Friday, January 04, 2008

Malström



And in the center of the twirling waters, where the pressure cracks the ships of thought, a slight flouration seems to bloom?...
Art, Religion, Science. Beauty, Goodness, Truth. I find the way for redeption and truth about nature also in art. That is my experience so far.

We judge the finality, and not causality of nature, if we judge its creations as artworks; in artworks made and estimated by human genius, therefore, their perfection is not a sign of the creator's skill only, it is a sign of overall and universal human finality. In an aesthetical sense, spirit (Geist) is what animates the soul (Seele) with finality. Animated with finality, and not causality, soul is in play. »Now my proposition is,« says Kant, »that this principle is nothing else than the faculty of presenting aesthetic ideas,« which is the imagination, the productive faculty of cognition. The material for imagination »can be borrowed by us from nature in accordance with that law, but be worked up by us into something else – namely, what surpasses nature.« Genius, then, is a talent for creating and estimating arts which presupposes a definite concept of the product: not of its causality or utility, which we would usually expect as an answer to the question »What is this good for?«. The concept required in genius is a concept of an end, of the finality of artwork. To give imagination some restrictions in its flying freedom, genius needs taste »so that it may preserve its character of finality«.

Lev Kreft, "Mission(s) of Art".

4 comments:

Stargazer said...

I believe the truth is within all of us, sometimes realized, but never actualized, seemingly not possible in this reality. Just a thought...

runnerfrog said...

OK.
The whole point of the post was saying that art appreciation and production are productive impulses for the subsequent perception of the truth (no matter how that is defined). Obviously this expresses that I can't appreciate conceptual relativity. However, it's just a post, of a blog, not a line in a book. :-) So I yes can relativise its importance. ;-)
Thanks for your comments, as always.

Stargazer said...

I enjoy all your posts, and appreciation all your creations; they are all beautiful. I post what I'm feeling at the time, and it's only a reflection of me.

Your words are very thought provoking, and I look forward to reading them all.

Blog on Runnerfrog!

runnerfrog said...

Made me blush, don't praise me much, I'll get self-conscious ;-)

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