Beauty All Too Human, in Nietzsche, Twilight of the Idols, 19

by Corry Shores
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Friedrich Nietzsche

Twilight of the Idols

Skirmishes of an Untimely Man

19

Nothing is beautiful in itself. Things are beautiful only to humans. And we see ourselves in what we deem beautiful.

In the beautiful, man posits himself as the measure of perfection; in special cases he worships himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise but thus affirm itself alone [allein Ja sagen]. Its lowest instinct, that of self‑preservation and self‑expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man believes the world itself to be overloaded with beauty — and he forgets himself as the cause of this. He alone has presented the world with beauty—alas! only with a very human, all‑too‑human beauty ... At bottom, man mirrors himself in things; he considers everything beautiful that reflects his own image: the judgment "beautiful" is the vanity of his species.

The world is beautiful to us only be cause we humanized it.

But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that man should be the model of beauty. Who knows what he looks like in the eyes of a higher judge of beauty? Daring perhaps? Perhaps even amusing? Perhaps a little arbitrary?

Text from the Nietzsche Channel:

19

Beautiful and ugly ["Schön und hässlich"="Fair and foul"].— Nothing is more conditional—or, let us say, narrower—than our feeling for beauty. Whoever would think of it apart from man's joy in man would immediately lose any foothold. "Beautiful in itself" is a mere phrase, not even a concept. In the beautiful, man posits himself as the measure of perfection; in special cases he worships himself in it. A species cannot do otherwise but thus affirm itself alone [allein Ja sagen]. Its lowest instinct, that of self-preservation and self-expansion, still radiates in such sublimities. Man believes the world itself to be overloaded with beauty—and he forgets himself as the cause of this. He alone has presented the world with beauty—alas! only with a very human, all-too-human beauty ... At bottom, man mirrors himself in things; he considers everything beautiful that reflects his own image: the judgment "beautiful" is the vanity of his species ... For a little suspicion may whisper this question into the skeptic's ear: Is the world really beautified by the fact that man thinks it beautiful? He has humanized it: that is all. But nothing, absolutely nothing, guarantees that man should be the model of beauty. Who knows what he looks like in the eyes of a higher judge of beauty? Daring perhaps? Perhaps even amusing? Perhaps a little arbitrary? ... "Oh Dionysus, divine one, why do you pull me by my ears?" Ariadne once asked her philosophic lover during one of those famous dialogues on Naxos. "I find a kind of humor in your ears, Ariadne: why are they not even longer?"

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Twilight of the Idols. Based on Walter Kaufmann's translation. Available at: http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/twi.htm

The Ugly Art of Soul. in Nietzsche, Human all too Human, 152

by Corry Shores
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Friedrich Nietzsche

Human all too Human

IV. From the Souls of Artists and Writers

152

Art can be created with those who strike us as having a deep inner self that is attuned to what is beautiful. They seem to have a "beautiful soul" that is orderly, respectable, and well-behaved.

However, these sorts do not produce "the mightiest effects of art, the crushing of souls, moving of stones and humanising of beasts." Here lies the importance of the ugly artistic soul.

From the Nietzsche Channel translation:

152

The art of the ugly soul.— Art is confined within too narrow limits if it be required that only the orderly, respectable, well-behaved soul should be allowed to express itself therein. As in the plastic arts, so also in music and poetry: there is an art of the ugly soul side by side with the art of the beautiful soul; and the mightiest effects of art, the crushing of souls, moving of stones and humanising of beasts, have perhaps been best achieved precisely by that art.

Nietzsche, Friedrich. Human all too Human. Transl. Helen Zimmern, R. J. Hollingdale, and Marion Faber. Available online at:

http://www.geocities.com/thenietzschechannel/human1.htm

Bergson, Time and Free Will, Chapter 1, §10 "The Feeling of Beauty"

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Bergson, Time and Free Will (Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience)

Chapter I, "The Intensity of Psychic States"

Part III: "The Aesthetic Feelings"

§10 "The Feeling of Beauty: Art Puts to Sleep Our Active and Resistant Powers and Makes Us Responsive to Suggestion"

We are mistaken to think that the feelings we have when seeing something beautiful may increase or decrease in intensity (13-14).

Many consider nature to possess beauty inherently, and exactly what makes it beautiful remains mysterious to us. They furthermore believe that an artist expresses the same sort of beauty that nature bears. But because nature's beauty remains mysterious, so too does art's beauty remain mysterious. (14a.b)

Bergson proposes an alternative perspective. We intentionally and consciously make art beautiful. So there are some specific properties that we find beautiful. Then by chance, nature sometimes exhibits these properties. But because we consider nature as somehow primordial, we mistakenly regard it as the origin for what we call beauty. (14b)

Thus,

it seems more in conformity with the rules of a sound method to study the beautiful first in the works in which it has been produced by a conscious effort, and then to pass on by imperceptible steps from art to nature.

(14bc)

il semble plus conforme aux règles d'une saine méthode d'étudier d'abord le beau dans les œuvres, où il a été produit par un effort conscient, et de descendre ensuite par transitions insensibles de l'art à la nature, qui est artiste à sa manière.

(11a)

Bergson will now proceed to explain why art is essentially hypnosis.

Our sensations and ideas normally proceed in an irregular flow. They do not usually come at regular paces, but rather their speeds vary continuously. However, when we listen to music, its steady rhythm and measure diverts this natural flow, and causes our attention "to swing to and fro between fixed points." (14-15)

Previously we saw how we sympathize with the dancer's graceful movements. The result is that we take-on the dancer's motional tendencies. So if the dancer's movement is abruptly halted, our bodies want to carry it on, because they have been synchronized with it all along.

So our sympathetic connection with the dancer gives us the feeling that we are the dancer's puppet master. But because of the control the dancer has over us, we instead are the puppets really.

Like a lullaby, the steadiness of the rhythm pacifies us, and it places us in a hypnotic state. But this is so for all art:

the object of art is to put to sleep the active or rather resistant powers of our personality, and thus to bring us into a state of perfect responsiveness, in which we realize the idea that is suggested to us and sympathize with the feeling that is expressed. In the processes of art we shall find, in a weakened form, a refined and in some measure spiritualized version of the processes commonly used to induce the state of hypnosis.

(14c.d)

l'objet de l'art est d'endormir les puissances actives ou plutôt résistantes de notre personnalité, et de nous amener ainsi à un état de docilité parfaite où nous réalisons l'idée qu'on nous suggère, où nous sympathisons avec le sentiment exprimé. Dans les procédés de l'art on retrouvera sous une forme atténuée, raffinés et en quelque sorte spiritualisés, les procédés par lesquels on obtient ordinairement l'état d'hypnose.

(11b)

Once we are placed in this hypnotic state, art has heightened powers of affecting us by means of suggestion. This is why the sounds of nature, as beautiful as they are, do not overcome us as powerfully as music: "nature confines itself to expressing feelings, whereas music suggests them to us." (15a)

Poets use meter to create a steady rhythm for the words' procession. That alone has a hypnotic effect. And each word or phrase conjures an image. So these images pass before our eyes to a steady beat. Moreover, each image evokes an emotion, whose sequence also moves steadily and in synchrony with the other repetitions.

but we should never realize these images so strongly without the regular movements of the rhythm by which our soul is lulled into self-forgetfulness, and, as in a dream, thinks and sees with the poet.

(15bc)

mais ces images ne se réaliseraient pas aussi fortement pour nous sans les mouvements réguliers du rythme, par lequel notre âme, bercée et endormie, s'oublie comme en un rêve pour penser et pour voir avec le poète.

(11d)

Statues capture bodies in movement, as though halted instantaneously.

the pale immobility of the stone causes the feeling expressed or the movement just begun to appear as if they were fixed for ever, absorbing our thought and our will in their own eternity.

(15d)

la pale immobilité de la pierre donne au sentiment exprimé, au mouvement commencé, je ne sais quoi de définitif et d'éternel, où notre pensée s'absorbe et où notre volonté se perd.

(12a)

The rhythm of music and poetry fix us into a state where the normal flow of time is suspended. Sculpture does as well by placing the spectator into a state of consciousness where time is eternal and still.

Architecture too has a "startling immobility," but its formal elements nonetheless produces rhythmic effects in the spectator. (15d)

The symmetry of form, the indefinite repetition of the same architectural motive, causes our faculty of perception to oscillate between the same and the same again, and gets rid of those customary incessant changes which in ordinary life bring us back without ceasing to the consciousness of our personality: even the faint suggestion of an idea will then be enough to make the idea fill the whole of our mind.

(15-16)

La symétrie des formes, la répétition indéfinie du même motif architectural, font que notre faculté de percevoir oscille du même au même et se déshabitue de ces changements incessants qui, dans la vie journalière, nous ramènent sans cesse à la conscience de notre personnalité: l'indication, même légère, d'une idée suffira alors à remplir de cette idée notre âme entière.

(12b.c)

So art does not try to express its feelings. Rather, it tries to impress feelings upon us through hypnotic suggestion. Yet, nature as well is suggestion. But, it "does not command the resources of rhythm." (16b) Nature has earned our sympathies from a friendship spanning all the generations of humanity, so that "the slightest indication by nature of a feeling arouses sympathy in our minds, just as a mere gesture on the part of the hypnotist is enough to force the intended suggestion upon a subject accustomed to his control." (16c)

Bergson then claims that nature evokes the most sympathy when it is as regular and even as possible:

And this sympathy is shown in particular when nature displays to us beings of normal proportions, so that our attention is distributed equally over all the parts of the figure without being fixed on any one of them: our perceptive faculty then finds itself lulled and soothed by this harmony, and nothing hinders any longer the free play of sympathy, which is ever ready to come forward as soon as the obstacle in its path is removed.

(16c.d)

Et cette sympathie se produit en particulier quand la nature nous présente des êtres aux proportions normales, tels que notre attention se divise également entre toutes les parties de la figure sans se fixer sur aucune d'elles : notre faculté de percevoir se trouvant alors bercée par cette espèce d'harmonie, rien n'arrête plus le libre essor de la sensibilité, qui n'attend jamais que la chute de l'obstacle pour être émue sympathiquement.

(12c)

[Next entry in this series.]

Images from the pages summarized above, in the English Translation [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Images from the pages summarized above, in the original French [click on the image for an enlargement]:

Bergson, Henri. Time and Free Will: An Essay on the Immediate Data of Consciousness, Transl. F. L. Pogson, (New York: Dover Publications, Inc., 2001).

Available online at:

http://www.archive.org/details/timeandfreewill00pogsgoog

French text from:

Bergson, Henri. Essai sur les données immédiates de la conscience. Originally published Paris: Les Presses universitaires de France, 1888.

http://www.archive.org/details/essaisurlesdonn00berguoft

Kant’s Judgments of Beauty vs. Judgments of Sublime

by Corry Shores
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Judgments of beauty concern the form of the object, and because form is a matter of the object’s delimitations, judgments of beauty are concerned with limitation. Judgments of the sublime, however, are made in regard to something formless. As being a matter of form, judgments of beauty concern quality; and as being a matter of limitlessness, judgments of sublime concern quantity (§23 128c).

The feeling of pleasure differs for both judgments. The beautiful directly provides a feeling of the promotion of life, resulting partly from the free play of the imagination. The sublime induces pleasure only indirectly, and it results after a “feeling of a momentary inhibition of the vital powers and the immediately following and all the more powerful outpouring of them; hence as an emotion it seems to be not play but something serious in the activity of the imagination. Hence it is also incompatible with charms, and, since the mind is not merely attracted by the object, but is also always reciprocally repelled by it, the satisfaction in the sublime does not so much contain positive pleasure as it does admiration or respects, i.e., it deserves to be called negative pleasure” (§23 128-129).

The most import and difference between the two types of judgments is that beauty is comprehendible and seems predetermined to be in accord with our powers of judgment, and hence is purposive, whereas the sublime is contrapurposive to our power of judgment, because we cannot comprehend it; hence it does “violence to our imagination, but is nevertheless judged all the more sublime for that” (129b).

Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.

Kant's Ideal of Beauty

by Corry Shores

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“Idea signifies, strictly speaking, a concept of reason, and ideal the representation of an individual being as adequate to an idea” (§17 117a). Our taste judges things as beautiful, but there can be no objective rule that determines what is beautiful by means of concepts alone, because the source of our beauty-judgments is aesthetic: “its determining ground is the feeling of the subject and not a concept of an object” (116b).

So because ideas are concepts of reason, we would call the ideal of beauty the archetype of taste which is an “indeterminate idea of a maximum” that “cannot be represented through concepts, but only in an individual presentation” (117a).

Such a beauty cannot be vague, but rather must be fixed by a concept of purposiveness. Nothing except humans have their ends in themselves, and thus nothing other than the human being can be said to capable of the ideal of beauty.

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

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Kant's Free and Adherent Beauties

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Kant distinguishes two beauties: free and adherent beauty. Free beauty does not presuppose a concept of perfection for what the object is supposed to be, while adherent beauty is conditioned, because it adheres to a concept based on a particular end (§16 114a).

Certain things in nature such as flowers and birds are free beauties, because they do not represent some determinate concept. Kant thus includes decorations and “music fantasias[1]

(without a theme), indeed all music without a text” as free beauties (114b).

However, the beauty of human beings, horses, and buildings is adherent beauty, because they “presuppose a concept of the end that determines what the things should be, hence a concept of its perfection” (114d). [CS: perhaps we have a stronger concept of what horses are supposed to be for, more so than for flowers, on account of our instrumental usage of horses.]

When the representation for the object matches the concept of what it is for, that is, when we become aware of the object’s perfection, then we have deemed it beautiful (115c).

[1] OED, fantasia: 1. a. Mus. ‘A composition in a style in which form is subservient to fancy’ (Stainer and Barrett)

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)

Kant’s Beauty of Color, Sound, and Form

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Normally a sensuous experience of color or sound cannot be considered beautiful, because only universally communicable non-subjective judgments may deem something as beautiful. However, they can be judged beautiful if they are considered pure: colors and sounds are vibrations or pulses whose effect is not merely their immediate impression on our eyes and ears, but as well results from our synthesizing the play of impressions into a representation of the sound or color. Because such a representation can be universally communicated, sounds and colors in this pure form may be deemed beautiful (§14 108-109).

Because in order for these representations to be pure there cannot be any disturbances or interruptions of other sensations: “all simple colors, insofar as they are pure, are held then beautiful; those that are mixed do not have this advantage” (109c).

But what is essential in all the arts is ‘drawing,’ which provides form. “All form of the objects of the senses (of the outer as well as, mediately, the inner) is either shape or play: in the latter case, either play of shapes (in space, mime, and dance), or mere play of sensations (in time).” Even though the charm of colors may be added, it remains the drawing or form that is essential in judging something as beautiful (110b).

(page numbers from: Kant, Immanuel. Critique of the Power of Judgment. Transls. & Eds. Paul Guyer & Eric Matthews. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2000.)