No More Learning

Of course, it is decisive that the basic philosophical intention of the interpretation be held fast. Let us try to sharpen that intention further. The inquiry goes in the direction of asking what the being is. This traditional "chief question" of Western philosophy we call the guiding question. But it is only the penultimate question. The ultimate, i. e. ,
first question is: what is Being itself? This question, the one which above all is to be unfolded and grounded, we call the grounding ques- tion of philosophy, because in it philosophy first inquires into the ground of beings as ground, inquiring at the same time into its own ground and in that way grounding itself. Before the question is posed explicitly, philosophy must, if it wants to ground itself, get a firm foothold on the path of an epistemology or doctrine of consciousness; but in so doing it remains forever on a path that leads only to the anteroom of philosophy, as it were, and does not penetrate to the very center of philosophy. The grounding question remains as foreign to
Nietzsche as it does to the history of thought prior to him.
68 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
But when the guiding question (What is the being? ) and the ground- ing question (What is Being? ) are asked, we are asking: What is . . . ? The opening up of beings as a whole and of Being is the target for thought. Beings are to be brought into the open region of Being itself, and Being is to be conducted into the open region of its essence. The openness of beings we call unconcealment-aletheia, truth. The guid- ing and the grounding questions of philosophy ask what beings and Being in truth are. With the question of the essence of Being we are inquiring in such a way that nothing remains outside the question, not even nothingness. Therefore the question of what Being in truth is must at the same time ask what the truth in which Being is to be illumined itself is. Truth stands with Being in the realm of the ground- ing question, not because the possibility of truth is cast in doubt epistemologically, but because it already belongs to the essence of the grounding question in a distinctive sense, as its "space. " In the ground- ing and guiding questions concerning Being and beings, we are also asking simultaneously and inherently about the essence of truth. "Al- so" about truth, we say, speaking altogether extrinsically. For truth cannot be what "also" comes forward somewhere in proximity to Be- ing. Rather, the questions will arise as to how both are united in essence and yet are foreign to one another, and "where," in what domain, they somehow come together, and what that domain itself "is. " Those are indeed questions that inquire beyond Nietzsche. But they alone provide the guarantee that we will bring his thought out into the open and make it fruitful, and also that we will come to experience and know the essential borders between us, recognizing what is different in him.
But if will to power determines beings as such, which is to say, in their truth, then the question concerning truth, i. e. , the question of the essence of truth, must always be inserted into the interpretation of beings as will to power. And if for Nietzsche art attains an exceptional position within the task of a general interpretation of all occurrence, which is understood as will to power, then the question of truth must play a leading role precisely here.
12. Five Statements on Art
We shall now attempt a first characterization of Nietzsche's total conception of the essence of art. We will do this by exhibiting a sequence of five statements on art which provide weighty evidence.
Why is art of decisive importance for the task of grounding the principle of the new valuation? The immediate answer is found in number 797 of The Will to Power, which really ought to stand in the position of number 794* : "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous-. " At first we will read no further, but consider only this statement. "The most perspicuous," that is, what for us is most accessible in its essence, is the phenomenon "artist"-the being of an artist. With this being, the artist, Being lights up for us most immediately and brightly. Why? Nietzsche does not explicitly say why; yet we can easily discover the reason. To be an artist is to be able to bring something forth. But to bring forth means to establish in Being something that does not yet exist. It is as though in bringing-forth we dwelled upon the coming to be of beings and could see there with utter clarity their essence. Because it is a matter of illuminating will to power as the basic character of beings, the task must begin where what is in question shows itself most brightly. For all clarifying must proceed from what is clear to what is obscure, not the other way round.
Being an artist is a way of life. What does Nietzsche say about life in general? He calls life "the form of Being most familiar to us" (WM, 689). For him "Being" itself serves only "as a generalization of the
*I. e. , as the first of all the aphorisms and notes gathered under the title "Will to Power as Art. "
70 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
concept 'life' (breathing), 'being besouled,' 'willing, effecting,' 'becom- ing'" (WM, 581 ). "'Being'-we have no other way to represent it than as 'living. ' How then can something dead 'be'? " (WM, 582). "If the innermost essence of Being is will to power . . . " (WM, 693).
With these somewhat formula-like references we have already taken measure of the framework within which the "artist phenomenon" is to be conceived, the framework that is to be maintained throughout the coming considerations. We repeat: the being of an artist is the most perspicuous mode of life. Life is for us the most familiar form of Being. The innermost essence of Being is will to power. In the being of the artist we encounter the most perspicuous and most familiar mode of will to power. Since it is a matter of illuminating the Being of beings, meditation on art has in this regard decisive priority.
However, here Nietzsche speaks only of the "artist phenomenon," not about art. Although it is difficult to say what art "as such" is, and how it is, still it is clear that works of art too belong to the reality of art, and furthermore so do those who, as we say, "experience" such works. The artist is but one of those things that together make up the actuality of art as a whole. Certainly, but this is precisely what is decisive in Nietzsche's conception of art, that he sees it in its essential entirety in terms of the artist; this he does consciously and in explicit opposition to that conception of art which represents it in terms of those who "enjoy" and "experience" it.
That is a guiding principle of Nietzsche's teaching on art: art must be grasped in terms of creators and producers, not recipients. Nietzsche expresses it unequivocally in the following words (WM, 811): "Our aesthetics heretofore has been a woman's aesthetics, inasmuch as only the recipients of art have formulated their experiences of 'what is beautiful. ' In all philosophy to date the artist is missing. . . . " Philos- ophy of art means "aesthetics" for Nietzsche too-but masculine aes- thetics, not feminine aesthetics. The question of art is the question of the artist as the productive, creative one; his experiences of what is beautiful must provide the standard.
We now go back to number 797: "The phenomenon 'artist' is still the most perspicuous-. " If we take the assertion in the guiding con-
Five Statements on Art 71 text of the question of will to power, with a view to the essence of art,
then we derive at once two essential statements about art:
I. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist.
And now let us read further (WM, 797): ". . . from that position to scan the basic instincts of power, of nature, etc. ! Also of religion and morals! " Here Nietzsche says explicitly that with a view toward the essence of the artist the other configurations of will to power also- nature, religion, morals, and we might add, society and individual, knowledge, science, and philosophy-are to be observed. These kinds of beings hence correspond in a certain way to the being of the artist, to artistic creativity, and to being created. The remaining beings, which the artist does not expressly bring forth, have the mode of Being that corresponds to what the artist creates, the work of art. Evidence for such a thought we find in the aphorism immediately preceding (WM, 796): "The work of art, where it appears without artist, e. g. , as body, as organization (the Prussian officer corps, the Jesuit order). To what extent the artist is only a preliminary stage. The world as a work of art that gives birth to itself-. " Here the concept of art and of the work of art is obviously extended to every ability to bring forth and to everything that is essentially brought forth. To a certain extent that also corresponds to a usage that was common until the outset of the nine- teenth century. Up to that time art meant every kind of ability to bring forth. Craftsmen, statesmen, and educators, as men who brought some- thing forth, were artists. Nature too was an artist, a female artist. At that time art did not mean the current, narrow concept, as applied to "fine art," which brings forth something beautiful in its work.
However, Nietzsche now interprets that earlier, extended usage of art, in which fine art is only one type among others, in such a way that all bringing-forth is conceived as corresponding to fine art and to the artist devoted to it. "The artist is only a preliminary stage" means the artist in the narrower sense, one who brings forth works of fine art. On that basis we can exhibit a third statement about art:
72 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self- creating, created.
But we know that will to power is essentially a creating and destroy- ing. That the basic occurrence of beings is "art" suggests nothing else than that it is will to power.
Long before Nietzsche grasps the essence of art explicitly as a con- figuration of will to power, in his very first writing, The Birth of Tragedy from the Spirit of Music, he sees art as the basic character of beings. Thus we can understand why during the time of his work on The Will to Power Nietzsche returns to the position he maintained on art in The Birth of Tragedy. An observation that is pertinent here is taken up into The Will to Power (WM, 853, Section IV). The final paragraph of the section reads: "Already in the Foreword [i. e. , to the book The Birth of Tragedy], where Richard Wagner is invited, as it were, to a dialogue, this confession of faith, this artists' gospel, appears: 'art as the proper task of life, art as its metaphysical activity. . . . ' " "Life" is not only meant in the narrow sense of human life but is identified with "world" in the Schopenhauerian sense. The statement is reminiscent of Schopenhauer, but it is already speaking against him.
Art, thought in the broadest sense as the creative, constitutes the basic character of beings. Accordingly, art in the narrower sense is that activity in which creation emerges for itself and becomes most per- spicuous; it is not merely one configuration of will to power among others but the supreme configuration. Will to power becomes genu- inely visible in terms of art and as art. But will to power is the ground upon which all valuation in the future is to stand. It is the principle of the new valuation, as opposed to the prior one which was dominated by religion, morality, and philosophy. If will to power therefore finds its supreme configuration in art, the positing of the new relation of will to power must proceed from art. Since the new valuation is a revalua- tion of the prior one, however, opposition and upheaval arise from art. That is averred in The Will to Power, no. 794:
Our religion, morality, and philosophy are decadence-forms of humanity. - T h e countermovement: art.
Five Statements on Art 73
According to Nietzsche's interpretation the very first principle of morality, of Christian religion, and of the philosophy determined by Plato reads as follows: This world is worth nothing; there must be a "better" world than this one, enmeshed as it is in sensuality; there must be a "true world" beyond, a supersensuous world; the world of the senses is but a world of appearances.
In such manner this world and this life are at bottom negated. If a "yes" apparently is uttered to the world, it is ultimately only in order to deny the world all the more decisively. But Nietzsche says that the "true world" of morality is a world of lies, that the true, the supersensu- ous, is an error. The sensuous world-which in Platonism means the world of semblance and errancy, the realm of error-is the true world. But the sensuous, the sense-semblant, is the very element of art. So it is that art affirms what the supposition of the ostensibly true world denies. Nietzsche therefore says (WM, 853, section II): "Art as the single superior counterforce against all will to negation of life, art as the anti-Christian, anti-Buddhist, anti-Nihilist par excellence. " With that we attain a fourth statement about the essence of art:
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.
The artistic creates and gives form. If the artistic constitutes meta- physical activity pure and simple, then every deed, especially the high- est deed and thus the thinking of philosophy too, must be determined by it. The concept of philosophy may no longer be defined according to the pattern of the teacher of morality who posits another higher world in opposition to this presumably worthless one. Against the nihilistic philosopher of morality (Schopenhauer hovers before Nietz- sche as the most recent example of this type) must be deployed the philosopher who goes counter, who emerges from a countermoveme~t, the "artist-philosopher. " Such a philosopher is an artist in that he gives form to beings as a whole, beginning there where they reveal them- selves, i. e. , in man. It is with this thought in mind that we are to read number 795 of The Will to Power:
The artist-philosopher. Higher concept of art. Whether a man can remove himself far enough from other men, in order to give them form? (-Prelimi-
74 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
nary exercises: l. the one who gives himself form, the hermit; 2. the artist
hitherto, as the insignificant perfecter of a piece of raw material. )
Art, particularly in the narrow sense, is yes-saying to the sensuous, to semblance, to what is not "the true world," or as Nietzsche says succinctly, to what is not "the truth. "
In art a decision is made about what truth is, and for Nietzsche that always means true beings, i. e. , beings proper. This corresponds to the necessary connection between the guiding question and the grounding question of philosophy, on the one hand, and to the question of what truth is, on the other. Art is the will to semblance as the sensuous. But concerning such will Nietzsche says (XIV, 369): "The will to sem-
blance, to illusion, to deception, to Becoming and change is deeper, more 'metaphysical,' than the will to truth, to reality, to Being. " The true is meant here in Plato's sense, as being in itself, the Ideas, the supersensuous. The will to the sensuous world and to its richness is for Nietzsche, on the contrary, the will to what "metaphysics" seeks. Hence the will to the sensuous is metaphysical. That metaphysical will is actual in art.
Nietzsche says (XIV, 368):
Very early in my life I took the question of the relation of art to truth seriously: even now I stand in holy dread in the face of this discordance. My first book was devoted to it. The Birth of Tragedy believes in art on the background of another belief-that it is not possible to live with truth, that the "will to truth" is already a symptom of degeneration.
The statement sounds perverse. But it loses its foreignness, though not its importance, as soon as we read it in the right way. "Will to truth" here (and with Nietzsche always) means the will to the "true world" in the sense of Plato and Christianity, the will to supersensuousness, to being in itself. The will to such "true beings" is in truth a no-saying to our present world, precisely the one in which art is at home. Because this world is the genuinely real and only true world, Nietzsche can declare with respect to the relation of art and truth that "art is worth more than truth" (WM, 853, section IV). That is to say, the sensuous stands in a higher place and is more genuinely than the supersensuous.
Five Statements on Art 75
In that regard Nietzsche says, "W e have art in order not to perish from the truth" (WM, 822). Again "truth" means the "true world" of the supersensuous, which conceals in itself the danger that life may perish, "life" in Nietzsche's sense always meaning "life which is on the as- cent. " The supersensuous lures life away from invigorating sensuality, drains life's forces, weakens it. When we aim at the supersensuous, submission, capitulation, pity, mortification, and abasement become positive "virtues. " "The simpletons of this world," the abject, the wretched, become "children of God. " They are the true beings. It is the lowly ones who belong "up above" and who are to say what is "lofty," that is, what reaches their own height. For them all creative heightening and all pride in self-subsistent life amount to rebellion, delusion, and sin. But we have art so that we do not perish from such supersenst. ious "truth," so that the supersensuous does not vitiate life to the point of general debility and ultimate collapse. With regard to the essential relation of art and truth yet another statement about art, the final one in our series, results:
5. Art is worth more than "the truth. "
Let us review the preceding statements:
l. Art is the most perspicuous and familiar configuration of will to power;
2. Art must be grasped in terms of the artist;
3. According to the expanded concept of artist, art is the basic occurrence of all beings; to the extent that they are, beings are self- creating, created;
4. Art is the distinctive countermovement to nihilism.
At the instigation of the five statements on art, we should now recall an utterance of Nietzsche's on the same subject cited earlier: ". . . we find it to be the greatest stimulans of life-" (WM, 808). Earlier the statement served only as an example of Nietzsche's procedure of rever- sal (in this case the reversal of Schopenhauer's sedative). Now we must grasp the statement in terms of its most proper content. On the basis of all the intervening material we can easily see that this definition of
76 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
art as the stimulant of life means nothing else than that art is a configu- ration of will to power. For a "stimulant" is what propels and advances, what lifts a thing beyond itself; it is increase of power and thus power pure and simple, which is to say, will to power.
Hence we cannot merely append to the five previous statements the one about art as the greatest stimulant of life. On the contrary, it is Nietzsche's major statement on art. Those five statements enlarge upon it.
On the cursory view, we are already at the end of our task. We were to indicate art as a configuration of will to power. Such is Nietzsche's intention. But with a view to Nietzsche we are searching for something else. We are asking, first, what does this conception of art achieve for the essential definition of will to power and thereby for that of beings as a whole? We can come to know that only if beforehand we ask, second, what is the significance of this interpretation for our knowledge of art and for our position with respect to it?
13. Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics
We shall begin with the second question. In order to come to terms with it we must characterize Nietzsche's procedure for defining the essence of art with greater penetration and must place it in the context of previous efforts to gain knowledge of art.
With the five statements on art that we brought forward the essential aspects of Nietzsche's interrogation of art have been estab- lished. From them one thing is clear: Nietzsche does not inquire into art in order to describe it as a cultural phenomenon or as a monument to civilization. Rather, by means of art and a characterization of the essence of art, he wants to show what will to power is. Nevertheless, Nietzsche's meditation on art keeps to the traditional path. The path is defined in its peculiarity by the term "aesthetics. " True, Nietzsche speaks against feminine aesthetics. But in so doing he speaks for mascu- line aesthetics, hence for aesthetics. In that way Nietzsche's interroga- tion of art is aesthetics driven to the extreme, an aesthetics, so to speak, that somersaults beyond itself. But what else should inquiry into art and knowledge of it be than "aesthetics"? What does "aesthetics" mean?
The term "aesthetics" is formed in the same manner as "logic" and "ethics. " The word episteme, knowledge, must always complete these terms. Logic: logike episteme: knowledge of logos, that is, the doctrine of assertion or judgment as the basic form of thought. Logic is knowl- edge of thinking, of the forms and rules of thought. Ethics: ethike episteme: knowledge of ethos, of the inner character of man and of the way it determines his behavior. Logic and ethics both refer to human behavior and its lawfulness.
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The word "aesthetics" is formed in the corresponding way: aisthetike episteme: knowledge of human behavior with regard to sense, sensa- tion, and feeling, and knowledge of how these are determined.
What determines thinking, hence logic, and what thinking comports itself toward, is the true. What determines the character and behavior of man, hence ethics, and what human character and behavior comport themselves toward, is the good. What determines man's feeling, hence aesthetics, and what feeling comports itself toward, is the beautiful. The true, the good, and the beautiful are the objects of logic, ethics, and aesthetics.
Accordingly, aesthetics is consideration of man's state of feeling in its relation to the beautiful; it is consideration of the beautiful to the extent that it stands in relation to man's state of feeling. The beautiful itself is nothing other than what in its self-showing brings forth that state. But the beautiful can pertain to either nature or art. Because art in its way brings forth the beautiful, inasmuch as it is "fine" art, meditation on art becomes aesthetics. With relation to knowledge of art and inquiry into it, therefore, aesthetics is that kind of meditation on art in which man's affinity to the beautiful represented in art sets the standard for all definitions and explanations, man's state of feeling remaining the point of departure and the goal of the meditation. The relation of feeling toward art and its bringing-forth can be one of production or of reception and enjoyment.
Now, since in the aesthetic consideration of art the artwork is defined as the beautiful which has been brought forth in art, the work is represented as the bearer and provoker of the beautiful with relation to our state of feeling. The artwork is posited as the "object" for a "subject"; definitive for aesthetic consideration is the subject-object relation, indeed as a relation of feeling. The work becomes an object in terms of that surface which is accessible to "lived experience. "
Just as we say that a judgment that satisfies the laws of thought promulgated in logic is "logical," so do we apply the designation "aes- thetic," which really only means a kind of observation and investigation with regard to a relation of feeling, to this sort of behavior itself. We speak of aesthetic feeling and an aesthetic state. Strictly speaking, a
History of Aesthetics 79
state of feeling is not "aesthetic. " It is rather something that can become the object of aesthetic consideration. Such consideration is called "aesthetic" because it observes from the outset the state of feeling aroused by the beautiful, relates everything to that state, and defines all else in terms of it.
The name "aesthetics," meaning meditation on art and the beautiful, is recent. It arises in the eighteenth century. But the matter which the word so aptly names, the manner of inquiry into art and the beautiful on the basis of the state of feeling in enjoyers and producers, is old, as old as meditation on art and the beautiful in Western thought. Philo- sophical meditation on the essence of art and the beautiful even begins as aesthetics.
In recent decades we have often heard the complaint that the innu- merable aesthetic considerations of and investigations into art and the beautiful have achieved nothing, that they have not helped anyone to gain access to art, that they have contributed virtually nothing to artistic creativity and to a sound appreciation of art. That is certainly true, especially with regard to the kind of thing bandied about today under the name "aesthetics. " But we dare not derive our standards for judging aesthetics and its relation to art from such contemporary work. For, in truth, the fact whether and how an era is committed to an aesthetics, whether and how it adopts a stance toward art of an aesthetic character, is decisive for the way art shapes the history of that era-or remains irrelevant for-it.
Because what stands in question for us is art as a configuration of will to power, which is to say, as a configuration of Being in general, indeed the distinctive one, the question of aesthetics as the basic sort of meditation on art and the knowledge of it can be treated only with respect to fundamentals. Only with the help of a reflection on th~ essence of aesthetics developed in this way can we get to the point where we can grasp Nietzsche's interpretation of the essence of art; only with the help of such a reflection can we at the same time take a position with regard to Nietzsche's interpretation, so that on this basis a confrontation can flourish.
In order to characterize the essence of aesthetics, its role in Western
80 THE WILL TO POWER AS ART
thought, and its relation to the history of Western art, we shall in- troduce six basic developments for con~ideration. Such consideration, of course, can only be by way of brief reference.
I. The magnificent art of Greece remains without a corresponding cognitive-conceptual meditation on it, such meditation not having to be identical with aesthetics. The lack of such a simultaneous reflection or meditation on great art does not imply that Greek art was only "lived," that the Greeks wallowed in a murky brew of "experiences" braced by neither concepts nor knowledge. It was their good fortune that the Greeks had no "lived experiences. " On the contrary, they had such an originally mature and luminous knowledge, such a passion for knowledge, that in their luminous state of knowing they had no need of "aesthetics. "
2. Aesthetics begins with the Greeks only at that moment when their great art and also the great philosophy that flourished along with it comes to an end. At that time, during the age of Plato and Aristotle, in connection with the organization of philosophy as a whole, those basic concepts are formed which mark off the boundaries for all future inquiry into art. One of those basic notions is the conceptual pair hyle-morphe, materia-forma, matter-form. The distinction has its ori- gin in the conception of beings founded by Plato, the conception of beings with regard to their outer appearance: eidos, idea. Where beings are apprehended as beings, and distinguished from other beings, in view of their outer appearance, the demarcation and arrangement of beings in terms of outer and inner limits enters on the scene. But what limits is form, what is limited is matter. Whatever comes into view as soon as the work of art is experienced as a self-showing according to its eidos, as phainesthai, is now subsumed under these definitions. The ekphanestaton, what properly shows itself and is most radiant of all, is the beautiful. By way of the idea, the work of art comes to appear in the designation of the beautiful as ekphanestaton.
With the distinction of hyle-morphe, which pertains to beings as such, a second concept is coupled which comes to guide all inquiry into art: art is techne. We have long known that the Greeks name art as well as handicraft with the same word, techne, and name correspond-
History of Aesthetics
81
ingly both the craftsman and the artist technites. In accordance with the later "technical" use of the word techne, where it designates (in a way utterly foreign to the Greeks) a mode of production, we seek even in the original and genuine significance of the word such later content: we aver that techne means hand manufacture. But because what we call fine art is also designated by the Greeks as techne, we believe that this implies a glorification of handicraft, or else that the exercise of art is degraded to the level of a handicraft.
However illuminating the common belief may be, it is not adequate to the actual state of affairs; that is to say, it does not penetrate to the basic position from which the Greeks define art and the work of art. But this will become clear when we examine the fundamental word techne. In order to catch hold of its true significance, it is advisable to establish the concept that properly counters it. The latter is named in the word physis. W e translate it with "nature," and think little enough about it. For the Greeks, physis is the first and the essential name for beings themselves and as a whole. For them the being is what flourishes on its own, in no way compelled, what rises and comes forward, and what goes back into itself and passes away. It is the rule that rises and resides in itself.
If man tries to win a foothold and establish himself among the beings (physis) to which he is exposed, if he proceeds to master beings in this or that way, then his advance against beings is borne and guided by a knowledge of them. Such knowledge is called techne. From the very outset the word is not, and never is, the designation of a "making" and a producing; rather, it designates that knowledge which supports and conducts every human irruption into the midst of beings. For that reason techne is often the word for human knowledge without qualifi- cation. The kind of knowledge that guides and grounds confrontatio~ with and mastery over beings, in which new and other beings are expressly produced and generated in addition to and on the basis of the beings that have already come to be (physis), in other words, the kind of knowledge that produces utensils and works of art, is then specially designated by the word techne. But even here, techne never means making or manufacturing as such; it always means knowledge, the
82 THE WILL TO POWER i\S ART
disclosing of beings as such, in the manner of a knowing guidance of bringing-forth. Now, since the manufacture of utensils and the creation of artworks each in its way inheres in the immediacy of everyday existence, the knowledge that guides such procedures and modes of bringing-forth is called techne in an exceptional sense. The artist is a technites, not because he too is a handworker, but because the bring- ing-forth of artworks as well as utensils is an irruption by the man who knows and who goes forward in the midst of physis and upon its basis. Nevertheless, such "going forward," thought in Greek fashion, is no kind of attack: it lets what is already coming to presence arrive.
With the emergence of the distinction between matter and form, the essence of techne undergoes an interpretation in a particular direction; it loses the force of its original, broad significance. In Aristotle techne is still a mode of knowing, if only one among others (see the Nicoma- chean Ethics, Bk. VI). If we understand the word "art" quite generally to mean every sort of human capacity to bring forth, and if in addition we grasp the capacity and ability more originally as a knowing, then the word "art" corresponds to the Greek concept of techne also in its broad significance. But to the extent that techne is then brought expressly into relation with the production of beautiful things, or their represen- tation, meditation on art is diverted by way of the beautiful into the realm of aesthetics. What in truth is decided in the apparently extrinsic and, according to the usual view, even misguided designation of art as techne never comes to light, neither with the Greeks nor in later times.
But here we cannot show how the conceptual pair "matter and form" came to be the really principal schema for all inquiry into art and all further definition of the work of art. Nor can we show how the distinction of "form and content" ultimately came to be a concept applicable to everything under the sun, a concept under which any- thing and everything was to be subsumed. It suffices to know that the distinction of "matter and form" sprang from the area of manufacture of tools or utensils, that it was not originally acquired in the realm of art in the narrower sense, i. e. , fine art and works of art, but that it was merely transferred and applied to this realm. Which is reason enough to be dominated by a deep and abiding doubt concerning the tren-
History of Aesthetics 83
chancy of these concepts when it comes to discussions about art and works of art.
3. The third basic development for the history of knowledge about art, and that now means the origin and formation of aesthetics, is once again a happenstance that does not flow immediately from art or from meditation on it. On the contrary, it is an occurrence that involves our entire history. It is the beginning of the modern age. Man and his unconstrained knowledge of himself, as of his position among beings, become the arena where the decision falls as to how beings are to be experienced, defined, and shaped. Falling back upon the state and condition of man, upon the way man stands before himself and before
things, implies that now the very way man freely takes a position toward things, the way he finds and feels them to be, in short, his "taste," becomes the court of judicature over beings. In metaphysics that becomes manifest in the way in which certitude of all Being and all truth is grounded in the self-consciousness of the individual ego: ego cogito ergo sum. Such finding ourselves before ourselves in our own state and condition, the cogito me cogitare, also provides the first "object" which is secured in its Being. I myself, and my states, are the primary and genuine beings. Everything else that may be said to be is measured against the standard of this quite certain being. My having various states-the ways I find myself to be with something-partici- pates essentially in defining how I find the things themselves and everything I encounter to be.
Meditation on the beautiful in art now slips markedly, even exclu- sively, into the relationship of man's state of feeling, aisthesis. No wonder that in recent centuries aesthetics as such has been grounded and conscientiously pursued. That also explains why the name only now comes into use as a mode of observation for which the way had long. been paved: "aesthetics" is to be in the field of sensuousness and feeling precisely what logic is in the area of thinking-which is why it is also called "logic of sensuousness. "
Parallel to the formation of aesthetics and to the effort to clarify and ground the aesthetic state, another decisive process unfolds within the history of art. Great art and its works are great in their historical
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emergence and Being because in man's historical existence they accom- plish a decisive task: they make manifest, in the way appropriate to works, what beings as a whole are, preserving such'manifestation in the work. Art and its works are necessary only as an itinerary and sojourn for man in which the truth of beings as a whole, i. e. , the unconditioned, the absolute, opens itself up to him. What makes art great is not only and not in the first place the high quality of what is created. Rather, art is great because it is an "absolute need. " Because it is that, and to the extent it is that, it also can and must be great in rank. For only on the basis of the magnitude of its essential character does it also create a dimension of magnitude for the rank and stature of what is brought forth.
Concurrent with the formation of a dominant aesthetics and of the aesthetic relation to art in modern times is the decline of great art, great in the designated sense. Such decline does not result from the fact that the "quality" is poorer and the style less imposing; it is rather that art forfeits its essence, loses its immediate relation to the basic task of representing the absolute, i. e. , of establishing the absolute definitively as such in the realm of historical man. From this vantage point we can grasp the fourth basic development.
4. At the historical moment when aesthetics achieves its greatest possible height, breadth, and rigor of form, great art comes to an end. The achievement of aesthetics derives its greatness from the fact that it recognizes and gives utterance to the end of great art as such. The final and greatest aesthetics in the Western tradition is that of Hegel. It is recorded in his Lectures on Aesthetics, held for the last time at the University of Berlin in 1828-29 (see Hegel's Works, vol. X, parts l, 2 and 3). Here the following statements appear:
. . . yet in this regard there is at least no absolute need at hand for it [the matter] to be brought to representation by art (X, 2, p. 233).
In all these relations art is and remains for us, with regard to its highest determination, something past (X, I, p. I6).
The magnificent days of Greek art, like the golden era of the later Middle Ages, are gone (X, I, pp. I5-I6).
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One cannot refute these statements and overcome all the history and happenings that stand behind them by objecting against Hegel that since 1830 we have had many considerable works of art which we might point to. Hegel never wished to deny the possibility that also in the future individual works of art would originate and be esteemed. The fact of such individual works, which exist as works only for the enjoy- ment 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 the absolute, has lost its absolute power. On the basis of such loss the position of art and the kind of knowledge concerning it are defined for the nine- teenth century. This we can demonstrate briefly in a fifth point.
5. Catching a glimpse of the decline of art from its essence, the nineteenth ~entury once more dares to attempt the "collective art- work. " That effort is associated with the name Richard Wagner. It is no accident that his effort does not limit itself to the creation of works that might serve such an end. His effort is accompanied and undergird- ed by reflections on the principles of such works, and by corresponding treatises, the most important of which are Art and Revolution (1849), The Artwork of the Future (1850), Opera and Drama (1851), German Art and German Politics (1865). It is not possible here to clarify to any great extent the complicated and confused historical and intellectual milieu of the mid-nineteenth ceniury. In the decade 1850-1860 two streams interpenetrate in a remarkable fashion, the genuine and well- preserved tradition of the great age of the German movement, and the slowly expanding wasteland, the uprooting of human existence, which comes to light fully during the Gilded Age. One can never understand this most ambiguous century by describing the sequence of its periods. It must be demarcated simultaneously from both ends, i. e. , from the last third of the eighteenth century and the first third of the twentieth. .
Here we have to be satisfied with one indication, delineated by our guiding area of inquiry. With reference to the historical position of art, the effort to produce the "collective artwork" remains essential. The very name is demonstrative. For one thing, it means that the arts should no longer be realized apart from one another, that they should be conjoined in one work. But beyond such sheer quantitative unification,
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the artwork should be a celebration of the national community, it should be the religion. In that respect the definitive arts are literary and musical. Theoretically, music is to be a means for achieving effective drama; in reality, however, music in the form of opera becomes the authentic art. Drama possesses its importance and essential character, not in poetic originality, i. e. , not in the well-wrought truth of the linguistic work, but in things pertaining to the stage, theatrical arrange- ments and gala productions. Architecture serves merely for theater construction, painting provides the backdrops, sculpture portrays the gestures of actors. Literary creation and language remain without the essential and decisive shaping force of genuine knowledge. What is wanted is the domination of art as music, and thereby the domination of the pure state of feeling-the tumult and delirium of the senses, tremendous contraction, the felicitous distress that swoons in enjoy- ment, absorption in "the bottomless sea of harmonies," the plunge into frenzy and the disintegration into sheer feeling as redemptive. The "lived experience" as such becomes decisive. The work is merely what arouses such experience. All portrayal is to work its effects as fore- ground and superficies, aiming toward the impression, the effect, want- ing to work on and arouse the audience: theatrics. Theater and orchestra determine art. Of the orchestra Wagner says:
The orchestra is, so to speak, the basis of infinite, universally common feeling, from which the individual feeling of the particular artist can blossom to the greatest fullness: it dissolves to a certain extent the static, motionless basis of the scene of reality into a liquid-soft, flexible, impressionable, ethereal surface, the immeasurable ground of which is the sea of feeling itself. (The Artwork of the Future, in Cesammelte Schriften und Dich- tungen, 2nd ed. , 1887, p. 157. )
To this we should compare what Nietzsche says in The Will to Power (WM, 839) about Wagner's "means of achieving effects":
Consider the means of achieving effects to which Wagner most likes to turn (and which for the most part he had to invent): to an astonishing extent they resemble the means by which the hypnotist achieves his effect (his selection
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of tempi and tonal hues for his orchestra; a repulsive avoidance of the logic and intervals of rhythm; the lingering, soothing, mysterious, hysterical qual- ity of his "endless melody"). And is the state to which the prelude to Lohengrin reduces its listeners, especially the lady listeners, essentially dif- ferent from that of a somnambulistic trance? -1 heard an Italian woman who had just listened to that prelude say, flashing those lovely mesmerized eyes that Wagneriennes know how to affect, "Come si dorme con questa musi-
! " ca.
Here the essential character of the conception "collective artwork" comes to unequivocal expression: the dissolution of everything solid into a fluid, flexible, malleable state, into a swimming and floundering; the unmeasured, without laws or borders, clarity or definiteness; the boundless night of sheer submergence. In other words, art is once again to become an absolute need. But now the absolute is experienced as sheer indeterminacy, total dissolution into sheer feeling, a hovering that gradually sinks into nothingness. No wonder Wagner found the metaphysical confirmation and explanation of his art in Schopenhauer's main work, which he studied diligently four different times.
However persistently Wagner's will to the "collective artwork" in its results and influence became the very opposite of great art, the will itself remains singular for his time. It raises Wagner-in spite of his theatricality and recklessness-above the level of other efforts focusing on art and its essential role in existence. In that regard Nietzsche writes (XIV, 150-51):
Without any doubt, Wagner gave the Germans of this era the most consid- erable indication of what an artist could be: reverence for "the artist" suddenly grew to great heights; he awakened on all sides new evaluations, new desires, new hopes; and this perhaps not least of all because of the merely preparatory, incomplete, imperfect nature of his artistic products: Who has not learned from him!