Christian Hermann Weisse: System of aesthetics - The art of time

The modern ideal of beauty, Weisse suggests, is in a sense a point where beauty coincides with truth. That is, whereas by the idea of truth Weisse means the philosophical understanding of the whole world, both the physical nature and the human history, the modern ideal of beauty means experiencing again this whole world and all that has happened in it as beautiful. The difference is that the modern ideal does not merely passively observe this beauty, but tries to create an image of this living world with the help of some inert matter, which in itself is lifeless. This creation of images of beauty is the definition of art, Weisse says.

Like many German philosophers of the time, Weisse provides a hierarchy of arts. He does not mean to say that works from the arts of the lower level of hierarchy would be automatically less beautiful than works from the arts of the higher level. Indeed, works from any art can have an infinite variety in their degrees of beauty. Instead, the idea of the hierarchy is that the lower levels contain more abstract types of arts, which in themselves point to more concrete types of arts as embodying features that the lower levels lack.

It is then understandable why Weisse would begin from music as the most abstract type of art. Indeed, the place of music in Weisse’s hierarchy might appear surprising, when compared with thinkers like Hegel and Schopenhauer, who placed music much higher in their respective hierarchies of arts, Schopenhauer reserving for it even the highest position. Yet, while both Hegel and Schopenhauer move in their hierarchies from brute physicality toward more immaterial types of art, Weisse chooses to begin from an art that is closest to the mere modern ideal of beauty: while the ideal is nothing but consciousness of beauty, music embodies this beauty in the most fluid type of material or movement of sounds.

Following Hegelian philosophy, Weisse notes that sounds or what we can hear embodies especially time, while what we can see embodies space (sounds appear and vanish, following one another, while colours and figures abide longer and side by side one another). Yet, it is not all sounds (Klang) that music is concerned about, but notes (Ton), that is, purified sounds that are quantitatively related to a whole system of other notes.

A piece of music, Weisse continues, contains firstly a temporal succession of such notes - this is the melody of that piece. As Weisse has constantly emphasised, we can not give any surefire quantitative recipe for making beautiful objects and this is the case also with music: we cannot say beforehand what melody is beautiful, despite music being able to be represented through quantitative notions. A certain regularity is required, and this is provided by the rhythm of the music, although Weisse thinks rhythm is still subservient to the melody. A further, equally indeterminate demand is that a piece of music should let the melody be diversified into different and even dissonant modifications, although from a more higher perspective of the whole composition a harmony would prevail.

In its most abstract phase, Weisse says, music uses such sounds that do not occur in ordinary nature, but are made through mechanical instruments (we have to wonder what Weisse would have thought about synthesisers that take this type of music into its extreme). Because of this divorce from nature, Weisse suggests, instrumental music is closest to the pure consciousness of the modern ideal of beauty. Indeed, he continues, as the most abstract art, capable of expressing nothing more than raw emotions, like joy and pain, it has necessarily been the youngest art, because such a height of abstraction has required plenty of cultivation. Indeed, the modern ideal of art, which is even more abstract, being mere consciousness of beauty, could not have appeared before this most abstract of arts had appeared in history, Weisse concludes.

Although the sounds of instrumental music are artificially created, they are in a sense natural sounds, Weisse reminds us, since all sounds are part of the physical nature. Yet, the more they resemble naturally occurring sounds, such as raindrops, the further away the instrumental music moves from what is proper to its level, Weisse argues. Still, despite the fact that instrumental music imitating natural sounds is a corruption, in Weisse’s eyes, the tendency to make such experiments shows that music has a natural drive toward more natural sounds.

A more proper development of the music into more natural sounds is shown in singing, Weisse says, where instruments are replaced by human voice. Singing is not anymore just an expression of the pure modern ideal of beauty, but adds layers from the whole human life. In its simplest forms, Weisse notes, singing can be used to express all sorts of frivolous topics, which are far from true art (one suspects Weisse would categorise pop music here). This lower form of singing can be saved only by the help of poetry and an instrumental background.

Yet, Weisse continues, singing can have a higher purpose, namely, when it strengthens the relation of a finite observer to the divine. While worldly singing usually works with one or two singers, religious singing often requires a whole chorus of voices. A further difference is, Weisse concludes, that religious choral music does not require the help of instruments to become real art.

In choral music, finite human life is immediately unified with the ideal consciousness of beauty, through which the humans try to connect to the divine they yearn to find, Weisse says. Yet, finite life can also be put into opposition to the ideal consciousness, as something lowly and unworthy of serious interest. Yet, just like in the earlier stage of comical, this frivolous finite life can also help to show the ideal, by revealing its own unworthiness and contradictoriness.

This revelation is achieved by the final phase of music, Weisse notes, that is, opera, where music is used to embody the drama of life. Opera in a very literal sense combines the previous types of music, by connecting instrumental music to singing, thus proving Weisse’s earlier point that if singing of lowly matters is to become an art, it must be helped by musical instruments. So, opera can be taken as the final truth of music.

Yet, opera shows also the very reason why music is ultimately not the most satisfying vehicle of art, Weisse emphasises. In order to express the ordinary human life, music requires a more robust shape of embodiment. Indeed, opera has to rely on the help of other arts - it uses visual arts to provide the setting and poetry to create something to be sung. Even more so, Weisse remarks, opera must be embodied by living people, who express the beauty of life through gestures and facial expressions - or even by activities like dancing and pantomime. In other words, in opera music wants to become visible, which is also the key to the next stage in Weisse’s hierarchy of arts.

Christian Hermann Weisse: System of aesthetics - History of an ideal beauty

The development of beauty, with Weisse, had to contend with immediate beauty not necessarily conforming to the sublime infinity beyond it and being thus ugly. Now, while we can see what an ideal beauty corresponding to the sublime should be like, he continues, originally the discovery of ideal beauty required the effort of generations, and indeed, several historical cultures.

Weisse connects the notion of ideal beauty especially to the notion of mythology. Mythologies at their best are for Weisse not just arbitrary creations of fantasy, but reflect the life and thoughts of a people. A mythology sums up the hopes and fears of a culture in a symbolic shape of mythical personalities. These symbols, Weisse says, resemble the previous aesthetic shape of comical humour, in that they both rise above the ordinary life of finite, momentary and decaying shapes, the difference being that while humour merely notes and rises above this decay, mythological symbols try to grasp something stable from this play of finite entities.

Mythology as such is not yet beauty. It is no surprise that Weisse would follow the general trend in thinking that the ancient Greek were the people responsible for transforming mythology into an ideal beauty, because Hellenic mythology was a particularly natural creation of the spirit of Greek life. Hellenic mythology, as Weisse envisions it, had two different types of mythological shapes. Firstly, the mythology tells about heroes living in the distant past, who express the essence of what the Greek thought being a Greek meant. Secondly, the heroes interact with the beautiful gods, who represent various aspects of the superhuman realm beyond human history.This mythology is then embodied in the Hellenic cult, which represents the relations of humans to this supernatural realm.

Just like Hellenic ideal was a result of historical development, it was also subject to further development, Weisse notes. While in Hellenic mythology gods were characterised by their beauty, such an external appearance was revealed to be frivolous compared to god being a self-conscious entity: beauty is replaced by something more valuable. This does not mean that beauty was completely ignored after this historical transformation, but its place in the hierarchy of values was just lowered.

With this transformation, Weisse explains, the ancient ideal of beauty turned into a romantic ideal, with its own mythology. While Hellenic gods were present as beautiful shapes, romantic God is something beyond the mythological or legendary figures - an unreachable infinity. This doesn’t mean that romantic God would never be thought to appear in the finite world, Weisse admits, but the relation of the divine and the finite was just reversed. While Hellenic gods were embodied divinities, romantic God could divinise a body - an obvious reference to the notion of incarnation. Furthermore, Weisse continues, unlike with Hellenic gods, this appearance of the romantic God in the world of finity was meant to be just temporary and God returned to the realm beyond.

The divination or at least spiritualisation of the corporeal world in the romantic mythology happened also in an opposite fashion from incarnation, Weisse notes. The finite world or at least some part of it still appeared to be severed from God - in terms of earlier concepts, it was an ugly world. Now, this inherent ugliness of the human world, Weisse continues, was presented in a non-bodily form as evil spirits opposing God. Indeed, often the beautiful gods of antiquity were now interpreted as these evil spirits or demons. Human world was then seen as a battleground between the spiritual forces of good and evil.

This battle was not supposed to be never ending, Weisse notes, but it was assumed to end with the overcoming of the forces of evil. Yet, this final victory was not really thought of as occurring at some definite point of time, but only in the hazy future - or, one might say, it had already been won, since nothing could hinder God's plans. This victory or salvation of the finite world was wrapped in the notion of divine love of the finite world.

While Hegel had ended the development of aesthetics with romanticism, which made his contemporaries assume he had assumed the death of aesthetics, Weisse continues further. Indeed, this very next step he assumes is inherent in the notion of divine love of finity - like the romantic God was supposed to do in the future or have done in an atemporal manner, we humans have again come to appreciate the beauty of the world around us. When this change has happened, yet another form of ideal has appeared - the modern ideal.

While many German romantics had supposed that a new ideal would require a new mythology, Weisse comments that all we really need now is the science of beauty itself or speculative aesthetics. Indeed, we need not even a complete aesthetical theory, but just a certainty that beauty is something equally eternal as truth and God are. This certainty is then accompanied with the historical appreciation of the former shapes of ideal beauty and with the expectation of further beauties of innumerable measure.

The historical development of the aesthetic ideals has stopped now, Weisse emphasises, but this does not mean that no further beauties would not be found. Instead, quite the opposite has happened, since by understanding beauty as such, we have liberated it from any necessary connection to further mythologies. We have thus learned to appreciate beautiful objects, which each in their unique manner express the modern ideal of beauty. In other words, Weisse implies, we now appreciate art for its own sake, not just as an expression of religious notions.