Bart Vandenabeele

_A Companion to Schopenhauer_ provides a comprehensive guide to all the important facets of Schopenhauer’s philosophy. The volume contains 26 newly commissioned essays by prominent Schopenhauer scholars working in the field today. A thoroughly comprehensive guide to the life, work, and thought of Arthur Schopenhauer Demonstrates the range of Schopenhauer’s work and illuminates the debates it has generated 26 newly commissioned essays by some of the most prominent Schopenhauer scholars working today reflect the very latest trends in Schopenhauer scholarship Covers the full range of historical and philosophical perspectives on Schopenhauer’s work Discusses his seminal contributions to our understanding of knowledge, perception, morality, science, logic and mathematics, Platonic Ideas, the unconscious, aesthetic experience, art, colours, sexuality, will, compassion, pessimism, tragedy, pleasure, and happiness.

In this essay, I argue that Schopenhauer's view of the aesthetic feelings of the beautiful and the sublime shows how a “dialectical” interpretation that homogenizes both aesthetic concepts and reduces the discrepancy between both to merely quantitative differences is flawed. My critical analysis reveals a number of important tensions in both Schopenhauer's own aesthetic theory—which does not ultimately succeed in “merging” Plato's and Kant's approaches—and the interpretation that unjustly reduces the value of aesthetic experience to a merely preliminary stage of ethical will‐less salvation.

Drawing on anthropological examples of first contacts between people from different cultures, I argue that non-verbal communication plays a far bigger part in intercultural communication than has been acknowledged in the literature so far. Communication rests on mutually attuning in a large number of judgements. Some sort of structuring principle is needed at this point, and Davidson's principle of charity is a good candidate, provided sufficient attention is given to non-verbal communication. There will always be more and less successful interpretations and translations, and their success will depend on the success of the non-verbal communication at hand. There is no need for cognitive or semantic universals: people understand each other because they share (a) certain form(s) of life. How ever, it is incorrect to treat forms of life as rigid entities with clear boundaries: it is both impossible and unnecessary to determine them in an exact way. Any appeal to cognitive or cultural essences to explain how people communicate successfully is flawed. My critique of essentialism is not a defence of linguistic ‘anything goes' relativism whatsoever. Assumptions underwriting a relativist stance often wrongly issue, in a decidedly non-relativist confidence in one fixed set of categories, values or meanings. S. Afr. J. Philos. Vol.21(2) 2002: 85-96

Schopenhauer’s pessimism, aesthetic contemplation and the value of art According to Schopenhauer, the aesthetic contemplation of art temporarily offers some kind of redemption: art is valuable because of its liberating effect on the spectator’s will, i.e. his or her urges, strivings and desires. He also acknowledges that works of art have cognitive value, since they offer insight into timeless Platonic Ideas. I argue that Schopenhauer is right to acknowledge the cognitive value of art, but that his aesthetic Platonism is flawed and thus cannot offer a solid foundation for the envisaged redemption, let alone for human happiness. By confronting Schopenhauer’s aesthetic theory with some aspects of Kant’s, I aim to show that by disentangling Schopenhauer’s theory from Platonism and focusing on his psychology of aesthetic contemplation we can provide a more plausible view of aesthetic contemplation, which is compatible with Schopenhauerian pessimism as well as with the possibility of human happiness.

Numerous contemporary artworks are found repellent, even by genuine art lovers, either because they deliberately derange our perception and imagination by an abundance of incoherent representations and stimuli or because they demand that we value seemingly nonsensical objects or all kinds of disgusting materials. Installations, collages, and so-called unassisted ready-mades especially cannot count on too much appreciation, unless the artists in question are sufficiently supported by clever managers who reduce their work to commodities, which then serve merely as illustrations of complicated art theories. “Postmodern” and conceptual art suffer especially from this: the value of such work as art is..

The Sublime in Schopenhauer's Philosophy transforms our understanding of Schopenhauer's aesthetics and anthropology. Bart Vandenabeele breaks new ground by providing what is probably the first monograph to be devoted exclusively to Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime. The book focuses on Schopenhauer's conception of the sublime and how it relates to the individual and its attitude towards life. The author explores in unusual depth Schopenhauer's relation to Kant, whose follower and critic he was, and shows how Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory moves beyond Kant's in numerous meaningful ways. Drawing on recent insights in psychology and the philosophy of mind, Vandenabeele seeks ultimately to rework Schopenhauer's theory into a viable form so as to establish the sublime as a distinctive aesthetic category with a broader existential and metaphysical significance.

While several commentators agree that Schopenhauer’s theory of ‘will-less contemplation’ is a variant of Kant’s account of aesthetic disinterestedness, I shall argue here that Schopenhauer’s account departs from Kant’s in several important ways, and that he radically transforms Kant’s analysis of aesthetic judgement into a novel aesthetic attitude theory. In the first part of the article, I critically discuss Kant’s theory of disinterestedness, pay particular attention to rectifying a common misconception of this notion, and discuss some significant problems with Kant’s approach. In part two, I argue that Schopenhauer gives up Kant’s concern with the transcendental conditions of the reflecting judgement, but nonetheless retains two crucial aspects of Kant’s analysis: first, the idea that pure aesthetic pleasure cannot be based on the satisfaction of some personal desire or inclination and, second, that aesthetic experience is ultimately based on the stimulation of our cognitive powers. For Kant, too, suggests that, although our application of the predicate ‘beautiful’ be independent of the subsumption of the object under any determinate concept, it still leaves room for the imagination and the understanding to play ‘beyond’ what is regulated by determinate concepts. For Schopenhauer, aesthetic pleasure is equally the result of the cognitive freedom and expansion that the ‘will-less’ attitude affords. Schopenhauer thus transforms the Kantian transcendental analysis of beauty in terms of non-conceptual reflection’ into a psychological theory of beauty in terms of ‘non-conceptual cognition’. Hence, according to both Kant and Schopenhauer (or so I argue) a beautiful object yields a degree of harmony that cannot be reduced to the discursively rigid unity offered by conceptual knowledge. And, although Schopenhauer’s ‘idealistic’ version of aesthetic perception fails to accommodate for several valuable ways in which artworks can convey ideas, thoughts, and emotions, his account of aesthetic contemplation in terms of ‘will-lessness’ and objectivity is still rich in psychological insight.

Although Kant (wrongly) holds that the universal communicability of aesthetic judgments logically follows from the disinterested character of the pleasure upon which they are based, Kant’s emphasis on the a priori validity of judgments of beauty can be viewed as a rebuttal of the kind of empiricist arguments that Burke offers to justify the social nature of the experience of beauty. I argue that the requirement of universal communicability is not a mere addition to the requirement of universal validity and is far more relevant to an adequate characterisation of the beautiful than has customarily been assumed. I further argue that the ‘exemplary necessity’ of pure judgments of taste, if understood correctly, reveals beauty’s primordial social significance, enabling us to become alive to a profound universal solidarity among aesthetic subjects.

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:"New" Media, Art, and Intercultural CommunicationBart Vandenabeele (bio)It is fairly common — but perhaps not altogether innocent — to avoid addressing new media and intercultural aspects of communication in one and the same essay. Here, however, both issues are treated together. I shall investigate, in a perhaps somewhat unusual way, the phenomenon of "new" artistic media and some related issues such as virtual reality, computer and telecommunications technology, and cyberspace. I offer some philosophical remarks, especially of an epistemological kind, that are important to every debate in which terms like multimedia art, "new" media art, and screen based art occur. I argue that the novelty of some changes in the use of artistic media tends to be overemphasized and dramatized. Furthermore, I shall point to the lack of interest in intercultural aspects of artistic communication and to the relevance an intercultural orientation can have for reflection on the phenomenon of so-called "new" media in art.1It has often been claimed that art is the best possible window into another community. Art would be a universal language and contact with works of art supposedly offers the best direct or immediate internal access to another community. This is purported to be a kind of access that cannot possibly be matched by knowledge about the geography, religion, and history. Even John Dewey believes that "au fond, the aesthetic quality is the same for Greeks, Chinese, Americans."2 This idea is surprisingly reminiscent of Clive Bell's "discovery" of Significant Form in so-called primitive art.3 Dewey says thatbarriers are dissolved, limiting prejudices melt away, when we enter into the spirit of Negro or Polynesian art. This insensible melting is far more efficacious than the change effected by reasoning, because it enters directly into attitude."4To this contention one could object in the following way. Immediate contact with for example, Congolese Nkisi nkondi fetish statues (in the museum of [End Page 1] African Art and History in Tervuren), which are bristling with nails are quite shocking to Europeans — such as Joseph Conrad in the Congo.5 Only by acquaintance with facts that are external to the artwork can one get real access to and understanding of them. One has to know that the nails are meant to seal dispute resolutions and that the statues "were considered so powerful that they were sometimes kept outside the village."6 Only when I know this, will my first perception be seriously altered. It is an objection that is often made against the privilege enjoyed by the immediate contact with the senses: knowledge of the "context" can enhance our appreciation of the art of the foreign community.Both the universalist view and the objection are flawed.7 First of all, we have to ask whether we can make such a sharp distinction between internal and external information and, second, whether it is correct to presuppose a typical proper aesthetics to make artistic communication possible. Is not every form of life already the (not fully definable) outcome of conscious or unconscious influence by other forms of life? What would be the so-called "own" internal aesthetics by which we should judge the famous "Turkish" Iznik tiles that reflect especially the Ottoman rulers' interest in Chinese porcelain, or the "Japanese" aesthetics of Zen Buddhism that is the result of a century-long historical interaction between Japanese culture and the new, foreign religion of Buddhism, which traveled from Japan to India via China and Korea? What would be the "typical" English garden, which was realized on the basis of travel reports from the Far East? And what of the Eastern influence on so-called typical Western painters as Matisse, Whistler, and Degas or composers such as Debussy, Messiaen, Ravel, Rimski-Korsakow and Puccini? What is clear is that it is completely unclear what is "own," "typical," or "authentic." Live communities are never isolated islands developing by themselves. It is as impossible to demarcate strictly the "proper" from the "foreign" as it is to find a universal language that would make artistic communication possible in an absolutely definitive way.Just as it is not necessary to share a language to communicate8 — this holds both for people...

In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:The Journal of Aesthetic Education 37.1 (2003) 90-106 [Access article in PDF] Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and the Aesthetically Sublime Bart Vandenabeele Much has been written on the relationship between Arthur Schopenhauer and Friedrich Nietzsche. Much remains to be said, however, concerning their respective theories of the sublime. First, I shall argue against the traditional, dialectical view of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime that stresses the crucial role the sublime plays in bridging the wide gap between aesthetics and ethics. Although this traditional interpretation is definitely influenced by Nietzsche, I do not maintain it is exclusively Nietzschean as such. Second, I would like to offer some points of contention concerning their accounts of the feeling of the sublime. I will try and show that, although Nietzsche's account of the Apollonian and the Dionysian is highly influenced by Schopenhauer's analysis of the sublime feeling, his analysis of Dionysian intoxication cannot be taken to simply develop out of Schopenhauer's philosophy. Moreover, by way of (a not so innocent) example, it is shown that Nietzsche's philosophy of music — although highly influenced by Schopenhauer's — cannot as easily be reconciled with Schopenhauer'stheory as is commonly believed, due to their differing accounts of the nature of the feeling of the sublime. Schopenhauer on the Feeling of the Sublime: Pleasure and Pain When one tries to describe the exact relationship between the aesthetic feelings of the beautiful and the sublime in the philosophy of "Nietzsche's educator," many interpretation problems arise. 2 The main problem can be compared to a similar issue in Kant: if one agrees with Kant that the theory of the sublime is "a mere appendix to our aesthetic judging," then it is possible to restrict the Kantian critique of the aesthetic appreciation to the Analytic of the judgment of taste 2 — that is, if one neglects the subtle displacements and gaps in Kant's text. In this way, as one can read in its introduction, the [End Page 90] Critique of Judgement serves as the sought-after "bridge" between the theoretical and the practical, spanning the gulf previously created between the knowledge of objects according to the conditions of possible experience and the realization of freedom under the unconditional of moral law. Moreover, if one notices that Schopenhauer too, in his aesthetics, stresses the fact that "in the main" the feeling of the sublime "is identical with the feeling of the beautiful" and "is distinguished from that of the beautiful only by the addition, namely the exaltation beyond the known hostile relation of the contemplated object to the will in general,then the option for a similar unifying and pacifying reading seems evident. 3 I shall argue that things are far more complicated and that such a "dialectical" interpretation is far from evident.In the appendix to his The World as Will and Representation, Schopenhauer had stressed — long before Jean-François Lyotard — the enormous importance of Kant's analysis of the sublime, when he wrote that "the theory of the sublime" is "by far the most excellent thing in the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment" (WWR, I, 532). That theory, Schopenhauer says, is even "incomparably more successful than that of the beautiful" and "gives not only, as that does, the general method of investigation, but also a part of the right way to it, so much so that, although it does not provide the real solution to the problem, it nevertheless touches on it very closely" (WWR, I, 532).According to Schopenhauer, the main difference between the sublime and the beautiful is that, while in the case of the latter, pure knowledge has gained the upper hand without a struggle...and not even a recollection of the will remains [with the sublime] that state of pure knowing is obtained first of all by a conscious and violent tearing away from the relations of the same object to the will which are recognized as unfavorable, by a free exaltation, accompanied by consciousness, beyond the will and the knowledge related to it (WWR, I, 202). The objects can be hostile to the human...

The mainstream interpretation of Schopenhauer's philosophy is dialectical and stresses the continuity between aesthetics and ethics. This interpretation has its own plausibility but is overly confident in the letter. Restricting the value of Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory to a mere propaedeutic of an ethics, wherein the ascetic ideal of the denial of willing is central, might seem fully justified at first sight, but clearly overlooks a number of crucial complexities and ambivalences. First of all, it obliterates the specificity and complexity of Schopenhauer's theoryof (aesthetic) pleasure. In the first section, aesthetic pleasure is shown to be closely linked with a peculiar form of non-conceptual insight, which is at the core of Schopenhauer's philosophy. In the second section, it is argued that aesthetic pleasure cannotbe reduced to the so-called negative pleasure that accompanies the liberation from individual willing. The dialectical reading of Schopenhauer's philosophy invariably stresses the negativity of aesthetic pleasure to argue for the 'bridge' between the aesthetic disinterestedness and the ethical denial of willing. Schopenhauer's aesthetics, however, acknowledges a kind of intrinsic and positive pleasure, which is bound up with the perception of the (Platonic) Idea in and through the concrete object and with the non-ordinary use of the cognitive faculties. The aesthetic contemplation is a peculiar kind of(non-conceptual) self-consciousness, which is itself a source of pleasure and is to some degree independent of the pleasure of relief from the demands of desire. Moreover, this dialectical interpretation avoids a detailed and radical scrutiny of Schopenhauer's theory of the sublime feeling. In the second section, the sublime feeling is contrasted with the beautiful and is shown to be a pure feeling that meets the specific conditions of an aesthetic appreciation. An attentive reading of Schopenhauer's fascinating theory of the sublime intimates a new interpretation of his philosophy, in which the fissures between aesthetics and ethics appear. The aesthetic feeling of the sublime hampers a smooth crossing from the aesthetic realm to the ethical denial of willing in asceticism, since it is not at all an harmonious feeling which accompanies the liberation from the will and does not promise an everlasting freedom from willing. The sublime feeling is an ambivalent mixture of pleasure and pain, of joy and sorrow and reveals a deep and unbridgeable gap in the heart of subjectivity itself. It is clearly distinct from and even contradictory to the ascetic's ideal of restraint and denial of the will