Modernism

This blog post concerns modernism, aesthetics, Nietzsche and Schopenhauer. The notes are a bit bare but this is only really for my understanding, hopefully you all get it!

Aesthetics: Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy which concerns art, beauty, and music - the process of making it and enjoying it. From the late 17th to the early 20th century Western aesthetics underwent change into what is often called modernism. European thinkers placed a very high profoundness on beauty as the key aspect of art and would go as far to see art as necessarily aiming at absolute beauty and art it is the closest thing we can get to absolute beauty - this idea of absolute beauty is linked heavily with the form theory.

For Hegel all art or beauty is a matter of "absolute spirit" showing itself, changing to a perfection that only philosophy can approach. Art is the first stage in which the absolute spirit is manifest immediately to perception. For Schopenhauer aesthetics is a way for people to understand what beauty is and for one to lose themselves in it, as sort of a coping mechanism to an extent - which allows people to hide from a harsh world. therefor Schopenhauer saw it one way to fight the suffering of people.

Nietzsche - Philosopher of Music: Nietzsche wanted to understand why somethings are considered beautiful and some are not: this is heavily linked again to Plato's cave and forms theory - the idea that there is a perfect woman or chair or table out there somewhere but we cannot perceive it but we do know when they are close to them. One of the most outstanding features of Nietzsche's work is his ornamental poetic language. He liked to be seen as an artist and to be judged solely on that fact. 

Man is the main balance in the universe and this balance is struck by people using their language and ideas to shape the way they live. For Nietzsche, art is not the imitation, but more of a metaphysical complement that will allows nature to become more than it is, to transcend itself and art is the highest form of human activity. From this it is understandable to say that artists are the closest people to the forms.

Furthermore, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche and Wagner believe that music is the very purest and profound form of art and aspect. This can be linked back to the aesthetics approach to why people find things beautiful and their own personal preference to what beauty is.

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer's book "The world as will and representation" mentions the 'will' which, linked to his possible Hindu roots, is the Hindu God Brahma. For Schopenhauer, human desiring, "willing,"  just ends up causing suffering or pain. A temporary way to escape this pain is through art or aesthetic contemplation. Aesthetic contemplation allows one to escape this pain because it stops one perceiving the world in one way and to see it in a better light - you get lost in it.

He believes that people have to overcome desire, when you experience this - that is the will, which can be linked to the 'force' from Star Wars and denial of the Will is the only way to be perfectly and absolutely happy. The Dionysian view of being perfectly happy would be to use intoxication on yourself, just to numb the pain of a harsh world by getting drunk, taking drugs and over indulging yourself, but these will all have their own drawbacks, for one they are only temporary releases - you will sober up eventually. Contrasting with this is the Apollonian way, the "healthy" option, for example losing yourself in art or music or something that you find beautiful - this is known as a healthy intoxication.

Schopenhauer and Nietzsche - HCJ

Schopenhauer: Schopenhauer was a German philosopher and one of the great pessimists and he was known for his philosophical clarity. Schopenhauer's most influential work, The World as Will and Representation, claimed that the world is fundamentally what humans recognize in themselves as their will. His analysis of will led him to the conclusion that emotional, physical, and sexual desires can never be fully satisfied. He became a student at a University in 1809. There he studied metaphysics and he studied under a man who advised him to concentrate on Plato and Immanuel Kant, which is where he draws some of his influence from - Schopenhauer accepted Kant's double-aspect of the universe — the phenomenal (world of experience) and the noumenal (the true world, independent of experience).

Nietzsche: Friedrich Nietzsche was a German philosopher. He wrote critical texts on religion, philosophy and science. Nietzsche's influence comes notably from existentialism. His style and radical questioning of the value and objectivity of truth have resulted in much commentary and interpretation, mostly in the continental tradition. His key ideas include the death of God, perspectivism, the Ubermensch, and the will to power. Central to his philosophy is the idea of "life-affirmation", which involves an honest questioning of all ideas that drain life's expansive energies.

Nietzsche is renowned for saying that “god is dead” and that all that will follow this is violence – which in turn will lead to the end of mankind, Nietzsche also tries to find a “super-man” person. Nietzsche now shows his true pessimism about life, he says that there won’t be humans forever, so he believes that we will all die and that nothing we do matters at all, but he says this as a good thing... crazy right? In 1872 Nietzsche published his first book, The Birth of Tragedy. However, his colleagues expressed little enthusiasm for the work. He renamed his book “Hellenism and Pessimism”. Nietzsche criticises Schopenhauer and calls him a Nihilist – he believes that Christians are the worst, they merely wait for death when we have just one life, we must live it to the fullest and ensure we die with no regrets, he believes that the Ubermensch does not apologise for its actions and therefore has no regrets.

Well that’s all for now, just for my revision purposes really, plus my notes are sort of bare for these two which isn’t good! Anyway, more to come sometime soon, so...

Stay classy :) x