Schopenhauer's Philosophy of Art

Schopenhauer is renowned for his account of the pleasures of aesthetic contemplation. A lot and perhaps even most of Schopenhauer's insightful account of the arts can be reduced to a kind of enlightened aesthetic attitude theory that relates all artistic achievements back to the value of the aesthetic experiences afforded. But Schopenhauer's account of tragedy reveals some reticence about the 'aesthetic experience' approach that is usually attributed to him. Although Christopher Janaway (along with many other commentators) is right to emphasise the crucial importance of the pleasure of will-less tranquillity, 1 Schopenhauer's analysis of the significance of tragedy at least suggests that we cannot explain the value of all art in terms of the pleasurable experience afforded. We do not value a work of art merely because it offers us pleasure, nor do we repudiate it because it fails to do so. Janaway rightly insists that 'aesthetics is at the heart of philosophy for Schopenhauer', 2 but also ultimately reduces Schopenhauer's theory of art to an account of aesthetic pleasure. However, unlike Paul Guyer, for example, 3 he argues that 'Schopenhauer's philosophy, at a deeper level, is more Platonic than it is Kantian'. 4 His main arguments are: first, that the theory of Platonic Ideas is no mere ad hoc insertion into a dominantly Kantian framework, but a carefully prepared and fundamental insight; and, second, that his account of aesthetic experience is ultimately preoccupied with timeless and painless contemplation-i.e. the younger Schopenhauer's so-called ideal of the 'better consciousness': the timeless, painless subject-which is 'indissolubly' connected with the knowledge of (Platonic) Ideas. I shall argue that some important (and often neglected) aspects of Schopenhauer's insightful discussion of tragedy show that the thesis that the value of art is reducible to the aesthetic pleasure it affords is inadequate. 5 Pace some of what Schopenhauer himself suggests, the value of the understanding offered by an artwork does not solely consist in the pleasure it may generate. Although Schopenhauer does not sufficiently develop this strand of thought, he nonetheless rightly suggests that a theory that conceives of artistic value as being fully exhausted by aesthetic value cannot but be mistaken.

Vandenabeele/A Companion to Schopenhauer, 2011

Although many people would surely agree that art stretches and extends the ways we come to see the world, enhances our understanding and enriches our mental life, few would probably claim that art provides us with objective knowledge of the world. Objectivity, we hold, cannot be obtained by creating or admiring novels, sonnets, string quartets and films. Although these will not always simply be expressions of romantic souls, their common purpose is to offer rewarding experiences. And if they do afford us some kind of knowledge or understanding, it will always be mediated by the artist's subjective view of the world. In this, artworks radically differ from scientific theories, which aim to show the true objective nature of things: whereas artists create merely subjective views of the world, scientists (or so common opinion holds) are able to offer theories, laws, hypotheses and solutions to problems that really concern the objective nature of the world, are based on a careful examination of the "facts" and are clearly more objective than the understanding that artworks may provide. It would be hard to convince anyone of the idea that, say, Giorgione's painting The Tempest is more objective than Einstein's special theory of relativity. Yet in Schopenhauer's view, science is a subjectively coloured enterprise that merely offers knowledge that is in the service of our human desires, needs and interests. Scientific knowledge, he says, is knowledge that is dependent upon the principle of sufficient reason, i.e., it consists of solutions to problems in terms of

In the human society, one of the most valuable things is the behavior that one loves the others. This is the essential behavior that makes the world become beautiful and humanistic. The world will become meaningless and hopeless without love. People are more likely to live the same as machine. So love becomes the most important element in the human life. Erich Fromm said that love is the best way to cure the loneness of human beings. Love is the highest means to obtain happy life in real social life. (Erich Fromm, 1985, P.7) Many spend their whole life to chase fame, profit and power, but they forgot to behave love although they want it actually. Erich Fromm emphasizes the theory of love in his book The Art of Loving. Point out that love is the treasury of human beings and suggest people to practice it.

This paper aims to show that the Modern association of aesthetics' dignity with its perfectly autonomous nature -an association that developed through the eighteenth century and culminated with the establishment of such autonomy in Kant's third Critique -makes in fact impossible an authentic recognition of aesthetics' dignity. From here, I will also attempt to demonstrate that both Heidegger's and Adorno's aesthetic thought do justice to their contemporaneous character by assuming this fact and accordingly relinquishing the idea of perfect autonomy. Lastly, it will have to be seen if this step allows, in the thought of those authors struggling with the premises of Modernity, for the restitution to aesthetics of an authentic dignity.

ATINER’s Conference Paper Proceedings Series PHI2022-0262, 2022

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The Nature of the Universe: A Synthesis of Judaeo-Christian and Buddhist Philosophies. BETTER DRAFT BUT STILL SOME GAPS.

Heythrop Journal-a Quarterly Review of Philosophy and Theology, 2009

Schopenhauer has been portrayed, since the emergence of the analytic philosophies of Russell and Moore 1 , with respect to two primary philosophical results. On the one hand, he is described as a 'metaphysician' of the Will. On the other hand, he is depicted as an 'ethicist' of the tragic self-denial of the Will. Indeed, there is much evidence for such interpretations in his magnum opus. Yet, the collateral effect of our captivation to this picture of mere philosophical results has been to render Schopenhauer's philosophy into a closed circle or a philosophical dead-end. Indeed, even the rare admissions of his influence upon major philosophers such as Nietzsche and Wittgenstein 2 have been accompanied by a decided suppression of any consideration of the philosophical context of Schopenhauer's original questioning and of the specific meaning of 'metaphysics' amid his post-Kantian horizons. Until the last decade or so, the usual attitude to the philosophy of Schopenhauer has been dominated by the prejudicial legacy of the logical positivists -and other antimetaphysicians -with their respective dismissals of 'metaphysical' philosophies. For these iconoclasts, the philosophy of Schopenhauer is a contradictory, idiosyncraticbut above all metaphysical -teaching which sought, due to its own weakness or obscurity (or, Orientalism), to escape from the facticity of existence. 3 Of course, Nietzsche could be blamed for some aspects of this picture of Schopenhauer. Yet, while we will see below that Nietzsche's criticisms may have their merit, the character of his criticisms is quite distinct from that of the positivists. Indeed, I will explore the depth of the philosophy of Schopenhauer that exceeds the merely anti-2 metaphysical critiques, especially in light of his overt animosity to idealistic interpretations of Kantian philosophy and the Absolute idealism of Hegel, both dominant in the Academy of his day. To simply brand him a 'metaphysician' without any specification of the philosophical context simply obscures that which is critical for an understanding of his philosophy. Schopenhauer does not, as with Kant's description of the 'rationalists', simply play amongst the plethora of mere concepts, nor, does he descend into the passive state of pre-critical 'empiricism'. On the contrary, as a 'good', though dissident, post-Kantian, he remains a transcendental philosopher, but, one honest enough to enact a radical phenomenologyhis own hermeneutics of existence. He not only acknowledges our finite predicament, but also discloses phenomenologies of pain, pleasure, laughter and weeping, etc. (not to mention, for the moment, those of beauty and the sublime). In this light, my emphasis will be upon his methodology of contemplation, from which these philosophical results arose in the first place. We will find in Schopenhauer's contemplations upon the body, nature and art, an aesthetic phenomenology, one far removed from that of either Husserl or Nietzsche. 4

2000

Friedrich Nietzsche once commented that Schopenhauer showed 'great knowl- edgeability about the human and all-too-human' and had a 'native sense of reality', all of which was 'not a little dimmed by the motley leopard-skin of his metaphysics (which one must first remove from him if one is to discover the real moralist genius beneath it).' 1 Schopenhauer apparently thought of