VENUS OF MILO

Revisiting now my erstwhile entry Une Promesse De Bonheur in the Philosophy section, and, together with it, the Nietzschean criticism of Kantian aesthetics, here is Nietzsche again in Genealogie III-6:

“Schopenhauer used the Kantian version of the aesthetic problem, although he did not view it with Kantian eyes. Kant thought he was honoring art, when, among the predicates of beauty, he emphasized those which establish the honor of knowledge: impersonality and universality. This is not a place to inquire if it was a mistake; all I wish to stress is that Kant, like all philosophers, instead of seeing the aesthetic problem from the point of view of the artist, the creator, considered art and the beautiful purely from the point of view of the spectator, and unconsciously introduced spectator into the concept beautiful. It would not have been so bad had the spectator been sufficiently familiar to the philosophers of beauty, namely, as a great personal fact and experience. But, I fear, the reverse has always been the case, so they have offered us definitions, in which a lack of experience reposes in the shape of a fat worm of error. ‘That is beautiful,’ proclaims Kant, ‘which gives us pleasure without interest.’ Without interest! Compare this with the definition once framed by a genuine spectator and an artist Stendhal, who once called the beautiful “une promesse de bonheur.” He rejects the one point, which Kant has stressed: le desinteressement. Who is right? If our aestheticians rule in Kant’s favor that under the spell of beauty one can even view undraped female statues without interest, one may laugh a little at their expense. The experiences of artists are more interested, and Pygmalion was not necessarily an unaesthetic man.”

Impersonality and universality are, of course, Kant’s predicates of knowledge, but they are equally applied by him to aesthetics, with which our friend Nietzsche most vehemently disagrees. I can see his point quite well, but is what he is arguing for, aesthetics?! There are many great works of art, which evoke extremely personal emotions within me, but isn’t it possible that they cannot be brought under the broad umbrella of aesthetic contemplation of beauty, and that aesthetics, of which the old Kant is talking, is something else? Something impersonal and universal, just as he says?

Such is my own contemplation, for instance, of the beautiful statue of Venus of Milos. There can be nothing Pygmalionish in this contemplation, no erotic attraction, no personal interest, no dismay at the sight of such a beautiful body so tragically mutilated: both arms have been broken off: Here, I must say, is a disinterested contemplation of beauty, if there ever was such a thing.

In this connection, it will be interesting to quote Remy de Gourmont (1858-1915), a French writer and critic with a penchant for philosophy. Here is what he writes about aesthetic emotion, in his work Decadence:

“Aesthetic emotion puts man in a state favorable to the reception of erotic emotion. Art is the accomplice of love. Take love away, and there is no longer art.”

In my estimation, art can indeed evoke both kinds of emotions: the aesthetic and the erotic. But to confuse these two is like confusing two distinctly different types of love, which the Greeks have given two separate names: agape and eros. Incidentally, ever since my childhood, I have admired Greek male statues, as well as female, but to insinuate an admixture of some kind of erotic element to my admiration of a Paris, or an Apollo, would be, knowing me, the most preposterous thing to suggest!

And it is here, in this matter, that Kant may have been perfectly right, whereas Nietzsche, while making, as always, an interesting and valid point in general terms, may himself have missed Kant’s point altogether.