. X.293. 32. X,243. 33. See below, chapter 2, notes 78ff. 34. cf. XII, 5721 Nietzsche (1968),168 - amended; cf. XIII, 300. 35. XII,405. 36. Montaigne (1965), 666. 37. cf. XlI, 388. 38. cf. XII, 387. 39. cf. V,404f. 40. VI, 431 Nietzsche (1967), 183 - amended. 41. VI, 431, 431-32. 42. VI,432. 43. VI,418. 44. VI,418. 45. XIII, 230; cf. XlII, 299; XlI, 394. 46. xm,228. 47. XlII,296. 48. XlI, 342. 49. xn,394. 50. XlI, 285. 51. cf. XlI, 393. 52. xn,393. 53. xn, 555 1 Nietzsche (1962), 423-24 - amended. 54. XlI. 2091 Nietzsche (1968), 274 - amended. Regarding similar speculations by Charles Darwin see LeDoux (1998), 108. One of the few to have pointed to the parallels between Darwinian plus post-Darwinian evolutionary thought and that ofNiewche, is Daniel C. Dennett (1996, see especially 461-f17), who

320

Notes to pages 5-8

also deals with Nietzsche's essential ignorance and rejection of Datwin's ideas (ibid., 138, 181, 182). 55. d. xn, 15. 56. XII, 5731 Nietzsche (1968),168 - amended. 57. XII, 554-551 Nietzsche (1968), 423 - amended. 58. XII, 5541 Nietzsche (1968),423 - amended. 59. d. P. E. Griffiths in Lycan (1999), 517ff. See also Griffiths (1992), passim; and P. E. Griffiths in Bechtel and Graham (1998), 197-203, especially 199ff. 60. d. XII, 15. 61. For previous studies of Nietzsche's aesthetics see Kemal ec al. (1998) and Young (1992). 62. For a recent attempt of this kind See S. Gardner in Bunnin, and Tsui-James, (1996), 229-56. 63. Coleridge, XI i, 381; cf. Bate (1970), 374-75. 64. See, for instance, V, 400-011 Nietzsche (1956), 288. 65. cf. VI, 111, where Nietzsche groups Zola, along with others like Kant ("or cant as intelligible character") and Dante ("the hyena that poeticizes out of sepulchres") as one of his "impossible ones"; or IX, 576, where Zola is apostrophized as "Gorgon-Zola" or the one who provides "spiritual dessert for modem multitudes" (der geistige Nachtisch jetzt fUr Viele). 66. E. Zola in Adams (1971), 658, 659. 67. V, 400-01 1 Nietzsche (1956), 288. 68. d. D. E. Cooper in Bunnin and Tsui-James (1996), 708ft". 69. General information about these can be found in Cooper ec al. (1995), passim; S. Gardner in Bunnin and Tsui-James (1996) 229-56. For later bibliographical information see the current issues of the British Journal oj Aesthecics, the American Journal oj Aesthetics and Arc Criticism and Philosophy and Literature, as well as Aesthetics On-Line (http:/www.idiana.edul-asanl) hosted by the American Society for Aesthetics. 70. Known for having coined the term "the artworld" and for his neo-Hegelian reading of modern art history as a process in which art has come to marginalize and disenfranchise itself. See Danto (1964), 571-84, and (1986), 15ff. et passim. 71. Close to the neo-Kantian P. F. Strawson, Margolis has been concerned with the role of art within the general framework of a metaphysics of human history and culture, and more recently, with the hermeneutics of interpretation. See Margolis (l989a) and (l989b) for an account of these more recent changes. 72. See her 1984 book with the telling title Beauty Rescored and her article on "Beauty" in Cooper et al. (1995),44-51, where she suggests that "philosophical aesthetics needs to return to the question of the nature of beauty, and to try to develop the insights of past philosophers in a systematic way" (ibid., 51). 73. Known for reviving the Kantian notion of disinterested pleasure (1979), If., 10, 75-76, et passim, and, more recently (1990), 8f., 105f., et passim,

Notes to pages 8-10

74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79.

80. 81. 82. 83.

84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92.

321

for advocating an art that would take the place of natural theology in the tradition of Ruskin, Arnold, er ai. Known for his attempts to distinguish between aesthetic and nonaesthetic features. See, for instance, F. N. Sibley in Fisher (1983), 7ff. cf. D. Papineau in Bunnin and Tsui-James (1996), 291ft". Gombrich (1989), 116f. cr. Gombrich (1982),16. Goodman (1968), 9. Diana Raffinan in Cooper er ai. (1995), 318. Raffinan also gives a good overview of recent studies by Shepard and Jordan (1984), Lerdahl and Jackendoff (1983), and Hardin (1988) showing that aesthetic perception, even at the higher level of selecting, classifying, and constructing experience is to a large extent neurologically programed and at the same time "encapsulated." "For example, it is likely that listeners will continue to hear the sounded intervals [of a piece of music] as non-uniform in size even after being told they are identical. So although perception is doubtless cognitively penetrable at many places - your (explicit) knowledge that a painting is a full figure portrait can visually sift a human form out of an otherwise chaotic melange of colours, and your (explicit) belief that a tune has one time signature rather than another can radically alter the metrical pattern you hear - it is unlikely to be as plastic, or as permeable to deeper cognitive processes, as Goodman and others have supposed it to be" (ibid., 318). See also Raffinan (1993), especially pp. 11-35, "A Cognitivist Theory of Music Perception," and pp. 99-123, "Naturalizing Nelson Goodman." Zeki (1999), 87. cf. ibid., 177, 179, 181. cf. D. RafIman in Cooper er at. (1995), 319; cf. also Lcrdahl and Jackendoff (1983); Jackendoff (1996), 125-55; Jackendoff (1994), 165-83, and especially 168. As related studies of painting, poetry, and dance suggest, similar considerations apply to twentieth-century and earlier productions in these various art forms; cf. F. Turner and E. Poppel; W. Siegfried; G. Baumgartner; Jerre Levy, Marianne Regard and T. Landis; 0.-]. Grosser, T. Selke and B. Zynda in Rentschler et aI. (1988), 71-90, 117-45, 165-80, 219-42, 243-56,257-93; Jackendoff (1994), 165-83. Hegel (1993), 11. ibid., 9. Dickie (1984), 80. cf. G. Dickie in Cooper er al. (1995), 113. Regarding Montaigne's and Bacon's comments on this vicious circle of lexicography, see Faas (1986), 87. cf. V, 51. cf. V, 184; VI, 180. cf. V, 169. See R Shusterman's "Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal" (2000), 262-83, as an example.

322

Notes to pages 10-15

93. By J. Gallop (1988). 94. Edited by C. Gallagher and T. Laquer (1987). 95. By Horst Ruthrof (1997), a remarkable study complementing the labors of R. W. Gibbs, Jr. (1999), George Lakoff, Mark Johnson (most recently 1999) and others from a more traditional philosophical perspective. 96. By J. Butler (1993). 97. By M. Gatens (1996). 98. By N. Goldenberg (1990). 99. L Birke in Jagger and Young (2000), 203. 100. T. Chanter in ibid., 266. 101. S. L. Banky in ibid., 327. 102. N. Holmstrom in ibid., 285. 103. L Birke in ibid., 194, 198. 104. ibid., 194. 105. By R. Bleier (1984). 106. By A. Fausto-Sterling (1992). 107. By D. Nelkin and S. Lindee (1995). 108. By H. Rose (1994). 109. L. Birke in Jagger and Young (2000),109. 110. See also Gowaty (1997). Among the notable exceptions of work which is impressively well informed about science while pursuing an essentially consnuctivist and/or deconsnuctivist line of argument, see Lily E. Kay's fascinating Who Wrote 1M Book of Life? (2000); and T. Lenoir's Inscribing Science (1998). Ill. V, 293, 297/ Nietzsche (1956), 190, 194. 112. Nietzsche (1968), 148. 113. Foucault (1984), 80, 81, 83. 114. Dennett (1996), 181ff. explains this paradox. 115. Grosz (1994),146-47. 116. ibid., 147. 117. Nietzsche (1968), 271, 281. 118. ibid., 78, 289. 119. ibid., 271. 120. ibid., 275. 121. ibid., 272. 122. ibid., 282. 123. ibid., 266, 275. 124. cf. Berlin and Kay (1969), passim; see also Hardin and Maffi (1997). 125. Nietzsche (1968), 275. 126. Miller (2000), 283. 1 PLATO'S TRANSVALUATION OF AESTHETIC VALUES 1. 2. 3. 4. 5. 6.

1445: Laws 889d. 1374: Laws 802c. Tatarkiewicz (1970-74), I, 85. ibid., I, 87. ibid. cf. 1175: Tim. 47d.

Notes to pages 15-19 7. 8. 9. 10. II. 12. 13. 14. 15. 16. 17. 18. 19. 20. 21. 22. 23. 24. 25. 26. 27. 28. 29. 30. 31. 32. 33. 34. 35. 36. 37. 38. 39. 40. 41. 42. 43. 44. 45. 46. 47. 48. 49. 50. 51. 52.

323

cf. 649: Rep. 404e; 655: Rep. 410a; 1374: Laws 802e. cf. 1175: Tim. 47c-d. cf. 1262: Laws 665c; 1383: Laws 812c. 789: Rep. 561d. 1137: Laws 56a; cf. 1144: Phil. 62c. 1294: Laws 700d-e. 1294: Laws 700d; cf. 1266: Laws 669a--670a. 1294: Laws 700d. 1383: Laws 813a. cf. 1382-83: Laws 812c. cf. 1264: Laws 667e. 1371: Laws 800a; cf. 1253-54: Laws 656d-657b; 1294: Laws 701a. cf. 1133: Phil. SId. cf. Tatarkiewicz (1970-74), I, 77. cf. 1137: Phil. 55d-e. 1132: Phil. 51 c. Quoted in Keuls (1978), 114; cf. 1016: Soph. 267e; cf. 978: Soph. 235d-e. 978-79: Soph. 236a. 827: Rep. 602d; cf. 814: Rep. 586b. 832: Rep. 60Th. Tatarkiewicz (1970-74), I, 39. ibid. ibid., I, 107. cf. ibid., I, 76. ibid., I, 105. ibid., I, 104. cf. ibid., I, 32ff. cf. 1551-52: Hipp. maj. 298a. Odyssey, VIII, 248, IX, 3; cf. Tatarkiewicz (1970-74), I, 30, 35. Tatarkiewicz (1970-74), I, 38. cf. 1077: Statesm. 305e. 1419: Laws 858e. cf. 1488: Laws 941 C. 1502: Laws 957d. cf. their comparison to the Sophists in 315: Protag. 316d; cf. 624: Rep. 377dff.; 533-34: Symp. 179d-e; 652: Rep. 408b. cf. 624: Rep. 377d; cf. 820: Rep. 595b. cf. 624: Rep. 377e-378a; cf. 173: Euthyph. 5e--6a. 636: Rep. 391c-d. 635: Rep. 390c; cf. Homer, Iliad, XIV, 294ff. 624: Rep. 378a. cf. 624: Rep. 377c. 832: Rep. 607a. cf. 832: Rep. 606eff.; 633: Rep. 388a-c; 612: Rep. 365e. cf. 820: Rep. 595b. cf. 828: Rep. 603aff. (especially 603d). cf. 832: Rep. 607c; cf. 825: Rep 601b.

324 53. 54. 55. 56. 57. 58. 59. 60. 61. 62. 63. 64. 65. 66. 67. 68. 69. 70. 71. 72. 73. 74. 75. 76. 77. 78. 79. 80. 81. 82. 83. 84. 85. 86. 87. 88. 89. 90. 91. 92. 93. 94. 95. 96. 97. 98. 99. 100.

Notes to pages 19-21 833: Rep. 608a. cf. 625: Rep. 378b. cf. 634: Rep. 389a; cf. Homer, Iliad, I, 599. cf. 630: Rep. 382e. 626: Rep. 37ge; cf. Homer, Iliad, XXIV, 527ft". 173: Euthyph. 5e-6a. 626: Rep. 379c. 828: Rep. 603b. cf. 820: Rep. 595cff. 823: Rep. 598b. 832: Rep. 607a. cf. 819: Rep. 595aff. 979: Soph. 236c. 1014: Soph. 266c. 1383: Laws 812c. cf. 1016: Soph. 267e; cf. 1265: Laws 668b. cf. 1264: Laws 667d-e. 1445: Laws 889d-890a. Dodds (1973b), 216. ibid. 1050: Statesm. 283b. cf. 997: Soph. 252c. 924: Parm. 130b. cf. 924: Parm. 130c. 924: Pann. l30d. 950: Pann. 160b. 1008: Soph. 261a. 959: Soph. 216c. 983: Soph. 240c. 984: Soph. 241b. 1006: Soph. 259c. 1007: Soph. 260a. 992: Soph. 247c. 992: Soph. 248a. 993: Soph. 248c. 888: Theaet. 183e. 985: Soph. 241d. cf. 985: Soph. 242a. 980: Soph. 237b. 1031: Statesm. 266e. 1062: Statesm. 293d. 1063: Statesm. 293d. 1032: Statesm. 267d. cf. 1083: Statesm. 310bft". cf. 1076: Statesm. 304d. 1442: Laws 886d. 1442: Laws 886d. 1445: Laws 890a.

Notes to pages 21-24 101. 102. 103. 104. 105. 106. 107. 108. 109. 110. Ill. 112. 113. 114. 115. 116. 117. 118. 119. 120. 121. 122. 123. 124. 125. 126. 127. 128. 129. 130. 131. 132. 133. 134. 135. 136. 137. 138. 139. 140. 141.

142. 143. 144. 145. 146. 147. 148.

1445: Laws 890b. 1445: Laws 890b. 1444: Laws 888c. 1446: Laws 891b. 1442: Laws 886e. cf. 1448: Laws 893aff. 1445: Laws 88ge. 1445: Laws 890a. 1512: Laws 967b-c. 1447: Laws 891d. cf. 1443: Laws 888aff.; 1459: Laws 903b; 1460: Laws 904e. 1463: Laws 907d. cf. 1464: Laws 909a. 1257: Laws 660a. 1373: Laws 802b. 1373: Laws 802b. d. 1373: Laws 802aff. cf. 1395-96: Laws 829d. cf. 1485-86: Laws 935d-936b. cf. 1310: Laws 719c. 1310: Laws 719c. 1267: Laws 670e. 1267: Laws 671a. d. 1372: Laws 80la-b. 1259: Laws 662b-c. 1257: Laws 660a. d. 1267: Laws 671a. 715: Rep. 476b; cf. 646: Rep. 401c. 82: Phaedo 100d; cf. 423: erato 439c. cf. 928: Parm. 134c. 48: Pbaedo 65d. 730: Rep. 493e. 719-20: Rep. 47ge. 839: Rep. 615a. 561: Symp. 210a. 558, 559: Symp. 207a, 206c-d. 559: Symp. 206e. 560: Symp. 208b. 560: Symp. 208b-c. cf. 560: Symp. 208a-b. 563: Symp. 211c. 561: Symp. 210a. 563: Symp. 211d. 562: Symp. 210e. 562: Symp. 211a. 928: Parm. 134c. 562: Symp. 21lb. 888: Theaet. 183e.

325

326 149. 150. 151. 152. 153. 154. 155. 156. 157. 158. 159. 160. 161. 162.

Notes to pages 24-25 cf. 935: Parm. 141d-e. 563: Symp. 211e. 496: Phaedr. 24ge. 563: Symp. 211d. 563: Symp. 211e. 1552-53: Hipp. maj. 299a; cf. 1148: Phil. 65c-66a. 502: Phaedr. 256c. 502: Phaedr. 256d. 493: Phaedr. 246a. 497: Phaedr. 250e-251a. 500: Phaedr. 254b. 496: Phaedr. 24ge. cf. 497: Phaedr. 250c. cf. 66: Phaedo 82dff. Anticipations of such an understanding of the mindbody relationship are found here (see also 49: Phaedo 67a) and in Gorgitls (275: Gorg. 493a), where Plato shows a penchant for charging the individual soul or psyche with a burden of guilt derived from its association with the body. But the sense that man's inner life is ruled by two "opposite impulses" (829: Rep. 604b) - a better and a worse part (cf. 672: Rep. 431a), one, reason, whispering prohibitions (cf. 783: Rep. 554d), the other, ruled by the desires, passions, or temper tantrums, "constrain[ing] a man contrary to his reason" (682: Rep. 440b) to do the absolutely irrational thingthe emergence of this "double man" (783: Rep. 554e) belongs to a later period. Prefiguring the medieval morality play, Plato externalizes this inner strife to the point where man's soul becomes a psychomachia of allegorical factions. Diverse "appetites [are] buzzing about" (799: Rep. 573a) in the "citadel of the young man's soul" (788: Rep. 560b), and vices assume the disguise of virtues. Spewing forth "braggart discourses," these evil impulses "close the gates of the royal fortress within him and ... [so] prevail in the conflict, and naming reverence and awe 'folly' thrust it forth, a dishonored fugitive. And temperance they call 'want of manhood' and banish it with contumely, and they teach that moderation and orderly expenditure are 'rusticity' and 'illiberality,' and they combine with a gang of unprofitable and harmfu1 appetites to drive them over the border" (789: Rep. 560c-d). The earlier scenario of a soul which, in its pursuit of the good, beautiful, and true, yearned for its final escape from the prison house of the body (cf. 49: Phaedo 67a; 63: Phaedo 80cff.) has been replaced by something more dramatic. "Every one of us is in a state of internal warfare with himself," we read near the beginning of the Laws (1228: Laws 626e). Enough of this Platonic psychomachia, like man as a puppet that the gods jerk about by the strings of his hopes, fears, pains, and pleasures (cf. 1244: Laws 644dff.), has distinctly pagan connotations. But life as a conflict between ''vice" and "virtue" (1244: Laws 644e), the outcome of which has to be paid for in the hereafter, foreshadows similar Christian notions. Plato had often enough described the horrors of eternal damnation and the lesser torments of Hades awaiting the wicked (e.g., cf. 303: Gorg. 523aft'.; 838: Rep. 614, bff.) in previous works, not to have to repeat such matters in the Laws. But in Lelr.er VII, which contains his final philosophical testament written in

Notes to pages 25-27

327

old age, he presses his followers to remember that "we must at all times give our unfeigned assent to the ancient and holy doctrines which warn us that our souls are immortal, that they are iudged, and that they suffer the severest punishments after our separation from the body" (1583: Epis. VII, 335a). Long before Christianity turned human existence into an anguishridden psychomachia, Plato wanted the sheep of his utopia to act out their lives in similarly dramatic form. This is the curious reason why the citizens living under the sway of his laws, although seemingly more tolerant toward the arts than the inhabitants of his "republic," still will not let the tragedians into their midst. Why should they? They have no need of watching plays. "In fact, our whole polity has been constructed as a dramatization of a noble and perfect life; that is what we hold to be in truth the most real of tragedies. Thus you are poets, and we also are poets in the same style, rival artists and rival actors, and that in the finest of all dramas, one which indeed can be produced only by a code of true law - or at least that is our faith. So you must not expect that we shall lightheartedly permit you to pitch your booths in our market square" (1387: Laws 81 7b-faro's Pharmacy, 261, 262, 265 "Le mitirre de la I.:ruauri er la clOture de la represenration," 253, 254, 255 La wnti en pe;nture, 249, 282 La wix er k phenomene, 253 Derridean, 10,282,286,287,289,290, 293,294,298 Descartes, Rene, 98, 99,140,141,200, 218,221,222,230,231,272,273, 286,290,294,386 Regulae, 290 desensualization, 10 desire, 18,24,34,74,107,112,113,125, 127,138,149,156,157,183,313, 314,315 Desmarets de Saint-Sorlin, Jean, 259 The Art 0/ !berry, 259 derlS absconditus see God devil, 52, 61, 85, 114 dialectic, 92,114,171,172,174,175, 187,196,270 Dickie, George, 8, 9 Dicrionary 0/ Posrmodern Thought (S. Sim, «1.),278 didacticism, 17, 18, 66, 263 Diderot, Denis, 119 difference, 259 Dilthey, Wilhelm, 200 Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, 200 Dionysian, Dionysius, 4, 223, 226, 295,317 Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint, 66, 67, 70 Diotima (in Plato), 23, 24, 26, 103 disgust see revulsion disinterestedness, 3, 5, 74, 115, 119, 130, 132,141,142,144,155,159,160, 161,170,187,215,216,217,218, 253, 310, 320; see aJs() Heidegger, Hume, Kant, Shaftesbury Dissanayake, Ellen, 301, 311,311-12, 314 Homo Aesrhericus, 301 What is Arr/orJ, 301 dissociation of sensibility, 117, 204 divided self, 26, I 16, 144, 177 division oflabour, 13, 127, 183, 184 The DNA Mystique: me Gene as Icon (D. Nelkin and S. Lindee), 12 Dodds, E. R., xiii, 20, 33, 37, 46 DoJc:c, Lodovico, fi';, 87, 105 Dialogo deNa pircura, 85 domain specificity, 308 Donaasts, 59 Dostoyevsky, Feodor Milchailovich, 214

Index double predestination see predestination drama, 28, 29, 43, 44, 54,251,312,316 dreams, 253, 254, 265, 268, 307 Drosophila subobscura, 311 Dubois, Eugene, 183 Dubos, Jean-Baptiste, 119 Duff, William, 120 Duns Scotus, John, 214 Doctrine ojCaugories and Meaning, 214 DUrer, Albrecht, 75-78, 81, 82, 83, 92, 93,94,99,211; on beauty, 76; on perspective, 76, 78 Pmpecnwr Sketching a Lady, ix, 75, 76, 78,82,92 Self-Portrait, Nude, ix, 77, 83 Earl of Rochester see Rochester, John Wilmot, 2nd earl of. Ebreo, Leone, 91, 94,97, 106, 107 Dialoghi di Amore, 97 Eckhart, Meister, 201, 247 eidola, 203, 266, 267 eidos, 207, 262, 263, 374 ekmageicm, 266 Ekman, Paul, 305 ekphanesraum, 203, 204, 216 eleurhnvnumy, 158 elite aesthetics, 306, 307 emancipation of women, 195 emblems, 90, 92 emotions, 8, 15, 16, 17, 18,30,31,33,37, 40,75,85,87,113,118,124,127, 128, 132, 133, 138, 143, 144, 157, 158, 161, 165, 167, 174, 178, 180, 182, 183, 194, 202, 206, 276, 280, 284,305,306,307,384 Empedocles, 21, 99 empiricism, 113, 131, 138, 139, 142, 164, 202,219,220,231,233,234,235, 236,237,239,240,244,248,250, 262, 272, 304; see also Derrida, Heidegger, Kant empiricism-nativism dichotomy, 302, 303 empiricist falsifiability, 304 empty transcendence and/or ~cendentallsm, 142, 146, 147,247 Engels, Friedrich, 6, 8, 175, 176, 180, 183-84,185,186,187,188,359; critical and satirical writings, 187, 188; on Peuerbach, 176; on Marx, 175; and sexuality, 186 "The Pan Played by Labour in the Transition from Ape to Man," 18~84 ens creannn, 203 en tii psuchii, 262, 269

421 entelechy, 45, 72 environment, 10, 14 epic theatte, 251 Epicurus, 43, 165, 190, 193,194,222,235 epigenetic, 303, 307 epistemology, 13, 14, 156, 160, 162, 164, 219,220,224,229,230,232,233, 236,248,264,272,276,285,303 Equicola, Mario, 97, 106, 107 Libro eli nalUra d'amore, 97 Erigena, Johannes Scotus, 6, 66, 67, 69,214 Doctrine ojCaugona, 214 eroticism, 62, 81, 85, 87, 90, 91,102,104, 105,306 eschatology, 25, 35, 38, 246 essentialism, 34, 46, 72, 89, 98,131,140, 163, 175, 176, 177, 181, 190, 196, 200,203,207,208,210,211,212, 215,216,217,220,221,224,239, 245,247,251,276 eternal damnation, 35,40,55,56,57,58, 60, 326; see also damnation ethics, 152, 155, 171, 180 etymology, 128, 199,228,230,236,239 Eucharist, 288, 289, 290, 296 eudaemonism, 158 Euripides, 29 Eurocenaic, 172,251 euthanasia, 158 evil, 19,25,26,27,34,36,37,38,39,42, 43,44,48, 50, 55, 60, 61, 62, 98, 113,126,128,129,144,146,156, 157,169,173,187,190,191,192, 193, 194, 228, 262, 275; see also Augustine, Nietzsche, Plotinus evolution, 6, 10, 13, 14, 135, 136, 182, 222,224,233,236,237,239,277, 298,301,302,304,306,309,310, 315 evolution of language see origins of language evolutionary epistemology, 5 evolutionary or genealogical empiricism, 13,136,233,235,237,239,278, 303,304 evolutionary historicity, 304 evolutionary psychology, xiii, 13,301 "Evolved Responses to Landscapes" (G. H. Orians and J. H. Heerwagen), 301 exclusionariness, 304 experimental quantifiability, 137, 182, 304 expression, expressionism, 7, 301 extended genotype, 312

422

Index

face recognition, 9, 56, 303, 306 facial expressions, 305, 306 faith,59, 147, 148, 153, 154,289, 291,292 fallacy, 235,238,244,274,280,281,302 fall into matter, 44 fan into sin see theodicy of the fall fashion, 301 Faas, Ekbert, xii, 321, 340 ShaJuspean's Poetics, xii Ted Hughes, xii Tragedy and After, xii Fecamp, church of, 71 Fechner, GustaV Theodor, 305 feelings see emotions feigned dissent, 130, 136, 165 Felibien, Andre des Avaux, 119 Fen, John, 114 female bosom, 92, 103, 133, 134, 135 feminism, 10, 11, 12, 13,76,92,299, 301 Feminism and Tram°cion in Aesthetics (po Z. Brand and C. Konmeycr, eds.), 299 Feminism in Philosophy (M. Fricker and J. Hornsby, eds.), 299 Feminisr Philosophy (A. M. Jagger and I. M. Young, eds.), 299 Fenollosa, Ernest, 199 Fe~son,~, 126 Feuerbach, Ludwig Andreas, 176, 177, 178,184,185,186,193,355; on an and aesthetics, 178; on man's estrangement &om the body and sexuality, 177; on philosophy and religion, 177, 178, 193; retransvaluations, 177, 178, 186 "Against the Dualism of Body and Soul, Flesh and Spirit," 178 The Essence of Christianity, 176, 178, 355 Fichte, Johann Gottlieb, 3, 171, 227 Ficino, Manillo, 6, 8, 89, 91, 94, 95-97, 106, 107, 108; and artistic creativity, 96, 97, 108; and Augustine, 96; on beauty, 92, 96; loathing of body and sexuality, 96, 97; on Platonic ascent, 96; repressive Platonism, 97 fiction,fictionality,17,27,275 fitting,fittingness,28,134 fiowen, 54,310, 311 Fodor, Jerry A., 308, 384 folk aesthetics, 306 form and content, 9, 223, 227 form-matter see morphi-hyle dichotomy Fonter-Nietzsche, Elizabeth, 209 fortis, 128

Foucault, Michel, xiii, II, 12, 13, 14, 252, 295,298; and Nietzsche, 12, 13 "Nietzsche, Genealogy, History," 12 Fourier, Charles, 195 Frean de Chambray, Roland, x, 91, 92, 95, 119 "The Artistic Idea. Allegory," x, 91, 92, 95 Para//& de ['architeCture aruique et moderne,91,92 freedom, 95, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 147,149,155,156,157,158,162, 163,170,176,179,274,284,306 free will, 59, 114, 274 Freillgrath, Ferdinand, 186 Fresnoy, Charles Alphonse du, 119 Freud, Sigmund, 194, 243, 245, 253, 254, 262,298,312,372 "The Claim of Psychoanalysis to Scientific Interest," 253 Freudian, 127, 135,243,260 Friesen, W. v., 305 fruit, 310, 311 Fulvia (in Mandeville), 123, 124 Galileo (Galileo Galilei), 98 Gallienus, 41, 42 gardening, 120,306 Gay, John, 122 Geibel, Emanuel von, 176 Gender and Genius: Towards a New Feminist Aesthetics (C. Battenby), 299 genealogy of life, civilization and culture, 2, 3,12,13,31,125,126,127,133,136, 183, 184, 222, 224, 255, 276, 317 genealogy of morals, 31,125,126,127, 128, 152, 190,252 genetics, 6, 8, 14,247,300,301,302, 303,312 genitals, 33,34,61,62,75,77,85,90,92, 99,100,102,107,186,314; see also Aretino, Augustine, Julian of Eclanum, Montaigne, Plato genius, 95, 116, 120, 137, 169, 170 gentleman see connoisseur and virtuoso aesthetics geometry, 30, 75, 76, 89, 90, 92, 93, 95, 99, 103, 110 Gerard, Alexander, 120, 134 Germain d'Auxere, Saint, 73 Gibbon, Edward, 58 The Hisrory of the Decline and FaD of the Roman Empire, 58 Gilpin, William, 120 Giorgione, x, 81, 86 The Sleeping ~nus, x, 86

Index Giono, ix, 77, 78 The Lase Judgment, ix, 77, 78 Glanvill, Joseph, 114 gnosticism, 42, 43 God, 7, 18, 19,21,22,27,35,40,41,42, 43,45,48,49,50,51,52,53,54,55, 56,57,58,60,61,62,66,68,69,71, 76,90,92,93,113,116,117,127, 131, 140, 141, 142, 144, 145, 146, 147,148,149,151,152,153,155, 156, 160, 161, 163, 164, 167, 171, 172,173,174,176,177,178,179, 184,192,193,196,199,201,209, 210,211,242,245,246,247,248, 261,264,281,282,283,284,288, 291,292, 296, 298,308, 309; as artist, 43, 50, 52, 55, 56, 92, 116, 147, 261; as cosmic maker and supreme architect, 43, 50, 52, 55, 57, 92,148, 151,163,210,211,261; as deus abscondirus, 140, 153, 155, 156, 167,247,248,281,282,292,296; inscrutability, 49,55,56,57,58, 142, 145, 146, 153, 160,242,283,291, 296; as judge, 52, 55, 60, 145, 146, 179; as moral arbiter and lawgiver, 131,141,148,156,291; proofs of the existence of, 140,147, 151, 152, 153, 155, 163; as tormentor, 52, 55, 56, 57,58,60,156,179 Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von, 119, 135,186 Gombrich, E. H. J., 8, 305 Art and Illusion: a Study in the Pfyclwlogy of Pictorial Representlllions, 305 good and bad or evil, 1, 6, 14, 19, 23, 25, 27,28,30,31,37,40,48,50,60,71, 74,112, 113, 114, 118, 126,128, 129,132,144,150,156,157,159, 160,161,169,180,181,184,190, 192,193,194,195,199,216,242, 262,264,275,291,293,294,296, 303,307,316 Goodman, Nelson, 8, 320 Goodman, Paul, 295 Gorgias,17 gorillas, 314 ~,Ftichard, 124 The Art of Painring, 124 graphi, 262 Gravettian female ivory figurines from Avdeevo, Russia, x, 101 Great Chain of Being, 114 Greeo-RoDrutD,185,306 Gregorian Chant, 69, 70

423 Gregory IX, pope, 65 Griffith, Paul E., 384 Grosz, Elizabeth, 13 Haeckd, Ernst Heinrich, 183, 315

hama, 244, 262

Hamilton, w., 300

"The Genetical Evolution of Social Behaviour," 300 handedness, 183, 184, 185 happenings, 250 happiness, 156 harmony, harmonious, 43, 53, 69, 72, 76, 77,115,162 Hauser, Marc D., 313 Havelock, Eric A., 290 Hayek, F. A., 126 heaven and hell, 26, 57, ';8, 60, 62, 85, 92, 112, 146 heav~yloye,58, 107 heavenly music see music of the spheres Hebreo, Leon see Ebreo, Leone hedonism, 31, 35, 99 Heerwagm, J. H. see Orlans, G. H. Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich, 3, 6, 9, 169,175,176,177,178,179,187, 197,201,206,207,212,213,215, 216,221,230,231,249,263,264, 278,286,287,293,294,297,362; aesthetics as a science, 175; andsensualism,9, 172, 173, 174; and Being, 230, 231; categories, 170; decline and death of an, 9,174,175, 206,207,212,213,249; Eurocentrism, 172, 286, 296; God, see general index; and history, 171; and Kant, 169, 170, 171, 173, 174,297; on mimesis, 170, 263; ranking of artistic modes, 172, 174; superiority of artistic oyer natural beauty, 169, 170; the symbolic, classical, and Romantic, 172, 174; and tragedy, 171,172.173; world spirit, 171, 172, 173,174 Grundrisse tier PhilDsophie des Rechrs, 187 I-brksungm tiber die Asrherik, 169, 206, 212,215.249 Hegelian, 175, 177, 179, 186, 187, 196, 197,198,206,213,249 Heidegger, Martin (for use ofGred: and Latin concepts, see general index), xiii, 7,8, 10, 12, 14, 169, 175, 199-240, 241,242,243,244,245,246,247, 248,249,250,251,252,253,255, 258,259,260,272,273,278,279,

424

Index

Heidegger, Martin (com.) 286, 287, 288, 294, 295, 296, 297, 299,304,362,367,371,372;ah¥ays already, 202, 208, 231, 233; on an as a thrusting open of the awesome and a thrusting down of the ordinary, 210, 211; an's historical mission, 211, 212, 2 13; battle and suife, 20 I, 208, 209, 210; Being, 200, 201, 204, 205, 208, 209,210,212,213,215,218,219, 220,221,229,231,232,233,235, 246,247,260,304; deconstrUction or destrUction, 20, 199-213,214,216, 217,219,221,233,238,241,259, 272; development, 212, 213,215; on disinterestedness, 215, 216; eanh and world, 210, 211; and empiricism, 202, 219,220,230, 237, 240; and essentialism, 207, 208; and Freud, 243; on general misconceptions about an and poetry, 200, 201, 206, 210; and Germany, 201, 208, 209; God, see general index; and Hegel, 169, 206,212,213,215,216,221,249; and Hitler, 201, 209; and Hobbes, 232, 238, 240; byperboles, 205, 233; on inversion as reappropriation, 219, 221,224,228,273; on image and symbol, 199,201; and Kant, 203, 206,211,215,217,221,227,233, 244; and language, 208, 209, 240; manufactured equipment, 203, 208, 210, 211; meditation of metapbysics on metaphysics, 245, 246, su alSo metametapbysics; and memory, 233; and mimesis, 200, 204, 206, 207, 208, and National Socialism, 201, 208, 209; and naturalism, 207; and Nieascbe, 205, 212, 213, 214-31, 237,242,251,252,254,272,273, 278; oblivion and burial of the trUe sense of Being, 202, 204, 205, 242, 243,246,258, 260j obsession with Nietzsche, 215, 221, 229; onto-theo-ego-1ogical, 242, 286; ontotheology, 243; "philosopby bas to shed its habit of addressing the problem of an as one ofaesthetics," 200, 202, 206, 207, 215, 228; and Plato, 169,203,219,221,222,225, 226,227,232,233; and poetry, 200, 201,208,209; rectorsbip address of May 27,1933, 20lj reinterpretation of the sensuous, 224; reversals or inversions of Platonism, 289; thing,

thingness, thing1iness, 201, 202, 203, 204,208,210,211; transcendental imagination, 211, 232, 233,234; transcendentalism and megatranscendentalism, 199, 200, 203, 207,232; twisting free from n. overturning of Platonism, 221, 224, 225,227,228,252,253,255,258, 278; western dissociation of sensibility, 204, 242; western metaphysics and aesthetics, 202, 203, 204,205, 206,207,212, 218,219; the workliness of the artWork, 203, 208 Basie Problems of Phenomtnloiogy, 238 Kant a,uI the Problem of Metaphysics, 211, 216 "Nietzsche's Word 'God is Dead,'" 221 171t Origin of the of Art, 201,205, 206,207,208,209,211,212,213, 215,216,249,293,362 Stin u"d Zeit, 200, 204, 205, 208, 215, 220,242 Heideggerian, 10,235,237,241,245, 246,250,251,258,268,278,287, 289, 293, 294, 296 Heine, Heinricb, 140, 177, 180, 186 Helen of Troy, 28 Helmholtz, Hermann Ludwig Ferdinand von,305 Hera, 18 HeraclituS, 21, 99, 201, 204,209,235 Hercules, 123 Herder, Johann Gottfried von, 119

m,,.

be~~22,42,46,48,59,62,65,296

hermeneutics, 249, 287, 288, 289, 290,296 Hermione (in Sbakespeare), 85 Hesiod, 17, 18, 20, 34 hidden religious agendas, 139, 145, 148, 153, 156,167,168,258,259, 288,291 hieroglyphics, 253, 254 high art, 306, 307 bigher senses su senses Hipple, W. ]., Jr., 131 TIu BeallfijuJ, the Sublime, a,uI the

Piauresque, 131 history of ideas, 301 Hitler, Adolf, 201, 209 Mein Kampf, 209 Hobbes, Thomas, 6, 98, 112-15, 116, 117, 118,121, 122, 126, 129, 131, 232, 235, 238, 239,240, 303; on decaying sense or memory, 232; definitions of the beautiful, ugly,

Index good and evil, 111; and imagination, 113, 232; on language~ lacking the copula "is," 238, 239; nominalism, 113, 238; and ontology, 238; scandal surrounding Hobbes, 114 Conrpurario Sive l.ogica, 238 Deeive,1I3 L.:viarhall, 113, ) 20, 232 Lo,ica, 238 Hoby, Thomas, 97 Hoffmann, Ernst Thcodor Amadeus, 173, 176 Hogarth, William, 134, 135, 180 Analysis 0/ Bea",y, ) 35 Holderlin, Friedrich, 200, 201, 209, 212 "vermallinl," 200, 201, 209 "Der Rhei"," 200, 209 Holmstrom, Nancy, II home decoration, 306 Homer, 2, 17, 18,29,3'1,132,186 honro aesthBlic"s, 183 h01ll0 erectus, 183 Iwmo/abtr,183 homo haM/is, 184 homo homilli I"PlIS, 114 h"mow.fis, 206, 259; s~e aIs" adaeq"ario i",elkClu.~

ot rei

Iwmo I"dens, 187, .312 ""mo sapinlS, 184,302,307,314 homosexuality, 26, 97, 102 ho"esl"m, 121, 122, 128 Horace, 105, 186, 319 Horatio (in Mandeville), 121, 123, 124 Hugh of Saint Victor, 67, 72 Huizinga, lohan, 312 human artistic faculty, 304, 307, 308, 309, 311,316 humanities, 299, 301 Humboldt, Wilhelm von, 234 Hume, David, 125,131-32,164,167, 230,235,238,296,344, 386; on beauty, 131, 132; on disinterestedness, 132; on gentleman virtuoso and connoisseur, 131, 132 "Of the Standard or Taste," 131, 132, 296 A Treorise 0/ HUn/ali Natllre, 131 Husserl, Edmund, 7,371 Hutcheson, Francis, 74, 119, 120, 129, 134, 180 An IIIqlliry into ,he Original of 0", Ideas of Bea",y a"d Vi,tue, 120 hyperboles, 34, 36, 162, 205, 245, 292; lei! also Derrida, Heidegger, Kant, Plato, Shaftcsbury

425 hypocrisy, 81, 103, 108, 167, 168,190, 192, 193, 194, 195, 224 ro Iorpokcimenon - ra symbebikolQ dichotomy, 202, 262 iconoclasm debate, 66, 67 iconography, 90, 115, 261 idea, 15, 19,30,34,45,72,87,89,92,98, 114,123,157,162,169,171,172, 173,175,180,184,185,200,221, 222,223,225,227,230,236,239, 266, 304, 306 ideal, 2, 3,4, 40, 52, 69, 76, 95, 176, 178, 180, 182, 183, 190,207,225,226, 251,262 idealism, 2, 20, 40, 95, 97, 99, 118, 175, 185,186,217,219,222 idealization, 28, 30, 123 identity see sameness Iki, 199, 200 illusion, 16, 30, 164, 192, 235 imagery Sei! metaphorical language IlIIagi"ary Bodies (M. Gatens), 10 imagination, 2, 56, 68, 99, \06, 113, 117, 132,138,148,150,158,161,162, 163, 164, 178, 183,211,232,233, 234,236,257,258,259,261,263, 264,268,279,280,283,284,316, 368; see also Derrida, Heidegger, Hobbes, Kant imitation, 2, 4, 15, 16, 17, 19, 20, 30, 44,45,57, 116, 123, 154, 155, 170, 173,206,207,208,251,257,258, 259,260,261,262,263,264,265, 267,269,271,276,291; see also mimesis immortality, 140, 141, 144, 145, 147, 148, 149,1';5,284 inclusiveness, 304 I"dcx librorrllll prol/ibirorllm, 112, ) 13 infinite, 158, 162, 279, 283 infinite productivity of language, 307 innateness, 5, 6, 9, ) 13, 115, 127, 169, 231,239,303,304,307,311, 342 innereyeofthesQul,47,115,165 inner sense, 69, 112, 113, 115, ) 29, 130, 140,141,152 Innocent llI, pope, 65 Innocent IV. pope, 65 inquwtum cor "OstrUIII, 242 Inquisition, inquisitorial, 59, 61, 65, 66,117 insanity, 52, 68, 194, 225, 227, 251, 252,272

426

Index

inscrutability, incomprehensibility, inelfability, 55, 57, 140, 141, 142, 143,145,146,147,151,153,156, 159,160,161,163,168,173,174, 242,246,247,280,281,285,286, 294,296 inspiration, 22, 68, 71, 81, 108, 136, 264 instinCt, I, 2, 3, 6, 8, 9, 17, 23, 26, 40, 66, 73,74,93,125,126,127,130,133, 136,141,155,157,172,223,252, 276,277,303,306,307,308,311, 312 inteUecrual beauty see beauty intemperance, 36,37,125 intention, 151, 152,156, 182,216,244, 263,313 intentional stance (D. C. Dennen), 312, 313,316 inversion, reversal, 10,16,27,28,29,31, 33,36,40,46,47,60,91,99, 121, 125,127, 136, 156, 163,164, 167, 170, 175, 176, 177, 178, 179, 181, 184,185,187,189,192,194,210, 219,221,224,225,228,230,235, 236,237,241,246,250,251,252, 253,255,257,259,260,270,272, 273,274,275,276, 278, 288j see aao transVa1uation of values inward eye, 116 Lngaray, Lucc, 294, 295 Isis, 163 Jacob of Liege, 69 Jacquenetta (in Shakespeare), 107 Jaeger, Ernst, 37 Jakobson, Roman, 298 Japanese art, 199, 200 Jaspers, Karl, 204, 219 Jean Paul (Johann Paul Friedrich Richter), 180 jenesaisquoi, 113,146, 159, 160,282 Jesus see Christ Johnson, Samuel, Dr., 134 Judaeo-Christian, 185, 190, 195,246,274 Julian of Eclanum, 59-63, 334; on art and beauty, 62, 63; and genitals, 61; on sexuality, 60, 61, 62 Ad ftorum conrra Augustine Iibrorum secundum de nupriis, 60 Ad Turbantium, 60 Jung, Carl GustaV, 169 Jiinger, Ernst, 307 Justinian, emperor, 41 just-so stories, 255, 302 Juvena], 186

~,F~,146,

153

The Trial, 146, 153 ~esque, 147, 174,241,291,292 kakos, deiJos, 31, 35 Kam, Immanuel, 2, 3, 4, 6, 8, 9,14,74, 99,119,132,134,138-68,169,170, 171,173,174,180,186,187,188, 203,206,211,215,216,217,218, 221,227,233,234,235,247,249, 253,258,259,261,263,264,268, 273, 278, 279-85, 286, 288, 294, 295,296,297,299,308,319,320, 349, 352,362, 379,385; abstraction, 143,280,281; aesthetic judgment of feeling about the sublime vs. aesthetic judgment of taste about beauty, 148, 149,150,157,158,159,161,162, 284; aesthetic vs. pathological pleasure, 139; antinomies, 140; antisensualist bias, 141, 143, 156, 157,158,159,162,165,166;and Augustine, 165, 167, 168; on beauty, see general index; and Burke, 138; and Calvin, 145, 146, 153, 155, 156, 167, 168, 173; categorical imperative, 138, 141,142,143,157,227; categories, 159,160,170, 171j and COgilO m:fO sum, 140, 141; and CoUegium Fri~anum, 145, 167; common sense, 161, 165; conscience, 142, 143, 144,146,147,149,153,155,156, 160; deus abscondirus, see general index; disinterested pleasure and general disinterestedness, 3, 74, 141, 142, 144,159,161,165,170,187,214, 216,218; duty, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145,147,149,173; and empiricism, 138, 162, 164; empty transcendence, 146; ethicoteleology, 147, 148, 149, 151,152,158,161,162; faith, 147, 148,153,154,227; genealogical forays, 151, 152, 161; on genius, 169, 170; God, see general index; gratuitous striving, 145; hidden religious imperative of Kant's thinking and prose style, 139, 145, 148, 153, 156, 163,167; and Hume, 164; hyperboles, 156,162,163,167; and imagination, 138, 148, 150,158,161, 162,163, 211,233,234; the incomprehensible, inscrutable, unfathomable and unattainable, 138, 140, 141, 142, 143, 144,145,146,147,148,153,156, 159, 160, 163, 167, 168,281,283; judgment, 139, 140, 150, 152, 158,

Index 159, 162, 165; and Kafka, 146, 153, 174; legalese, 139,144,145,157, 158, 164; metaphorical and aUegorical language, 143, 144, 145, 146, 155, 156, 157; moral law, morality, 141, 142, 143, 144, 145, 146, 147, 148, 149, 150, 152, 153, 154, 155, 156, 157,158,159,161,162,163,164, 166,280; physicoteleology, 147, 148, 149,151,152,158,161,162,163; and posnnodemist painting, 278, 279, 280; practical reason, 147, 148, 149, 152,156,157,158,159,227,281, 283, 284; pre-1770, pre-critical writings, 164, 165, 166, 167, 168; prose style, 139, 140, 153, 160; pure reason, 147, 149, 158; purposiveness without purpose, 150, 161, 162,258, 263,264,268; respect, 143, 144, 147, 148, 150, 157, 159,280,281,282; second maker, 163,211; self-evident concepts, 142, 143; self-scrutiny, 143, 144; and sexuality, 166, 167; silent decade, 167; on the sublime, 279, 280,281,282,283,284,285; subreption, 280, 281; superiority of natural over artistic beauty, 147, 148, 161, 169, 170,281; supersensible, 141,144,146,147,149,150,153, 162, 284; supersensible moral vocation, 150,280,281,284; technic or concept of nature as art, 151, 163, 169; terminological iugglery, 156, 157, 160, 161; transcendent moral nature, 183; transcendentalism, 141, 163; unfathomable artistry in the purposes of nature, 148, ISO, 151, 152, 158, 160; universal moral kingdom of ends in themselves, 141, 146, 158 "Analytic of Aesthetic Judgment," 160 "Analytic of the Sublime," 279, 281, 283,284,285 Attempt 10 Jnrrodua che Concept 0/ Negatiw Magniludes inw Philosophy, 163 Blomberg Lectures, 164 Critique o/Judgment (third Critique), 3, 134,138,139,147,148,152,153, 155,160,162,163,165,169,170, 211,215,216,217,218,258,261, 279,282,283,284,296 Critique 0/ Practical Reason (second Critique), 140, 141, 143, 144, 145, 146,147,155,160,187,281,284

427 Critique of Pure Reason (first Critique), 140,141, 142, 145,147, 157, 162, 163,167,233,284 Dreams 0/ a Spirir-Seer, 164 Groundwork of rhe Meraphysics of Morals, 140, 141, 142, 143, 147 Meraphysics of MONIs, 143, 144, 145 Observadons 0/ rile Feeling 0/ me Beautiful and rhe Sublime, 165, 166, 167 On me J'orm and Principles of the Sensible and rhe lnu/Iigible u:6r1d, 165 Progress, 153 Religion wimin rile Limits of Reason Alone, 145,147 Kanzi (bonobo), 315 Katherine (in Shakespeare), 108 Kay, P., 14 Keats, John, 304 Kelly, Michael, ed., 299 Eru:ycIopedia of Aesrhetics, 299 Keynes, John Maynard, 125 khOra, 265, 256, 257, 258, 292, 375 Kierkegaard, Seren, 214, 242, 297 Knight, Richard Payne, 120,134,135 An Analyrica/ Inquiry inro rhe Principles of Tasre, 120, 134 Knights Templars, 66 Koch, Walter A., 301 kolaz,;n, 37 kosmos and kosmos psyche, 35 KreU, David F., 221, 228 !Kung San Bushmen, 307 Lampe (in H. Heine), 140 language, 127, 154, 155, 178, 184,204, 208,209,224,230,231,234,235, 237,239,240,241,244,245,246, 247,248,250,253,255,268,275, 277,289,290,291,294,302,305, 306,307,308,309,312,315 language acquisition, 307 language and thought, 234, 235, 239, 240,276,277 language instinct, 307 Lassalle, Ferdinand, 187 FmRZ wn Sickingen, 187 laughter, 19,57,59,129,155, 169,386 laws of contradiction, 222 Le Clerc, Sebastien, 119 Leibniz, Gottfried Wilhelm, 152, 153, 164,221 Leonardo da Vinci, 89, 90, 93, 135 Leontes (in Shakespeare), 85 lesbianism, 26

428

Index

Lessing, Gottbold Ephraim, 119, 134

Laocoon, 134

Levinas, Emmanuel, 295 Levi-Strauss, Claude, 92 lexicon, 241, 307 lex ralionis, 35 liber/as onium rutirura, 95 life-activity orlabor, 182, 183, 184, 257 life sciences, 299, 303 JinguWtics, 178,224,273,303,308 liturgy, 69, 291 Locke, John, 6, 116, 117, 129, 164, 186,386 logic, I, 110, 140, 180,204,205,220, 226,234,235,236,238,241,278, 288,294,306 logocentricity, 243, 245, 260, 268, 269, 270,282,288,294 logos, 204, 254, 259, 263, 289 Longaville (in Shakespeare), 107 Longino, Helen, 12 Science as Social Knowledge, 12 Longinus, 120 Lorrain see Claude Lorrain love, 25, 26,58,72,73,87,93,96,97, 103, 106, 107, 108, Ill, 115, 128, 129,133,136,138,143,166,176, 183, 193, 196, 292 Love-making, case mirror from Corinth, x, 102 Love, Power and Knowledge: Towards a Feminis, Trans/ormarian 0/ the Sciences (H. Rose), 12 Lucretius, 105, 106,319 De rerum narura, 106 lust, 5, 26, 33, 34, 46, 60, 61, 62. 66. 67, 85,87,96,99, 125, 129, 165, 189, 195,217 Luther, Martin, .3, 242, 297 Lutheranism, 146 LYOlard, Jean-Fran~ois, 8, 278, 279, 282, 284,285,294,295,379 "Riponse Ii la questiorl: qu'est-ce qlle Ie postmoderne?," 279 lynx's eyes, 96 Machiavelli, Niccolo, 113, 120, 126, 319 The~, 113, 120 Machiavellian intelligence, 313 madness see insanity The Making 0/ the Modern Body (C. Gallagher and T. Laqueur, eds.), 10 Mandeville, Bernard, 6, 120, 121, 122, 123,124,125, 126.127,128,129;

aesthetic affinities with Shakespeare, 123; on connoisseur as aesthetic priest, 122, 123, 124; etymological speculations, 127, 128, 129; on evolution oflanguage, 127; on genealogy of civilization, culture, and morais, 125, 126, 127,128, 129; on love and sex, 122, 128, 129; as "MANDEVIL," 120; and Nietzsche, 124, 125. 126. 127, 129; and Plato's Callic1es, 125; relativity of beauty, religion, and sexual mores, 122; rettansvtiuations, 125; and Sbaftesbury, 121, 122, 124,127; on transvaluation of values, 125, 126, 127; on virtuosoship as means of social repression, 122, 127, 128 An E'''luiry inco the Origin of Honollr and the Usefulness 0/ Christianity in Wflr. 121, 125, 127 "Enquiry into the Origin of Moral Virtue," 125 The Fable of rhe Bees, 120, 121 "A Search into the Nature of Society," 121 Manichaeism, 42, 47,48,50,54,60,61, 65,165 manufacture of consent, 11 March, Colley, 305 Marcuse, Herbert, 11 Margolis, Josepb, 8, 320 Maria (in Shakespeare), 107, 108 martyrdom, 32, 38, 39, 41, 42,58,81, 270,271 Marx, Karl, 6, 8,125,175-98,298,355, 359; and "Aesthetics" entry in the New American Cyclopedia of 1857,180, 181; and alienation, 184, 185, 186; nn an and aesthetics, 180, 182, 183, 185, 186; and Bruno Bauer, 179, 185, 186, 187,195,198; and Charles Darwin, 183; conscious life-activity. 182; criticti and satiricti writings, 187, 188; and didactic literature, 187; and Feuerbach, 176, 178, 185; free play of man's physicti and psychological faculties, 187; and Hegel, 175, 176, 179,196,197; and ideas, idealism, 184,185;andJudaisrn, 185; and Kant, 186--87; Nieaschean moment in his developmmt, 176, 182-98; and penal theory, 195; praxis, 182, 185; prosensuousness, 176-78, 185, 186; on repression, 194; as Romantic poet, 176; on Shakespeare, 187; transformational criticism, 175, 179,

Index 180, 185, 186; on writing as an act of revenge, 195 The Capital, 182 The Holy i-"amiIy, 175, 187, 196 Mism de la philosophie, 185 masochism, 38, 110 ~ason,C7corge, 120 master-5lave relationship, 31, 32, 37, 38, 39, 125, 126, 184, 209, 210; see also Nietzsche and Xenophon materialism, 21, 178 mathematics, mathematical, 15, 16,46, 76,94,150,277,306 McGinn, Colin, 383 Medici Venus, 76, 85, 91, 92,105, 106, 132 medieval Roman liturgy, 289 medieval theocracy, 40, 64, 66, 70, 93 megatranscendentalism, xiii, 7, 243, 247,248,270,277,283,286,294, 304 melody, 15,23,62,72,183 memory, 111, 130,232,233,262, 263,266 Mendel, Gregor Johann, 302 ~endelssohn, ~oses, 119, 132, 134 Meno (in Plato), 32, 270 Mesnadiere, Jules de la, 119 merametaphysics, 240, 243, 246, 248 metaphorical language, 45, 73, 103, 117,143,146,148,150,199,244, 266,267,268,273,275,276,290 Methodists, 193 metonymy, 273, 275 Meyer, Conrad Ferdinand, 206, 207,212 "Der riimische Brunnen," 206, 207 Michelangelo Buonarroti, 85, 87 The LastJruigmenr, 85 Miller, George, 312 Miller, J. Hillis, 268 "Deconstructing the Deconstructers," 268 Milton, John, 188 Paradise LoSl, 188 nnm~,265,266,267

mimesis, mimetic, 7, 15, 16, 19, 20, 53, 173,207,248,249,254,255,258, 261,263,280,283,291,295; see also Maud, Augustine, Dereida, Heidegger, Nietzsche, Plato, Plotinus mimihS,206,233,257,258,259,260, 261,262,263,264,268,269,270, 271,282,290,291,293,295 mind-body dichotomy, 31, 68, 98, 100, 103,127, 132, 141, 173, 177,251, 326

429 mind-brain-hody complex, 132, 158, 181,304 mind-matter dichotomy, 44, 75, 97,125, 157,173,177 minimalism, 16, 279 Mrr Encydopedia of the Cognitive Scienas (R. A. Wilson and F. C. Keit, eds.), 300 mnimi,262 mnimoneuein, 233 modem synthesis, 302 Mohammed,222 molecular biology, 302 Mondrian, Pier, 16, 305 Monica, Augustine's mother, 47 Montaigne, Michel Eyquem de, 2, 3, 4, 6, 98,99-100,102-03,105-06,107, 108,109,111,113,121,122,319, 321; aesthetic affinities with Shakespeare, 2, 3, 4, 99, 100, 102-03, 105-09; on beauty and art, 103, 105; on contempt of body and sensuality, 100,103; on erotically stimulative appeal of poetty and art, 103, 105, 106; on genitals, 99, 100; on love, 100, 103, 106; relativity of beauty, 100, 103; on self-decoration and cosmetics, 105; on sexuality, 100, 103, 106, 109; and mmati d'amore, 106 morality, 12, 13,46,53,64,87,94,112, 113,115,117,121,125,126,131, 132,138,141,142,143, 144,145, 146,147,148,150,151, 152,153, 154,155,156,157,158,159,160, 161,162,163,164,166,167,171, 172,184,189,190,193,194,195, 196,201,222,224,226,227,257, 270,276,279,280,281,282,283, 284,285,303 More, Henry, 114 morphi-hyle dichotomy, 203 morphology, 14 ~orris, Desmond, 300 The Biology of An, 300 Mothersill, Mary, 8 Muller, Eduard, 180 Musaeus,18 music, 4, 5, 9, 15, 16,22,29,30,44,52, 53, 62, 63, 68, 69, 70, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95,105,120,170,172,174,291, 305,310,317,321 music of the spheres, 69, 93, 95 mutualism, 313 mysticism, mystery, 68, 72,115,146,175, 176,177,196,197,202,234,242. 245,246,247,250,286,289

430

Index

mythology, 18,21,46, 172 Myths of GInder: Bi%gicoJ Theories About

""men and Men (Anne FaustoSterling), 12

nakedness see nudity names lee words Nancy, Jean-Luc, 290 narrative, 113, 126, 127, 173,205,227, 290,302,312,316 nativism, nativist, 304 natura naturans and naturrua, 258 natural selection, 14,304,306,307,309, 310,311 naruralism,7,276 natura1istic art, 7, 207 nature-nurture dichotomy, 302, 303 negative theology, 246, 247, 248, 287, 292 negative ttanscendentalism, 248, 250, 289 nematode (worm), 303 neoclassical, 122, 163 neologism, 156, 161,231,250,262 Neoplatonism, 48, 55, 61, 72, 96, 112, 167,258 nervous system, nerves, 164,276,303, 310,317 neurobiology, neurology, 9, 10,301 neurosis, 260 New American CydoJWia, 180 New Criticism, 187,267 New Hegelians, 179 new novel, 250 Nicole, Pierre, 119 NietzSche, Friedrich, xii, xiii. 1-6,7,8, 10, 12,13,14,15,28,31,32,37,40,41, 52,58,64,75,93, 110, 121, 124, 125, 126, 127, 136, 138, 155, 160, 169,182,184,185,190,191,192, 194,198,199,201,205,206,209, 212,213,214,215,216,217,218, 219,220,221,222,223,224,225, 226, 227, 228, 229, 230, 235, 236, 237,241,243,245,246,248,251, 252, 253, 254, 255, 257, 258, 270, 272-78,286,287,290,294,295, 296,298,301,303,307,309,316, 317,319,320,355,367,382,384; aesthetic disposition, drive, instinct or state, 5, 6, 8, 14, 121, 126,222,307, 316, 317; Apollonian and Dionysian, 226; apparent VB. real world, 14,229; art and beauty as stimulants oflile, 1, 3,75, 169,218,222,223.257; ascetic ideal, 4, 194, 272, 277, 286, 287, 290;

ascetic priest, 3, 58, 124, 126, 190, 191, 192, 270, 273; and Being, 29, 199,221,229,230,236; and binary opposition, 274, 275; biological understanding of aesthetics, 1, 2, 6, 14,93,110,222,257,224,316; and bod~5, 13, 182,222,223,273,275, 276,303; and categories, 236,237; and causality, 273, 274; on Christian diabolization of Eros, I; and Darwin, 13, 14,298; death of God, 221, 287, 296; denatura1ization of aesthetics and art, 1,4,10,155; development, 225, 226, 227, 228; the dreadful discordance between art and truth, 224,225,226,227; and eternal damnation, 52, 58; and evolutionary epistemology, 14, 182,214,222,224, 229,236,272,276,298,303,316; genealogy of ascetic beauty, 2; hegemony of physiology, 13; and human body, 12-13; on imitation, 257; on innate as inherited, 257; insanity, 52, 225, 227; and inversion, 224,273,274,275,277,278;and Kant, 3, 6,138, 155, 160,215,216, 217,218,286; and language, 199, 235; as the last metaphysician of the west, 2) 8, 220, 272; master-slave relationship, 31, 37, 126, 184; misappropriations of his thought, 12, 218,219,225; and music, 4, 5, 6; on perception, language, and thought, 14,273,274,275,276,277; perspectivism, 229, 278; physiology of aesthetics, 1,2,3,5,7,301,317; and Plato, 15,28,29,64,221,223,225, 226; positing of equality and making equal, 5,29, 110,214,229,236,241, 276,316; ressennmenr, 31, 37, 184, 185, 190, 198; and science, 7, 13, 278; and sexuality, 1, 12,93,218, 223,317; and sexual selection, 316-17; shifting of the ground instead ofinversion, 10, 42, 224, 228, 273, 274, 302, 304; slave revolt in morais, 31,37,41, 184,223; and Socrates, 28, 29, 226; thinking in reverse, 274; traditional aesthetics as a woman's aesthetics, 222, 227, 317; transvaluation of values, 31, 32, 37, 64, 126, 184, 185, 190,218,221, 222, 223, 228, 274, 278; and Wagner, 4,5; and will to power, 1,5,31, 110, 182, 190,218,220,277; on words

Index and concepts, 230,276,277; and Xenophon, 28 The Anti-Chrisr, 138

"Attempt at a Self-Critique," 225 The Birth of Tragedy, 4, 214, 215,225, 226 Daybreak: Thoughts on the Prejudices of AfonUi~, 169,227,228,298 D~ /rOh/idle Wissenschaft, 40, 227,

229 "The Dionysian World View," 226 Ecce Homo, 226 The Gqy Sc~nu, 40, 227, 229 The Genealogy of Aforals, 2, 12, 31, 52, 155,194,272,286 Gotzen-Diimmerung, 226, 251, 253 "The History of an Error," 226, 227, 228,253 Human, AN Too Human, 214, 272 Aforl6nri1m~

169,227,228,298

"The Phenomenalism of the 'Inner World,'" 273, 275 PhiJosophenbuch, 273

"Philosophy in the Tragic Age of the Greeks," 199 "Physiology of Art;' 2 "The Problem of Socrates," 226 "Socrates and Tragedy," 225, 226 Thus Spoke Zarathustra, 228

"On Truth and Lying in an Extta-Moral Sense," 273, 276, 277, 278 Twilight olme Idols, 226, 251, 253 The Will to R:Iwer, 1,2,3, 15,64,93, 110,121, 169,214,220,227, 273,275 NietzSchean, 1,6,13,60, 126, 129, 176,177,182,190,191,194,230, 235,237,243,246,252,270, 295,301 nihilism, 24, 25, 27, 145, 163 noewn,199,207,362 to nDmo adikon-to physei adikon

dichotomy, 37 nonwesterD art, aesthetics, and culture, 99, 116,122,172,199,200 North, Helen, 34 nothingness, 24, 25, 27, 140, 142,143, 162,176,246,247,274,279,291, 292,294 novel, novelist, 7,187,189,195,196,197 nudity, 16,75,76,77,81,85,87,90,91, 92,93,94,103,106,155 Nugent, Jane, 132 numerology, IS, 16,53,68,69,70. 131.267 nurture see nature-nurture dichotomy

431 objet troIItIB, 209 obscenity, 107, 186 Oldowan stone tool industry, 184 on, 247, 259 ontogeny,S, 135, 136,304,315 ontology, 199,203,204,211,224,232, 236,237,238,239,243,246,247, 252 orangutans, 136,314,315 Orians, G. H. and). H. Heerwagen, 301, 310 "Evolved Responses to Landscapes," 301 Origen, 41, 55 origina1ity, 44, 45, 135, 178 origins of an, 257,302,304,309,311, 312,314 origins oflanguage, 127,255,302,309, 315 origins oflife, 316 ornamentation, 310, 311, 317 Orpheus, 18, 115 Orwell, George, 40 Nineteen Eighty-Four, 40 Ostade, Adriaen van, 122 Ovid, 71 Afeunnorphoses, 71 Oxford,113

Pacioli, Luca, 90, 94 paganism, xiii, 2, 3, 4, 41, 48, 49, 50, 51, 55,60,64,73,81, 132, 167, 190, 193,194,270,274,279,282 pain, 6, 19,36,43,57,85,131,133, 138,162,191,217,257,275,276, 280,311 painting, 9, 16, 19,28,30,44,45,54,55, 70,76,85,90,91,92,93,94,99, 105, 111,119,120,122,123,172,174, 201,207,208,260,263,264,279, 282,291,300,301,312,314,321 pankalia,67

PanoCsky, Erwin, 91 pansexuality, 108 pantomime, 44 parable, 199, 233 paradox, paradoxality, 36, 38, 39, 62, 92, 95, 111,246,250,256,262,279, 283,291,287,288,289,292

parergon, 261 Pannenides, 20,21, 24, 204,287 Parrhasius (in Xenopbon), 30 partisan writing, 187, 188 passions su emotions Patrizi, Francesco, 96

432

Index

Paul, Gregor, 385 Paul, Saint, 2, 40, 49, 54, 56, 145, 146, 147,167,168,199,242,318 peacocks,257.309 Peacocke, Christopher, 308 Srudy of Conceprs, 308 Pelagianism, 59, 60 Pelagius, 59 Pepin the Shon, 65 perception, 14, 16,69,72,73,74, 131, 132, 135, 136, 162, 171, 178, 186, 209,211,231,232,234,236,246, 248,262,266,276,277,278,305, 3Jl Perrault, Claude, 119 perspecti~un,75,78,92,123,231,278

perversion, 31, 40, 46, 48,55,58.81,95, 100,124,132,180,190,192,194, 195,253 Petrarch (Francesco Petrarca), 96 Petronius Arbiter, 105 Satyricon, 105 phantasy see imagination pharmakon, pluumakos. pharmakeos, 233, 234,248,259,261,262,263,264, 268,269,270,271,288 phenomenology, 7 philanthropy, 188, 190, 193, 195 phiJocaJia,49 photography, 208, 306 phylogeny, 5,135,136,304,315 physiology, 1,2,3,5,11,13,111,118, 220,224,233,237,305,317 p/rysis-nomos dichotomy, 37,125, 126,261 Piaget, Jean, 303 Picasso, Pablo, 308 Pickford, R. Wo, 305 Psychology and Visual AestlNrics, 305 Pickstock, Catherine, 289, 290, 291 After Writing. On the Liturgical Consummation of Philosophy, 289 picturesque. 120, 130, I 35 Pierce, Thomas, 1 14 Pietism, 146, 167 Pietists, 145, 179 Pilkington, M., 120 GemJeman ~ and Connoisseur~ DiaiImmy of Painters, 120 Pindar, 17, 18 Piombo, Sebastiano del, ix, 80 The Martyrdom of St. AgatluJ, 80 piping plover, 313 Pirithous, 18 Plato (for use of Greek concepts, see general index), xiii, 2, 3, 4, 5,6,7,8,9,10,

15-39,40,41,42,44,45,46,47,49. 52,53,55,56,59,64,66,67,72,92, 94,95,96,98,99,100,114,115,116, 125,130,141,156,160,163,164, 173,174, 175, 180, 185, 186,202, 203,204,211,218,219,221,222, 223,224,225,226,232,245,257, 258,259,260,261,262,263,264, 265,266,267,268,269,270,273, 278,286.287,290,291,293,294. 304,309,318,326,327,330,375; absolute, inconceivable, ineffable, in~sible, true, unknowable beauty, 23. 24, 25,26,27,30, 34, 35, 47;aUegory of the cave, 25; antisensuousness, 5, 16,23,24,26,28,31,34,46; on beauty, see general index; and body, 15,21,25,28,31,33,34,46,53,56; on bowdlerizations of literature and myth, 18, 19,21; on censorship, 16, 18,19,21,22,40; condemnation of mimetic an, 3, 4,15,17,19,30,45, 52,53,55,173,174,223,225,226, 258,261, 291; convenion, 27,33; and didactic an, 15, 34; and education, 15,17,18,20,22; epistemology, 232; eschatology, 35, 38, 40; and genitals, 33,34; and hymns to the gods, 18, 19, 22,291; hyperboles, 25, 34, 36,40, 266; and illusion, 16,30; on imitation at a double remove from the truth, 15, 19,20,45,53,265,267; and law, 18, 22, 36, 38, 264; malady of doubt, 20; manipulative theology, 27; on materialists, 21; on mimesis, 15, 17, 19, 20; see also general index; on music, 15, 16,52; and myth, 18, 19; Nocturnal Council, 22, 35; on painting and sculpture, 16, 19, 22, 263, 264; plans for utopian republic, 18.20,21,32,35,40,66; on poetic inspiration, 22, 23; and poetry, 17, 18, 19, 22, 23, 261,291;political endeavon, 32, 40; and psychomachia, 25, 26; and punishment, 22. 25, 26, 34, 35, 36, 37. 38, 40, 59, 116, 261; quarrel between philosophy and poetry, 17; and religion, 18, 19,21, 22, 27, 59; science ofshepherding mankind, 21; and sexuality, 23, 24, 26; and Socrates, 28, 30, 32, 33, 34, 35, 38, 39, 40, 46, 270; Socrates-Callicles debate, 36,37,38, 125; Socrates' manyrdom, 38-39, 41; temperance and intemperance, 25, 34,

Index 35,37,40; transvaluation of aesthetics, 16, 18, 23, 28; transvaluation of values, 2, 4, 16,23, 31,32,33,34,36,40,41,45,46,67, 125, 175, 270; universal art of litatesmanship, 18; on writing, 260, 263,264,267,269,290 Apology, 38 Crilo,38 Gorgias, xiii, 35, 116, 125 Grearer Hippias, 29 I.aws, 20, 22. 26 Parmenides. 24 Phaedo, 25, 34, 38 Phaedrus, 24, 25. 26, 269, 290 Phi/ehus. 26. 263, 265 Politicu!, 264. 265 Republic, 19,25,26.37,261,267 Second !...etrer, 29 Sophist. 19, 20 Sraresmatl, 21 Symposium, 23, 40. 96, 97,103 T'heaerems, 232, 266 n",aeus, 46, 67,163,211,265,266, 267,268 Platonic love, 28. 128, 166 Platonism, Platonic, 2, 3, 28, 30, 38, 39, 41,42,44,45,46,47,48,49,50,53, 54,55,56,57,67,68,72,81,87,90, 91,92,94,95,96,97,98,107,108, 110, Ill, 112, 114,115,128,131, 134, 136, 156. 163, 172, 173, 174, 180, 199,219,221,222,223,224, 225,226,227,228,230,235,242, 251,252,255,257,258,259,260, 265,267,272,274,278,291,301 Platonopolis, 42, 45 play, 161, 162,257,312,313,316,386; see also social play behavior play bows, 313 pleasure, 3, 6, 15, 17. 19, 20, 24, 26, 27. 28,31,35,37,43,44,73,74,99, 102,103,110,119,125,131,133, 135,136,138, 156,157,159,160, 165,167,170,177,186,187,192, 200,217,249,257,280,281,282, 305,307,310,313 Plotinus (for use of Greek conceptS, see general index), xiii, 41-45, 50, 53, 54, 55,57,62,67,115,173; antisensuousness, 44; on beauty and art, 44, 45, 53, 54; condemnation of mimetic arts, 44, 45; contempt of the body. 44, 45; fall into matter, 42; and Gnostics, 42, 43; obsession with evil.

433 42, 43; and providence. 43, 53, 54; shame of being in the body, 45; theodicy of the aesthetic, 43, 44, 54, 55,57,62.67 Enneads, 44, 50, 53, 54 Plumer, F., 132 LetterS • •• to his Nephew at Oxford. 132 poetry, poets. 17, 18, 19,21.22,23,30, 31,44,51,70,93,94,99,105, 108, 109,111,112,114,119,135,136, I'H, 172, 174, 176, 178,200,201, 206,207,208,209,211,223,261". 291,327 political correctness. 296 Pollock, Jackson, 300 Polus (in Plato). 36 Polyclitus, painter and sculptor, 16 Popper, Sir Karl Raimund, 8. 304 pornographic art, 81, 89 pornography, 87, 92, 11 I Porphyry,41.42,45,56 Portia (in Shakespeare), 85 Poseidon, 18 postmodernism, 10, 11, 12, 13, 14. 225,237,250,251,272,273,278. 279.280,282,286,287.289,290, 293,294,295,296,299,306,307, 379,382 post·Nietzschean, 272 post-Platonic, 3,4,81,90, 110, 136, 227,304 post-Platonic conglomerate, 95, 98 Pound, Ezra l..oomi.~, 199 Poussin, Nicolas, 122 Praxitclcs. 105 J.&/us, 105 prayer, 21, 22, 193,291,292 predestination, 59, 60, 146 pre-Platonic see pre-Socratic philosophy and aesthetics preplay signaling, 31 3 pre-Socratic philosophy and aesthetics, 15, 16,17,18,21,23,28,99,204,243 pretend action, 313, 316 Priapea, 105 Priapus, 87, 90 Price. Sir Uvedale. 120, 134, 135 primal father, 127 pn"ma pukhrirudo, 52 primary and secondary sexual characteristics, 309, 314, 315 primates, 183, 184,298,302,308, 314,316 primitive man, 125, 126, 127. 128, 129, 130,151,152,178,298

434

Index

Priscian, 128 the prisoner of metaphysics to be liberated by deconstruction, 22, 219, 243, 244-45,252,258,260,261,268, 282,283,290,293,294 prison house of aesthetics, 108, llO, lll, 112, 113, 118, 125, 129, 130, 131, 132; see also sophronis~rion Prometheus, 108, 116, 117 propemprilum, 291

proportionality, 16,28,30,47,53,64,69, 70,72.76.77.87.89,90.92.93,95. 99. 115, 134, 161 Protagoras, 204 ProteStantism. 146 protoevolutionary. 183 proto-Lawrentian,61 proto-Nietzsc:hean, 6. 37. 60,124, 125, 129.136,176,182-98,190,270 Proudhon, Pierre Joseph, 185, 187 La philosophk rM fa mism, 185, 187 Qu'esr-ce que fa fIrOI»"iere, 185 providence, 43. 44. 50, 53, 54, 57, 61, 67, 171,193,194 Pseudo-Dionysius see Dionysius the Areopagite, Saint psycm, 33, 35, 326 psychoanalysis, 81, 127,253,299 psychology, 24, 52, 72, 73, 74, 87, 99,112, 113,117,150,164,177,180,200, 220,224,232,237,251,264,315 psychomachia, 24, 25, 26,116,188,193, 326,327 pulchrum, 44, 72, 73, 96, 121, 122, 128 punishment, 25, 35, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41, 44, 52,55,65,130,144,193,195; see also Plato puritanism, 3, 24, 33, 94, 96, 99, 100, 104,185,196,198,305,310 Pygmalion, 105 Pythagoras, Pythagorean, 15,33,53,68, 87, 90, 92, 98, 99 Rabelais, Fran~ois, 100, 105 Raffinan, Diana, 8, 299 "Perception," 299 Raimondi, Marcantonio, 81, 85 Ralph, Benjamin, 120 Sruderu's GuiJk lD Exprrssion in Historical Painrings, 120

rancor, 31,124,125,128,190,198,228 Raphael Santi, 317 Rapin, Rene, 119 reatism,30,122, 123, 187,209,222 reciprocal altruism, 313

rurirudo,205

Red Giant Kangaroo (Maaopus rufus), 314 red ochre, 314 reductionism, 7, ll, 87, 257, 259, 269, 300 Reformation, Ill, 134 Regino of Priim, 69 religion, religiosity, 18, 19,20,21,22,35, 41,46,49,56,104, ll6, 117, ll8, 121, 122, 129, 146, 147, 148, 152, 155,160,167,173,177,178,179, 184,185,186,191,192,193,194, 251,254,274,287,289,290,291, 293,296,297,305,348 renaturalization see retransValuation of values Rentschler, Ingo, et aI., ed., 305, 385 Beauty and the Brain, 301,305 repentance, 190, 191, 192 representation, representational, 15, 17, 18, 19,27,126,158,164,178,200,207, 239,248,253,254,256,260,279, 280,281,282,283,284,285,300 repression, 26, 31, 37, 40, 81, 93, 94, 97, 98, 108, 124, 125, 136, 141, 184, 194,223,243,244,245,260,271, 302, 305; see also aesthetics, Fieino, ~andeviUe,~

res cogil4ns, 140 The Resurreaitm of W Body (N. Goldenberg), 10 retransvaluation of values, 10,60,99, 108, 125,136,175,185,186,187,223, 224,228,258, 274; see also Feuerbach, ~andeviUe, Shakespeare revelation, 85, 207 revenge, 31, 55,124,188,189,193,194 revivals of the ascetic ideal, 10, ll4, 185. 186,284-97 revulsion, disgust, repuguance, 59, 85, 98, 222,305 rhetoric, ll, 21, 38, 209, 252, 273, 275, 277, 294, 298 rhythm,S, 15, 16,22,51,69,93,183,307 Ricardo, David, 185 Richard of Saint Victor, 68 ridicule, ridiculous, 26, 61, 70, 99, 115, 121,122,124,134,135,160 Ridley, ~an, 301 The Red Queen, 301 Rilke, Rainer Maria, 212 MaJ~ Laurids Briggll, 212

Robbe-Grillet, Alain, 250 ]bur un nOUfJllau roman, 250 Rochester, John Wilmot, 2nd earl of, 114

Index Rohde, E., 33 Roman Empire, 45, 46, 64, 65 Roman rite, 289, 290, 291 Romano, Giulio, 81, 85 Romanticism, Romantic, 172, 174, 176, 179,208,212,258,306 Rony, Richard, 272 Rosaline (in Shakespeare), 107 Ross, Stephen D., 287, 293, 294, 295, 296,297 Anthology of Aesrhetie Theory from PImo rD Heidegger and Derridll, 293 The Gift of Beaury: The Good as An. 287, 293,294,295,296,297 Rousseau, Jean Jacques, 244, 245, 260, 261,262,268,294 Ruge, Arnold, 179, 188 rules, 94, 95, Ill, 121, 130, 131, 169, 170,279,282,307 Rumohr, Carl Friedrich von, 180 sadism, 85, 189, 190, 195 sadomasochism, 81 salvation, 59, 196 Salzwedel, xiii sameness, 5,110, 131,214,229,231,236, 239,240,241,248,252,262,276, 316,344 Sansovino, Jacopo, 85 satire, 22, 176 Saussure, Ferdinand de, 245, 298 Scargill, Daniel, 113, 114 Scarlatti, Alessandro, 122 Schelling, Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von, 3,171,216,221,258 On the Relation of the Formative Am rD Nature, 258 schemata, 214, 221, 236, 274 Schiller, Friedrich von, 119, 186, 187, 227,312 Schlegel, August Wilhelm von, 132 Schleiermacher, Friedrich Daniel Ernst, 3 Schoenberg, Arnold, 9 Schopenhauer,Arrlmur,3,23,215,216, 217,218,222,227 The I¥f1r1d as Will and RepresencarUm, 215,218 Schulze, J. H., 142, 144 Anempc at an Inrroducrion rD a Doctrine of Morals, 142 science, 7, 8, II, 12, 14, 16,20,21,34, 40,68,108,112,117,118,127,135, 137,170,174,175,180,214,219, 237,242,278,299,301,302,305, 306,322

435

Scima and Gender: A Cririltue of Biology and its Theories on Wbmen (R. Bleier), 12 Scola Cantorum, 70 Scotus, Duns see Erigena, Johannes Scotus Scripture see Bible Scruton, Roger, 8 sculpture, 9, 16, 17, 28, 30, 44, 45, 85, 93, 94,99,104,105,111,119,172,174 second maker, 116, 117, 163,258,263 Secundus, Johannes, 105 The Kisses, 105 self, 30, 34, 69,116, )17, 125,145, 148,156,157,185,197,233,234, 236,256 self-control, 4, 25, 26, 33, 34, 35; see also sopluosyne self-decoration, 101, 103, 105,302,306, 311,314,315 self-handicapping and role-reversal, 313 self-indulgence, 35, 125, 143 self-loathing, self-denial, and self-torture, 52, 125, 129 self-preservation, 1,6,110,133,138,236, 276 self-recognition, 315 seIf-scrutiny, 129, 139, 144, 145, 157, 191,201 semantics, 8, 156,205,287 Semanties of the Body (H. Ruthrof), 10 semiotics, 298, 313 sensation, 90, 138, 158, 164, 202, 203, 211,233,252,263,305 senses and their hierarchy, 7, 14, 15, 16, 17,24,29,44,47,52,56,57,66,70, 71,72,74,87,90,91,92,98,103, 108,115, 130,131,133, 135, 136, 140,144,150,167,172,173, 178, 183,184, 186,202,224,236,274, 276,284,305,307,308 sensuality, 10, 26, 28, 31, 62, 77, 81, 103, 125, 129, 136, 159, 160, 165, 117, 178, 218, 223, 236, 255,257,281,305 sensuousness, 1, 9, 10, 16, 31, 53, 75, 156, 157,158,172,173,174,175,178, 185,186,224,226,227,228,295 serenity, 132, 167 sexuality, I, 10, 12, 17, 18,23,24,26,28, 29,35,47,56,60,61,62,66,67,74, 76,77,81,85,90,92,93,96,97,99, 100, 102, 105, 106, 107, 108, 109, Ill, 121, 122, 128, 129, 130, 133, 134, 135, 165, 166, 167, 117, 178,

436

Index

sexuality (cont.) 218,222,223,257,296,301,303, 305,308,311,314,317,352; seea/so Augustine, Engels, Feuerbach, Julian of Eclanum, Kant, Mandeville, Montaigne, NietzSche, Plato, Shakespeare sexual selection, 300,304,307,309,310, 311,313,314,316,317 Shanesbury, Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd earl of, 6, 8,114-19,121,122,127, 129,130,132, 134, 163,211,342; and aesthetic priest, 118; antibody bias, 117; on disinterested pleasure, 115, 119; "Exercise of Se/f-Curruerse," 116,117,118, 129; and gendeman connoisseur or virtuoso man of taste, 116, 117, 118, 119; hegemony of aesthetics over religion, philosophy, and science, 117, 118; hyperboles, 116; on incorporeal beauty, 115; and Plato, 115, 116, 117, 134; Pseudo-Ascetiks, 118, 129; rejection of philosophy, religion, and science, 116. 117,118; and second Maker, 116, 117,163 "Advise to An Author," 116 Characuristics, 115, I I 9 "Wit and Humour," 114, 115 Shakespeare, William, 2, 3, 81, 85, 97, 107-09, Ill, 113,123,166,173,187, 188; on an art that nature makes, 85, 123; bawdiness, 107; rctransvaluation of post-Platonic aesthetics, 108; satire of Renaissance academy and trtIlUIli d'amore, 107, 108; and sexuality, 3, 107, 108; on sexuality as source of artistic creativity, 108 I(jng Lear, 173 Low's Labor's LoSI, 107, 166 The Merry Wives 0/ Windsor, 188 shame, 26, 33, 36, 37, 38,45,61,100, 125,126,192 Sharrock, Robert, 1 13 Sherman (chimpanzee), 315 Shuzo Kuki, count, Japanese art historian and friend of Heidegger's, 199 Sibley, Frank N., 8 sign, 236 signifier, signified, and referent, 11, 240,255 Silesius, Angelus see Angelus Silesius Simonides, 18 sinfulness, 33, 51, 55, 59, 62, 71, 145, 177,190,191,192,193,194,269

singing, 16, 17, 62, 70, 257 skiagraphia, 16,261 slave revolt in morals, 31,37,41, 125, 126 Smith, Adam, 125, 126, 185 social constructionism, 11, 12 social contract hypothesis, 126 Social Darwinism, 300 social play behavior, 312 social sciences, 299 Socialism ou barbarie, 279 sociobiology, 300 Socrates, xiii, 18,20,21,23,25,28,29, 30,32,33,34,35,37,38,39,40,41, 46,99,102, 103, 116, 125,222,223, 224,225,226,260,261,263,264, 269, 270, 288; and Jesus Christ, 288; as portrayed by Plato, 28, 30, 32, 35, 38, 39. 40, 46; as portrayed by Xenophon, 28-30, 38-39 Solomon, king of the Hebrews, 54 Solon, Athenian statesman, 17 Solso, Robert L, 301 Sophists, 17,21,31 Sophocles, 171, 172 Antigone, 171, 172 sophronisterion, 35, 36, 73, 108, 110,261; see abo prison house of aesthetics sophrosyne, 4, 25, 34, 35, 40, 44, 125, 141, 159; see abo Plato, Xenophon species, 13,75,122,123,129,229,236, 247,302,307,309,312,315 Spence, Joseph, 134 Spencer, Herben, 14,310,312 Speusippus, 41 Spinoza, Baruch or Benedict, 99, 118 spontaneity, 156, 157, 162 Standard Social Science Model, 300, 305 Sranding Rotting Pair, ix, 79 Stendhal, Marie Henri Beyle, 155, 218,319 Sternberg, R. J., ed., 301 Handbook a/Creativity, 301 Sterne, Laurence, 176 Stewart, Dugald, 133, 137 Stirner, Max, 125, 187 Der Einzige und sein Eigenlum, 187 Stoicism, 67,190,193,194 stone tools, 302 Storey, Raben, 301 Strato,105 Of Carnal Conjunction, 105 Strauss, David Friedrich, 179 Suawson, P. F., 320 subject-object relationship, 171, 196, 197,229

Index subject-predicate sentence structure, 169, 177,202,203 sublimation, 223 sublime, 4, 6, 120, 122, 126, 129, 130, 132,133,138,139,146,148,149, 150, 157, 158, 162, 163, 169, 171, 211,212,278,279,280,281,282, 283, 284, 285, 379; see also Burke, Kant Sue, Eugenc, 187, 188, 189, 190, 191, 193,194,195,196,197,359 us Mysterts de Paris, 187, 195, 196, 197,359 Suger, abbot of Saint Denis, 71 Su1zcr, Johann Georg, 120, 180 Allgemeine Theone der Schiinm Kiinste. 120 Sum",a Alexandri, 71, 73 Summa Theologiae see Aquinas, Saint Thomas sumhelOn, 234 Surrealism, 251 survival of the fincst, 309 Swedenborg, Emanuel, 166 symbolism, symbol, 8,40,41,64,75,90, 92,101,161,172,182,192,199, 201,230,311 symmetry, 16,28,44,123,134,172, 305 Synods, 66, 70 syntax, 8,139, 153,202,235,241,287, 315 systematicity ofianguage, 307 Szeliga (Fram Zychlin von Zychlinski), 187,190,191,195,196,197, 198

tabula rasa, 303 Tacirus, 128 Histories, 128 Tao Te Ching, 200 taste, 17,71,115, 116, 118, 119, 120, 122,123,124,131,132,134,138, 139,148,150,158,161,162,165, 166,170,180,204,216,306,310, 349,364 Taylor, Marc C., 287, 288, 289 rechni, 207, 210, 306 temperance see sophrosyM Temple frieze at Khajuraho, India, x, 104 Tertullian, 57, 58 Testelio, Henri (the younger), 119 theater of the absurd, 250 theater of alienation, 250 theater of cruelty, 250, 253, 254, 255, 256

437 theism, 288 theodic:y of the aesthetic, 43,44,50,53, 55,57,61,62,67 theodic:y of the fall, 50, 55 Theodosius I or Theodosius the Great, 45 Theodote (in Xenophon), 29 theory of mind, 312, 313, 314, 315, 316 Theseus, 18 Thinking Through the Body (J. Gallop), 10 Thomas Aquinas see Aquinas, Saint Thomas Thomas of Citeaux, 71 Thomassin, S., 91 Thomistic, 203,292 Thomson, A., 120 Thomson, James, 119 ThonUUll,Rand~301,316

"Darwinian Aesthetics," 301, 316 Thrasymachus (in Plato), 32 Titian, 81, 84, 85, 90, 92 paintings of Venus and musicians, 90 linus and Adonis, 85 I-hrus with an Organist, ix, 84, 85 rolma, 42 Tomasello, Michael, 313 Tooby, John, 300 Tour, Seran de la, 120 L'an de sentir et de juger en matiere de goUt, 120 tragedy, 17, 132, 171, 172, 187,209,226, 261,327 tranScendentalism, 2,4,7,14,19,23,70, 72,94,131,140, 141,144.150,163, 177,193,196,202,203,207,211, 215, 232, 233, 234, 239, 243, 246, 247,250,256,259,272,273,278, 283,286,288,289,290,294,298, 302,304,308,309,385 transubs~tiation,289

uansvaluation of values, xiii, 2, 3, 4,16, 23,27,31,32,34,37,40,41,45,46, 50,64,67,99, 108, 125, 126, 129, 156,175,176,177,178,179,180, 184,185,186,190,194,198,204, 218,221,222,228,242,256,258, 270,273,274,275,277,278,290, 296, 309; see also Mandeville, Niettsche, Plato, retransvaluation of values trattati d'amore, 97, 106, 107 Trinity, 289, 290, 296, 380 Triven, R. L., 300 "The Evolution of Reciprocal Altruism," 300

438

Index

uuth, 1,2,7,15,16,17,19,20,23,49, 58,67,71,72, 118, 120, 131, 153, 176,177,178,180,181,184,199, 200,202,203,204,205,208,209, 210,211,213,216,219,220,224, 225, 226, 227, 228, 230, 232, 236, 239,245,259,261,264,275,276, 292,304,305,316 ruporhent4, 267 Turgot, Anne Robert Jacques, 126 Turner, Frederick, 310 see also Cooke, Bren twelve-tone music, 9 ugliness, 1,5,6, 14,26,27,30,43,48,50, 54,55,67,70,75,97, 11 1,113, 131, 222,303,311,316 unconscious, 1,37, 118, 127, 130, 164, 169,184,244,260,314,317 universal grammar (Noam Chomksy), 307,385 universal musical grammar (F. Lerdahl and R. Jackendofl'), 9 Upper Paleolithic, 314 utilitarian, 236 utility, 134, 304 utopia, 18,21,23,45,66, 195,327 Valta, Lorenzo, 94 Van Gogh, Vincent, 201, 203, 206, 207, 208,209,212,362 Vasari, Giorgio, 94 Va~mo,~,295,296

Venus

see Medici Venus

veritas, 205 vervet monkeys, 313 Villalpando, Juan Baptista, 95 vindictiveness, 4, 31,124,126,128, 184, 190, 191,192,195 viola ria gamba, 90 VII'gil or Vergil, 105, 106 Aeneid, 106 Georgics, 105 virtue and vice, 12,23,32,43,71,93, 116, 121,122,134,138,195,265; see also psychomachia virtuoso aesthetics, 116, 117, 118, 119, 122, 123, 124, 128,. 132; see also connoisseur virrus, 127,128 Vischer, Friedrich Theodor, 180 AesrherU:s Dr Scien&e of the Bearniful, 180 vision (artistic and mystical), 8, 23, 24, 53, 56,68,91,92, 170, 173,211 vision (sensory modality), 68, 136, 305

Viuuvian man, 88-89, 93, 95, 134 Vitruvius, 89, 90, 92, 93, 94, 95, 119,134 De arclriuaura, 89 void see nothingness volition, 159,172,174, 180,183,217 Voltaire, Fran~is Marie Arouet de, 119, 168 Candide, 168 voyeurism, 57, 76 Vulcan, 106 vulgarity, 2, 23, 35, 68, 97,116,117,122, 123, 131,161, 166, 196,215,223, 228,237,291,305,318 Waal, Frans de, 3 I 5 Wagner, Richard, 4, 5, Parsifal, 4 Wallin, N. L. lit a/., eds., 301 The Origins of Music, 301 Webb, Daniel, 120 Weber, Max, 125 Weerth, Georg, 186 Weismann, August, 23 Wesley, John, 120 Whitehead, Alfred North, 41 Wieland, Christoph Martin, 119 will to power, 1,31,52, 110, 113, 127, 128,182, 190,218,219,220, 252,277 William of Auvergne, 68, 72-73 Wilson, E. 0., 300, 301 Consilience, 301 Sociobiology: thll New Synthesis, 300 Wimsatt, William K., Jr., 244 Winckelmann, Johann Joachim, 71 Wind, Edgar, 9 J wit, 112, 114,115,178 Wittgenstcin, Ludwig, 238 Wittig, Georg, 294 Wolff, Christian von, 152, 153 words, 156, 176, 181, 199,208,230,231, 235,238,239,240,247,261,264, 276,277,288,292,307 Wordsworth, William, 302 Wordsworthian, 302 ~ting, 17, 127,234,244,246,248,253, 259,260,261,262,263,264,267, 269, 288, 290, 381 Wundt, Wilhelm Max, 305 Xenocrates, 41 Xenophon, xiii, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35, 38, 39, 103, 180, 270, 329; on beauty and art, 28, 29, 30; and master-slave

Index relationship. 38-39; on representation of passions in painting, 30; on self-control and temperance, 34, 35; and Socrates, 28, 29, 30, 34, 35, 38, 39, 270; and Socrates' death, 38,39 Apology, 39 MemorabiJia, 28, 29 j,"ymposiunI, 28

439 Zeti, Semir, 9, 301, 305 Inner Vision. Exp/Qration ofArt and the Brain, 301 Zeus, 18, 19 Zeuxis, 28, 30, 76 Zola, Emile, 7, 320 The Experimental Novel, 7 Zosimo, pope, 59 Episnda rractalDria, 59

Is it body or spi rit that makes us appreciate beauty and create art? The distin guished Canadia n critic Ekbert Faas argues that, with occasional exceptions like Montaigne and Mandeville, the mainstream of western thinking about beauty from Plato onwards has overemphasized the spirit, oreven execrated the body and sexuality as ini mical to the aesthetic disposit ion. The Genealo,gy of Aesthetics redresses th is imba lance, and offers a radical re-readin g of seminal thinkers such as Plato , Augu st ine, Kant, Hegel , Heidegger, and Derrida. Professo r Faas tells a new and exciting story: of the Platonic inversion of Homeric pagan va lues , of theirabsorption into Christian theology and eventual secularization , of Kant 's gra nd reworking ofth is tradi ti on, of Hegel's prophecy ofthe death of art in the ultimate triumph of spirit over body and , finall y, of the revival ofthe aesthetic/ascetic ideal in Heidegger, De rrida, and thei r followers. Professor Faas attacks both th e traditional and the postmodern consensus, and offers a new pro-sensualist aesthetics, heavi Iy infl uenced by Nietzsche, as well as d rawi ng on conte mporary neo-Darwin ian cognitive science. A work of both polemic and profound learning, The Genealo,gy of Aesthetics marks a rad ical new departure in thinkin g about art wh ich no futu re work in th is field can afford to ignore. EKBERT FAAS is Professor of Humanities and Graduate En glis h at York University, Toronto, Canada. He has published very widely as a critic (e.g. Shakespea re's Poetics, Cam bridge, 1986), bi ographer (Robert (reeley : a Bio,graphy), and novelist (Wo yzeck's Head).