Schiller's interest in the Artist as a uniter of those things local and contemporary with those things universal and eternal seems intimately related to Hegel's own dialectic. Schiller positions his ideal in the past, with Ancient Greek civilization, but acknowledges that "the intellect was unavoidably compelled by the store of knowledge it already possessed to dissociate itself from feeling and intuition in an attempt to arrive at exact discursive understanding" (488). He traces this split in our psyche to the many fractures which are evident to him in modern society - between "State and Church, laws and customs," and perhaps most importantly between the Individual and Whole (486-7). It would seem then that the dissociation between reason and intellect creates a dialectic which is potentially resolved in the Artist, who can forge anew in the work of Art "the Ideal out of the union of what is possible with what is necessary" (491).
In considering this similarity, what does it suggest that Schiller's first term - Greek art and culture - becomes Hegel's second?
Schiller also seems to remain confident that Art can eventually reconcile the two. Hegel's dialectic suggests that Art reaches its synthesis in its recognition that the two cannot be perfectly reconciled.
Showing posts with label Schiller. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schiller. Show all posts
Thursday, September 16, 2010
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Kant and Schiller on "The Pirate Bay"
Kant says of Taste:
Schiller insists in On the Aesthetic Education of Man:
It'd be nice to have these guys on your side when you got nailed for pirating music. They could help you explain to Ke$ha that to demand remuneration for her work was to deny its appreciation as true art.
Taste is the faculty for judging an object or a kind of representation through a satisfaction or dissatisfaction without any interest. The object of such a satisfaction is called beautiful (The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, Second Edition, p. 418).
Schiller insists in On the Aesthetic Education of Man:
Let [the Artist] direct his gaze upwards, to the dignity of his calling and the universal Law, not downwards towards Fortune and the needs of daily life (491).
It'd be nice to have these guys on your side when you got nailed for pirating music. They could help you explain to Ke$ha that to demand remuneration for her work was to deny its appreciation as true art.
Schiller's Aesthetic Education
I recently took issue with Kant for insisting that an aesthetic education was possible, while entirely avoiding any actual explanation of such an education. I have found, in Schiller's Aesthetic Education of Man (excepted in The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd Edition), an attempt to describe just such a curriculum. It occurs in his Ninth Letter, after an explanation of his conviction that Art is the "instrument not provided by the State" which might "open up living springs" of moral justice even from under the heaviest corruption (490). The fourth paragraph he begins thus:
Here Schiller seems to create the vision of the Artist as Outcast that strikes me as so key to the Romantic poets and the Romantic hero alike. Schiller's Artist takes "his theme" from his own time, so it would follow that the more invested he is in understanding and internalizing the experience of his own time the more clearly he will express his theme. But "his form he will borrow from a nobler time, nay, from beyond time altogether, from the absolute, unchanging unity of his being" (490). The Artist for Schiller is necessarily political, necessarily moral, as he is charged with the task, "Impart to the world you would influence a Direction towards the good" (491).
There is something of DFW in this concept of the Artist. Wallace was so invested in the mainstream ideas of socio-normative behavior, inhabited them so fully and naturally, and yet, was continuously is reminded (and constantly reminding) of his (and our) essential isolation, alienation, disunity.
Finally, Schiller even suggests that the formal aspects of the art object are necessarily and appropriately determined by historical context:
This acknowledgment of taste as historically and culturally determined is notably absent in Kant, who is so determined toward universality and eternality that he glosses the issue of the Artist altogether.
The artist is indeed the child of his age; but woe to him if he is at the same time its ward or, worse still, its minion! Let some beneficent deity snatch the sucking betimes from his mother's breast, nourish him with the milk of a better age, and suffer him to come to maturity under a distanct Grecian sky. The, when he has become a man, let him return, a stranger, to his own century; not, however, to gladden it by his appearance, but rather, terrible like Agamemnon's son, to cleanse and to purify it. (490)
Here Schiller seems to create the vision of the Artist as Outcast that strikes me as so key to the Romantic poets and the Romantic hero alike. Schiller's Artist takes "his theme" from his own time, so it would follow that the more invested he is in understanding and internalizing the experience of his own time the more clearly he will express his theme. But "his form he will borrow from a nobler time, nay, from beyond time altogether, from the absolute, unchanging unity of his being" (490). The Artist for Schiller is necessarily political, necessarily moral, as he is charged with the task, "Impart to the world you would influence a Direction towards the good" (491).
There is something of DFW in this concept of the Artist. Wallace was so invested in the mainstream ideas of socio-normative behavior, inhabited them so fully and naturally, and yet, was continuously is reminded (and constantly reminding) of his (and our) essential isolation, alienation, disunity.
Finally, Schiller even suggests that the formal aspects of the art object are necessarily and appropriately determined by historical context:
...nothing is more common than for both, science as well as art, to pay homage to the spirit of the age, or for creative minds to accept the critical standards of prevailing taste (490).
This acknowledgment of taste as historically and culturally determined is notably absent in Kant, who is so determined toward universality and eternality that he glosses the issue of the Artist altogether.
Sunday, August 29, 2010
Reception in Distraction, or the Habitual Aesthetic
Walter Benjamin is extremely interested in the phenomenon he calls "reception in distraction" (The Work of Art in the Age of Its Technological Reproduciblity and Other Writings on Media, Harvard University Press, 2008, p. 40). He sees this sort of experience as central to our understanding of architecture. While we may stand at a distance and look at a building, admiring it on some visual, contemplative level, the majority of our experiences with architecture are primarily tactile and distracted. There seems, in fact, to be something about the entire sensory apparatus involved in touch that demands a certain distraction. Dr. Rasula made the point by an example: it seems perfectly natural for someone to say, "look at this," or even "listen to that," but it strikes us as odd to be told to "touch" something. Our tactile experience is not attuned to focused attention.
Benjamin sees in film this capacity for reception through distraction, for learning not by way of direct contemplation, but through the development of a sort of habit. In On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller also seems to place the ideal receptive environment for Art in the realm of distracted attention. When meeting your audience, he advises the Artist:
Schiller here is still interested in preserving the concept of high Art, which Benjamin largely rejects in his attempt to reframe the debate around a consideration of all those things which are considered outside the realm of Art and thus are ignored by the critical eye. However, the similarity between their suggestions for ideal audience reception cannot be denied; both have something to do with entertainment.
The passage from Schiller also contains an undercurrent of the propagandistic, as if the artist must be quite sneaky in the insertion of his "principles." Even Schiller's phrasing smacks of the manifesto. He paints the audience as a "timorous fugitive" which the artist must "lay hold of," and the current customs of the audience (his frivolity) the artist must "banish."
Benjamin saw in film's capacity for "reception in distraction" the possibility of a great boon to the proletariat, who might be educated by film of man's relationship to the apparatus. Schiller, too, saw in this receptive mode the capacity for positive social change. History, unfortunately, has played out quite differently. The film medium was hugely successful in spreading the propaganda of the Nazi regime, and continues to be dominated by those interested in personal economic and political gain. So too are many of the media forms that represented Benjamin's great hope for the proletariat's recognition of itself as a class - the television, the radio, the newspaper. And the type of Artist which Schiller was interested in developing remains designated largely to obscurity: in art schools, in English departments, in Music programs, in theaters, Schiller's Artist is still largely studied only in contemplation, rather than in distraction.
Wordsworth seems to recognize (and to some extent embody) this continuing contradiction. He at once recognizes the dilapidated state of the High Arts, which are "driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse" while he at the same time attests to the "indestructible qualities of the human mind" (Norton, p. 564). The eventual triumph of art (which in his mind is not too far off) he places in the hands of "men of great power" who will oppose the "degrading thirst" of popular culture "with far more distinguished success" than he himself can offer (564). How ironic, though, that Wordsworth insists on the employment in high poetry of the language and of the common man while simultaneously turning his nose up at the types of diversion that same common man seems to enjoy best. And he makes no attempt to explain how his "men of great power" might draw the major portion of humanity away from the "gross and violent stimulants" of popular entertainment (563).
It is part of Benjamin's interest to rectify this imbalance. If we are to make this transition toward the Good or True, he seems to say, it will not be by shifting the interests of the larger population to align with our ideas about Art, but rather by realigning our interest in the aesthetic to include those forms that interest the larger population to begin with. This idea in the hands of those who seek power, however, can have some very negative implications. Benjamin closes the Artwork Essay by attributing to the National Socialist movement the motto "fiat ars--pereat mundus" (Artwork, p. 42). And this condemnation of Nazi political aestheticism mirrors perfectly the words with which Schiller closes his Aesthetic Education:
This charge, minus the last 5 words which identify the Ideal in the outcome, suggests what all the greatest propagandists in history have realized. Namely, that if you can surround them "wherever you meet them" you can eventually reach the point when your Semblance, whatever it might be, will conquer Reality, will indeed become Reality. The Third Reich surely recognized in this charge a very specific opportunity, that very opportunity which Benjamin identifies as the "aestheticizing of politics" (Artwork, p. 42). By realigning the Ideal that is Art with their own political motivations, they could lay claim to that same Ideal.
These dangers (inevitabilities?) are latent also in Kant. I have already explored the difficulties which I see as arising from Kant's concept of a disinterested aesthetic, but that same disinterest quickly becomes dangerous when taken up as the ideology of a despotic political regime. Kant anticipates as much:
Compare this with Benjamin's assertion that
Both Benjamin and Schiller have high hopes for the ability of art (variously defined) to move people toward the morally good, but they both fall short of defining the method by which this movement should best be accomplished. They differ from Wordsworth, who still looks forward to a return to more concentrated study of Art. Benjamin and Schiller both hope to locate the work of Art before an audience who is distracted, who is not interested in "learning" or "contemplating", who is entertained and thus can be influenced on an level analogous with Freud's unconscious. However, they (and we) continually run up against a public whose distracted attention seems more naturally attuned to the influence of powerbrokers.
Or, is there something about the mediums of mass that make them more useful to the propagandist than the artist?
Benjamin sees in film this capacity for reception through distraction, for learning not by way of direct contemplation, but through the development of a sort of habit. In On the Aesthetic Education of Man, Schiller also seems to place the ideal receptive environment for Art in the realm of distracted attention. When meeting your audience, he advises the Artist:
The seriousness of your principles will frighten them away, but in the play of your semblance they will be prepared to tolerate them; for their taste is purer than their heart, and it is here that you must lay hold of the timorous fugitive. In vain will you assail their precepts, in vain condemn their practice; but on their leisure hours you can try your shaping hand. Banish from their pleasures caprice, frivolity, and coarseness, and imperceptibly you will banish these from their actions and, eventually, from their inclinations too (The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism, 2nd Edition, p. 492).
Schiller here is still interested in preserving the concept of high Art, which Benjamin largely rejects in his attempt to reframe the debate around a consideration of all those things which are considered outside the realm of Art and thus are ignored by the critical eye. However, the similarity between their suggestions for ideal audience reception cannot be denied; both have something to do with entertainment.
The passage from Schiller also contains an undercurrent of the propagandistic, as if the artist must be quite sneaky in the insertion of his "principles." Even Schiller's phrasing smacks of the manifesto. He paints the audience as a "timorous fugitive" which the artist must "lay hold of," and the current customs of the audience (his frivolity) the artist must "banish."
Benjamin saw in film's capacity for "reception in distraction" the possibility of a great boon to the proletariat, who might be educated by film of man's relationship to the apparatus. Schiller, too, saw in this receptive mode the capacity for positive social change. History, unfortunately, has played out quite differently. The film medium was hugely successful in spreading the propaganda of the Nazi regime, and continues to be dominated by those interested in personal economic and political gain. So too are many of the media forms that represented Benjamin's great hope for the proletariat's recognition of itself as a class - the television, the radio, the newspaper. And the type of Artist which Schiller was interested in developing remains designated largely to obscurity: in art schools, in English departments, in Music programs, in theaters, Schiller's Artist is still largely studied only in contemplation, rather than in distraction.
Wordsworth seems to recognize (and to some extent embody) this continuing contradiction. He at once recognizes the dilapidated state of the High Arts, which are "driven into neglect by frantic novels, sickly and stupid German Tragedies, and deluges of idle and extravagant stories in verse" while he at the same time attests to the "indestructible qualities of the human mind" (Norton, p. 564). The eventual triumph of art (which in his mind is not too far off) he places in the hands of "men of great power" who will oppose the "degrading thirst" of popular culture "with far more distinguished success" than he himself can offer (564). How ironic, though, that Wordsworth insists on the employment in high poetry of the language and of the common man while simultaneously turning his nose up at the types of diversion that same common man seems to enjoy best. And he makes no attempt to explain how his "men of great power" might draw the major portion of humanity away from the "gross and violent stimulants" of popular entertainment (563).
It is part of Benjamin's interest to rectify this imbalance. If we are to make this transition toward the Good or True, he seems to say, it will not be by shifting the interests of the larger population to align with our ideas about Art, but rather by realigning our interest in the aesthetic to include those forms that interest the larger population to begin with. This idea in the hands of those who seek power, however, can have some very negative implications. Benjamin closes the Artwork Essay by attributing to the National Socialist movement the motto "fiat ars--pereat mundus" (Artwork, p. 42). And this condemnation of Nazi political aestheticism mirrors perfectly the words with which Schiller closes his Aesthetic Education:
Surround them, wherever you meet them, with the great and noble forms of genius, and encompass them about with the symbols of perfection, until Semblance conquer Reality, and Art triumph over Nature (Norton, p. 492).
This charge, minus the last 5 words which identify the Ideal in the outcome, suggests what all the greatest propagandists in history have realized. Namely, that if you can surround them "wherever you meet them" you can eventually reach the point when your Semblance, whatever it might be, will conquer Reality, will indeed become Reality. The Third Reich surely recognized in this charge a very specific opportunity, that very opportunity which Benjamin identifies as the "aestheticizing of politics" (Artwork, p. 42). By realigning the Ideal that is Art with their own political motivations, they could lay claim to that same Ideal.
These dangers (inevitabilities?) are latent also in Kant. I have already explored the difficulties which I see as arising from Kant's concept of a disinterested aesthetic, but that same disinterest quickly becomes dangerous when taken up as the ideology of a despotic political regime. Kant anticipates as much:
...however much debate there may be about whether it is the statesman or the general who deserves the greater respect in comparison to the other, aesthetic judgment decides in favor of the latter. Even war, if it is conducted with order and reverence for the rights of civilians, has something sublime about it, and at the same time makes the mentality of the people who conduct it in this way all the more sublime, the more dangers it has been exposed to and before which it has been able to assert its courage; whereas a long peace causes the spirit of mere commerce to predominate, along with base selfishness, cowardice and weakness... (Norton, p. 439)
Compare this with Benjamin's assertion that
All efforts to aestheticize politics culminate in one point. That one point is war. War, and only war, makes it possible to set a goal for mass movements of the grandest scale while preserving traditional property relations (Artwork, p. 41).
Both Benjamin and Schiller have high hopes for the ability of art (variously defined) to move people toward the morally good, but they both fall short of defining the method by which this movement should best be accomplished. They differ from Wordsworth, who still looks forward to a return to more concentrated study of Art. Benjamin and Schiller both hope to locate the work of Art before an audience who is distracted, who is not interested in "learning" or "contemplating", who is entertained and thus can be influenced on an level analogous with Freud's unconscious. However, they (and we) continually run up against a public whose distracted attention seems more naturally attuned to the influence of powerbrokers.
Or, is there something about the mediums of mass that make them more useful to the propagandist than the artist?
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