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Beauty
and Beautification
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The history of aesthetic reflection moves from a discourse in
which it is not perceived as especially relevant to efforts to
distinguish natural from artistic beauty, through the recognition
that there is a boundary between them, to the perception that they
are separated by a more or less vast and largely unmapped
territory, sharing boundaries with natural beauty on the one side
and artistic beauty on the other. Beauty of what we may speak of
as the Third Realm plays a far greater role in human conduct and
attitude than either of the (philosophically) more familiar kinds,
since most persons have little occasion to think about the fine
arts, or to gaze upon natural wonders, though what Kant speaks of
as the starry heavens above occasions awe and a sense of vastness
in even the simplest of persons. By natural beauty it is perhaps
best to think of beauty, the existence |
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of
which is independent of human will, like the night sky or the
sunset, mighty seas or majestic peaks. So the beauty of a garden
would not be natural beauty, leaving it a question ofwhether it
belongs to art or to the Third Realm. No one can be unaware of
Third Realm beauty in daily life, but the history of aesthetics,
which has drawn examples from it, has often, perhaps typically,
failed to note how different these are from either natural or
artistic beauty. |
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Kant exemplifies the first moment of this history, as his choice
of examples implies: he discusses green meadows
just after discussing fine palaces, dissociating aesthetic
judgment from whatever interest one may have in either. "A
coat, a house, or a flower is beautiful," presumably in the
same way; and Kant seems anxious that from the perspective of
aesthetic analysis, no distinction is to be drawn between flowers
and floral decorations ("free delineations, outlines
intertwined with one another.") So "Nature is beautiful
because it looks like art;' while "Beautiful art must look
like nature." Hence, from the perspective of beauty, the
distinction between art and nature does not greatly signify.l In
this Kant was very much a man of the Enlightenment, a period of
cultivated taste, in which even the moderately affluent were
liberated from the urgencies of immediate interest to the
possibility of a disinterested contemplation of natural beauties
and beautiful products ofartistic genius. And the world was safe
enough for people to travel about, to see the Alps or the artistic
wonders of Italy.
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Hegel defines the history's second moment, in that from the outset
he finds it crucial to distinguish sharply between artistic
beauty, on the one side, and "a beautiful color, a beautiful
sky, a beautiful river; likewise beautiful flowers, beautiful
animals, and even more of beautiful people."Artistic beauty
is "higher" than natural beauty, and is "born of
the spirit." Like natural beauty, artistic beauty
"presents itself to sense, feeling, intuition,
imagination." But it does more than gratify the senses: when
"fine art is truly art" it "place[ s ] itselfin the
same sphere as religion and philosophy," bringing to our
awareness "the deepest interests of mankind, and the most
comprehensive truths of the spirit. . . displaying even the
highest [ reality ] sensuously." At a minimum, art has a
content that must be grasped; it is, by contrast with skies and
flowers, about something. Ofcourse, the distinction would be
obliterated ifone thought of N ature as a Divine Visual Language,
following Bishop Berkeley or the painters of the Hudson River
School, who saw God addressing us through the medium of waterfalls
or Catskill cliffs. Moreover, the idea ofcontent arises late in
our understanding ofart, at that point-which Hegel identifies as
the end of art-where art becomes a topic for intellectual
judgment, rather than a sensuous presentation of what is taken to
be a reality , which Hegel regards as arts "highest
vocation."
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There is in Hegel a kind of art which he mentions mainly to
dismiss, as it does not qualify as a subject for
"Science" -a term which has little to do with natural
science, which is negligibly treated in his system. It designates,
rather, "The Science of the true in its true shape,"
which is, after all, the way Hegel thinks of the processes through
which Spirit arrives at an essential knowledge of its own nature.
" Art can be used in fleeting play ;' he writes,
"affording recreation and entertainment, decorating our
surroundings, giving pleasantness to the externals ofour life, and
making other objects stand out by artistic adornment." Art so
considered is not free but "ancillary"-it is applied to
ends external to itself, |
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whereas art as art is "free alike in its
end and its means." It is only as such that it pertains, as
with philosophy, to Absolute Spirit. Hegel is concerned to
characterize art, which relies upon sensuous presentation, from
thought. But there is a distinction to be made in regard to thought
itself, which parallels entirely the distinction between fine and
applied art: "Science may indeed be used as an intellectual
servant for finite ends and accidental means" he concedes, and
not for the high purposes of Science (with a capital S). This would
have been expected from the consideration that art and thought are
one, with the difference that art uses sensuous vehicles for
conveying its content. In any case, Hegel has identified what I have
preemptively designated a third aesthetic realm, one greatly
connected with human life and happiness. It is, in fact, coextensive
with most forms of human life: |
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Beauty and art does indeed pervade all the business oflife like a
friendly genius and brightly adorns all our surroundings whether
inner or outer, mitigating the seriousness of our circumstances
and the complexities of the actual world, extinguishing idleness
in an entertaining way. . . . Art belongs rather to the indulgence
and relaxation of the spirit, whereas substantial interests
require its exertion. . . . Yet even though art inter-sperses with
its pleasing forms everything from the war paint of the savages to
the splendor of temples with all the richness ofadornment, these
forms themselves nevertheless seem to fall outside the true ends
and aims of life.
Someone
who thought of art in these terms might consider it
"inappropriate and pedantic to propose to treat with
scientific seriousness what is not itself of a serious
nature," as Hegel has set out to do in his Lectures on
Aesthetics. I am not
certain Hegel disagrees with this proposition, despite his
remarkably cosmopolitan personality. For he does not discuss art
as applied art in the great work he devoted to the subject. Like
philosophical thought, art is a modality offree spirit. So there
can be no question of "the worthiness ofart' to be treated as
philosophically as philosophy itself. Art is worthy of
philosophical address only under the perspective of its highest
vocation, which it shares with philosophy. So Hegel spends little
time in exploring the territory he has uncovered, in which art is
applied to the enhancement of life, even if it may, in certain
periods, like the Renaissance, have been difficult to distinguish
it from Art (with a capital A). When Alberti was commissioned to
give a new facade to Santa Maria Novella in Florence, was it
upscale decoration or was it high art? We have such a problem
today with the distinction between craft and art proper.
But
the other border of what I shall designate the Third Realm is equally non-exclusionary, especially when we
consider what Hegel singles out under the head of beautiful
people-the kind of beauty possessed by Helen of Troy, say, which
we must suppose a wonder of nature. But Helen's
On
this view, art appears as a superfluity, even if the softening of
the heart which preoccupation with beauty can produce does not
altogether become deleterious as downright effeminacy. From this
point of view, granted the fine arts are a luxury, it has
frequently been necessary to defend them in their relationship to
practical necessities in general and in particular to morality and
piety, and since it is impossible to prove their harmlessness, at
least to give grounds for believing this luxury of the spirit may
afford a greater sum of advantages than disadvantages.
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