Aesthetics: From Plato to Heidegger
Plato
Plato believed that beauty is related to dialectics, morality, politics, and education. He believed that beauty has an inherent moral value. In Plato’s view, beauty is associated with the good and the true. He distrusted the capacity of artists for seduction, as they produce pleasure. He believed that the arts should be controlled and used for educational purposes in society.
Plato’s Condemnation of the Arts
Plato condemned the arts for the following reasons:
- He condemned the dramatic arts because they distract from the human soul and its passions.
- He condemned imitative arts because they are copies of copies (things).
Aristotle
Aristotle, in contrast, maintained that imitation provides three benefits: pleasure, knowledge, and purification of the emotions.
- Pleasure: Humans naturally tend to imitate things and actions.
- Knowledge: We learn through imitation and gain knowledge about the things imitated.
- Purification: Tragedy raises emotions in a safe context, allowing the spectator to purge these emotions, resulting in catharsis.
Kant
Kant says that beauty is produced by something that is disinterested and free. We want to repeat what is pleasant for our body (sensorial satisfaction). We also want to repeat what is considered virtuous, such as noble and generous actions (moral respect). These satisfactions (sensorial and moral) come from the interest of our senses or reason. However, we also want to repeat what is beautiful. Beauty is not just sensorial satisfaction; it can even seem unpleasant to us. Beauty can also occur even if something is not morally friendly. For Kant, “beauty is what universally pleases without a concept.” “Universally” here does not mean that everyone agrees on what is beautiful. It means that something beautiful has sufficient merit to be considered beautiful by all people. “…without a concept pleased”: for Kant, a concept is something that permits us to unequivocally identify something. We can identify something as a “cathedral” or as a “sunset,” but we cannot determine why it seems beautiful to us.
Schopenhauer
Schopenhauer believed that the world is merely an appearance, a dream. The thing in itself (noumenon) is the will. All beings and things arise from the will. Through the will, the human being becomes conscious of desire, which is never satisfied. This is the origin of pain (suffering). To avoid suffering, one must renounce the will. This renunciation cannot occur through knowledge because the person is always attached to the object. This renunciation can occur through art. The will becomes conscious of itself in art, especially in music (which shows the will in its infinite flow). Art, and especially music, calms the will, making it possible to renounce the will itself.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche believed that two principles can explain the history of Greek culture:
- Apollo: The tendency to shape impulses into beautiful appearances, harmony, order, and rationality.
- Dionysus: Creative impulse, instinct, drunkenness, vitality, and irrationality.
For Nietzsche, the Apollonian has predominated since Socrates. He believed that it is necessary to recover the Dionysian. Creation and intensity: art helps to intensify life. The creative capacity expresses existence. (We remember that, for Nietzsche, all values are metaphors, and therefore poetic creations of the will).
Heidegger
Modern Times
Heidegger believed that truth is the unveiling of being, that is, of time in epochs. In modern times, time puts the human being at the center (as in Descartes), and the scientific-technical conception of the world arises. This conception reduces the human being to a mere instrument, a thing. Thus, quality is suppressed in favor of mere quantity: something calculable to be dominated and consumed. In this way, we annul the being of things.
The Being of Things
Art shows us the being of things. A work of art is not there to be examined or consumed, but to make us stop in its presence. Art shows us what things are, letting them be. In this way, we ignore their utilitarian value and generate a habitable environment, creating a set of meanings, that is, a world. The arts have a special position because they show the truth, and truth is unveiling-concealment.