European Aesthetics: A Critical Introduction from Kant to Derrida

324 Pages·2013·1.91 MB·English

by  Robert L. Wicks

Praise for European Aesthetics:
“Robert Wicks has an encyclopedic knowledge of the history of continental
European aesthetics between 1790 and 1990. His book will be of use to both
scholars and advanced students.”
Dabney Townsend, Secretary-Treasurer/Executive Director, American
Society for Aesthetics
“A highly accessible and richly contextualized guide to the history of continental
European aesthetics... A valuable resource for historically-oriented courses in
aesthetics and philosophy of art.”
Sandra Shapshay, Assistant Professor of Philosophy, Indiana University

A Oneworld Book
Published by Oneworld Publications 2013
This ebook edition published in 2013
Copyright © Robert L. Wicks 2013
The moral right of Robert L. Wicks to be identified as the Author of this work has been asserted by him in
accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988
All rights reserved
Copyright under Berne Convention
A CIP record for this title is available from the British Library
Hardback ISBN 978-1-85168-818-0
Paperback ISBN 978-1-85168-819-7
eBook ISBN 978-1-78074-077-5
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For Gladys, Valentina and David
CONTENTS
Plates
Acknowledgements
Introduction: Art and the Disillusionment in Reason
Part I: 1790–1900
1. The Beauty of Universal Agreement
Immanuel Kant
2. The Beauty of Moral Cultivation
Friedrich Schiller
3. The Beauty of Metaphysical Truth
G. W. F. Hegel
4. The Art of Social Revolution
Karl Marx
5. The Art of Transcendent Peace
Arthur Schopenhauer
6. The Art of Supreme Health
Friedrich Nietzsche
7. The Art of Subjective Inwardness
Søren Kierkegaard
8. The Art of Unconscious Desire
Sigmund Freud
Part II: 1900–1980
9. The Art of Anti-Fascist Aesthetics
Walter Benjamin
10. The Art of Atonal Autonomy
Theodor Adorno
11. The Art of Poetically Disclosing Truth
Martin Heidegger
12. The Art of Interpretation
Hans-Georg Gadamer
13. The Art of Past Appearances
Roland Barthes
14. The Art of Self-Discipline
Michel Foucault
15. The Art of Free Interpretation
Jacques Derrida
16. The Art of the Time Image
Gilles Deleuze
Conclusion: The Arts of Trust and Social Criticism
Further Reading
Bibliography
Index of Names
Index of Subjects
PLATES
1 Design from the Lindisfarne Gospels manuscript (c.700) located in the British
Library in London.
2 The image of Tukaroto Matutaera Potatau Te Wherowhero Tawhiao, Second
Maori King – d.1894 (provided courtesy of the G.M.Collection, Alexander
Turnbull Library, Wellington, New Zealand).
Discobolus (Discus Thrower), copy of the original statue by Myron, c.460-450
BCE located in the Copenhagen Botanical Gardens.
4 Carl Wilhelm Hübner, The Silesian Weavers (1846) located in the Kunstmuseum,
Düsselsdorf.
5 Taj Mahal, Agra, India.
6 The original photograph of Nomadic Kyrgyz Family on the Golodnaya Steppe in
Uzbekistan by Sergey Prokudin-Gorsky (1911) located in the Library of
Congress, Washington, D.C.
7 The original photograph of Lewis Thornton Powell (a.k.a. Lewis Payne) by
Alexander Gardner (1865) located in the Library of Congress, Washington, D.C.
8 Diego Velázquez, Las Meninas (1656) located in the Prado Museum, Madrid.
9 Vincent van Gogh, A Pair of Shoes (1886) located in the Van Gogh Museum,
Amsterdam.
10 Honoré Daumier, Third-Class Carriage (1862) located in the National Gallery
of Canada.
All the plates with the exception of Plate 2 are from Wikimedia Commons to whom
the author expresses his gratitude.
All of the images of works over 100 years old are in the public domain.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
I would like to extend my gratitude to Oneworld Publications, who initially
suggested the idea for this book, and to Mike Harpley at Oneworld, who allowed
it to mature slowly.
Thanks are also due to the Heads of the Department of Philosophy at the
University of Auckland whose tenures covered the duration of this book’s
composition, Tim Dare and John Bishop, along with the Dean of Arts, Jan
Crosthwaite, who respectively scheduled reduced administrative assignments,
granted academic leave and secured special building access that allowed me to
complete this book more effectively than would otherwise have been possible.
In connection with the Kant chapter, I would like to thank Donald Crawford;
for the chapters on Hegel, Schopenhauer, Freud and Benjamin, Ivan Soll; for the
Marx chapter, Paul Warren; for the Heidegger chapter, Julian Young; for the
Gadamer chapter, Matheson Russell; for the Foucault chapter, Stephen Davies.
These individuals have been among my friends, colleagues and teachers who,
through discussions or professional interactions of one kind or another, have
shaped my views on the theorists here addressed. I am also indebted to two
anonymous reviewers for Oneworld, whose insights and constructive criticisms
significantly improved the manuscript. Thanks are also due to Routledge
Publishing, for having given permission for me to draw from my Foucault entry
in The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics.
My gratitude also extends to my research assistant, Daniel Wilson, and to the
students in my History of Aesthetics, Kant and Hegel, Schopenhauer and
Nietzsche, and Twentieth-Century French Philosophy classes at the University of
Auckland, whose presence, maturity and intellectual enthusiasm motivated me to
formulate some of the leading ideas contained herein.
The birth of my son, David, during the course of this book’s development,
almost on the birthday of Immanuel Kant, our initial theorist, and exactly during
the scheduled time of my Kant–Hegel class at the University of Auckland
(which had to be cancelled that morning for his arrival), rendered the memories
of this book’s composition that much more exciting and meaningful. My wife,
Gladys, and my daughter, Valentina, also deserve great thanks, as they open-
mindedly allowed me some peaceful months of time to write in New York that
otherwise would have been spent travelling happily with them while they were
in South America. I dedicate this book to my beautiful wife and children.
Auckland, April 24, 2012
INTRODUCTION: ART AND THE DISILLUSIONMENT IN
REASON
This book surveys sixteen theorists – mostly philosophers, but also
representatives from literary criticism, psychiatry, classics, and history – whose
work informs European aesthetics during the last two centuries. The
arrangement is chronological on the whole, where the sequence of writers is
further grouped according to their geographical origination and shared
assumptions. For the sake of expository balance, the presentation divides evenly
within each century between those who tend to respect reason’s capacities for
enlightenment versus those who question its power. Reflected in their various
conceptions of reason are ethical or political agendas that, as we shall see,
usually predominate over their aesthetic views. Two broad strands of thought are
consequently exposed, one rationalist and the other anti-rationalist, that extend
side by side from 1790 to 1990, where our account ends, but where
contemporary history also continues along the same dual tracks, albeit now more
confusingly amalgamated. These are “broad” strands, for each thinker embodies
a particular proportion of rational and anti-rational aspects which render the
comparisons and contrasts between them more subtle and often less
oppositional.
This expository design reflects a seminal theme that extends across these 200
years and illuminates this time-segment of aesthetic theorizing, namely, the
disagreement over the nature and value of reason. During the Enlightenment and
culminating in the French Revolution, reason reaches a point where it is
celebrated absolutely as the essence of God himself, or simply as the new God to
replace those of traditional religions, and in particular Christianity. Optimistic
applications of reason in science, politics, social organizations, and psychology –
a trend that continues today – are prescribed here as the most truth-oriented and
advisable ways to understand and manage our surroundings. Such ideals inhere
in some of the French Revolution’s advocates and sadly, eventual victims, such
as the Marquis de Condorcet (1743–94).