5. IRRATIONAL HUMAN EXPERIENCE

All aesthetic theories that attempt to explain art through analogies with the amorphous, disordered spheres of human experience — hypnosis, dreams, or intoxication — make a big blunder. The great lyric poet can, with his power, give form to the most vague feelings. This is possible only because his work, although it deals with the subject, i.e. with something irrational and inexpressible, it has clear organization and articulation. Even in the most bizarre creations of art, we do not find a solid "delightful confusion of fantasy" and "the initial chaos of human nature." This definition of art, given by romantics, contains a contradiction in terms. Each work of art has an intuitive structure, which means it has the character of rationality. Each individual element should be considered as part of an all-inclusive whole. If in the lyric poem to change one of the words, stress or rhythm, there is a danger of destroying the specific tone and poetic charm. Art is not chained to the rationality of things or events. It can violate all those laws of probability that classical aesthetics have proclaimed as constitutive laws of art. It can give us the strangest and most grotesque images, while maintaining its own rationality - the rationality of form. Thus, we can interpret the paradoxical statement of Goethe, who remarked: “Art is a second nature, just as mysterious, but more understandable, since it is rooted in our understanding.” Science organizes our thoughts, morality organizes our actions, art organizes our perception of visible, tangible and audible phenomena. Aesthetic theory very slowly went to the recognition and full understanding of these fundamental differences. However, if instead of building a metaphysical theory of beauty, we simply analyze our hereditary experience in the perception of art, we will not be mistaken. Art can be defined as a symbolic language. But this gives only a general genus, and not a species difference. In modern aesthetics, there seems to be a predominance of interest in the general genus and, moreover, to such an extent that the species difference is almost eclipsed and almost completely disappears. B. Croce insists that there is not only a close relationship, but also a complete identity between language and art. According to his logic, the distinction between these two types of activity is completely arbitrary. He studies general linguistics, believes B. Croce, thereby studying aesthetic problems, and vice versa. There is, however, an undoubted difference between symbols in art and the linguistic terms of everyday speech or writing. These two activities are not consistent either in character or in purpose: they use different means and to achieve different goals. Neither language nor art is merely an imitation of things or actions: both are representations. But representation through sensory forms is very different from a verbal or conceptual representation. The transfer of the landscape by the artist or poet is unlikely to have anything in common with the description of a geographer or geologist: both the methods of description and the motives will be different in the work of the scientist and in the work of the artist. A geographer can convey a landscape in a plastic manner and even in a variety of colors. But what he wants to convey at the same time is not a vision of the landscape, but an empirical concept. For this purpose, he will compare the cash form with other forms, will establish its characteristic features with the help of observation and induction. The geologist will take the next step in this empirical description: he is not content with registering physical facts alone, but will try to explain their origin. He will subtract the layers that make up the soil, mark the chronological differences of their occurrence and deepen to the general causal laws, according to which the earth has come to its present state. For the artist, all these empirical relationships, all these comparisons with other facts, as well as studies of causal relationships, do not exist. Our ordinary empirical concepts can be roughly reduced to two rubrics in accordance with what practical or theoretical interests they meet. The concepts from the first heading are related to the use of things and the question “for what”. The concepts from the second rubric are related to the question “from where” and the causes of things. Entering the field of art, we must forget such questions. Behind the existence, the nature of the empirical properties of things, we suddenly discover their forms. These forms are not static elements: the forms reveal a mobile order that opens for us new horizons of nature. Even the greatest admirers of art often spoke of him as something secondary, as improving or embellishing life. This, however, is a great understatement, an underestimation of its real meaning and its actual role in human culture. The double of reality always has only a very dubious value. Only by approaching art as a special direction and new orientation of our thinking, imagination, and feeling, can its true meaning and function be understood. Plastic arts allow you to see the sensual world in all its richness and diversity. What could we know about the innumerable nuances of external exchange of the surrounding things, if not the work of great artists and sculptors? Poetry, like that, is the revelation of our personality. Infinite possibilities, about which we have only a weak and vague idea, are revealed by poets, prose writers, playwrights. Such art is by no means just a fake or an exact copy, for it is a true manifestation of our inner life.
As long as we live only in the world of sensual impressions, we deal only with the outside of reality. Penetration into the depths of things always requires the exertion of all our active and constructive forces. But since these efforts are differently directed and pursue different goals, they cannot produce the same image of reality. One thing is conceptual depth, another is visual depth: the first is opened by science, the second is revealed in art. The first helps us to understand the bases of things, the second allows us to see their forms. In science they try to go deeper from phenomena to their root causes, to general laws and principles. Art, on the other hand, immerses into the element of the direct manifestations of things, and we enjoy these manifestations in all their fullness, wealth and diversity. Here we are already dealing not with the uniformity of laws, but with the diversity and heterogeneity of intuition. Even if one can imagine art as knowledge, this knowledge is of a special kind. Of course, you can subscribe to the words of Shaftesbury that "beauty is always the truth." But the truth of beauty does not consist in a theoretical description or explanation of things, it is rather contained in a “sympathetic vision,” in a sympathetic view of things. These points of view are completely dissimilar, but they are not in conflict or conflict. Since art and science are located in completely different planes, they cannot contradict or contradict each other. Conceptual interpretation in science does not prevent intuitive interpretation in art: each sphere has its own perspectives and, so to speak, its own angle of reflection. Psychology of sensory perception indicates that only the use of both eyes, binocular vision gives knowledge of the three-dimensionality of space. The depth of human experience in the same sense depends on the fact that we are able to change our way of seeing, are able to vary our perspectives on reality. In everyday experience, we associate phenomena according to the categories of causality or expediency. Depending on what interests us in things, theoretical foundations or practical consequences, we think of them as causes or as means. Therefore, we usually lose sight of the thing in its immediate manifestation and are no longer able to face it face to face. On the other hand, art teaches us to imagine, not just understand or use things. Art gives richer, more vibrant and multi-colored images of reality, and also allows deeper penetration into their formal structure. It is characteristic of human nature that he is not limited to a single specific approach to reality, but can choose a point of view and move from one aspect of things to another.
TEST 5
1. Who thought that there is a complete identity between language and art?
? Dante
? Plato
? Virgil
? B. Croce
2. Is there a distinction between symbols in art and linguistic terms of everyday speech?
? Yes
? not
? it depends
? only in obscene language
3. Why is the twin of reality in art of dubious value?
? because art does not copy reality
? because badly copied
? because he is a double
? because it is necessary
4. Who owns the words: “Beauty is always true”?
? Fetu
? Dostoevsky
? Pushkin
? A. Shaftesbury
5. Is there a difference between science and art?
? There are different approaches to reality.
? No, art is a kind of science.
? No, science is a kind of art.