Chapter 49 Part III The World as Representation Revisited §49

All our previous considerations of art have been grounded everywhere on the truth that the object of art—the object of expression—is the artist's own, and therefore the knowledge of this object, as The embryo, the source [of a work of art] necessarily precedes the work of the artist—the Idea in Plato's mind, and nothing else; not individual things, not objects of rational thought and science.Ideas and concepts have some commonalities when both [respectively] represent the actual things as a unit of "one", but the great difference between the two is due to the fact that the concepts in the first chapter and the ideas in this chapter are the same. Having said that, it should be clear enough.But I would never claim that Plato also clearly understood this distinction; rather, he has many examples of Ideas, and the discussion of Ideas applies only to concepts.On this point, we will leave it alone for now and go our own way.It is enough to comfort us that although we have repeatedly stepped on the old road of a great and outstanding person, we are not [step by step] stepping forward in his footsteps, but pursuing our own goals. —Concepts are abstract and come from reasoning.Concepts are completely indeterminate in their sphere of meaning, only in their scope.A concept can be understood and mastered by anyone as long as they are rational, and it can be conveyed to people through vocabulary without other media, and its definition says it all.Ideas, on the contrary, are always intuitive, though definable as adequate representatives of concepts.And the Idea, though it represents an innumerable number of individual things, is always definite: it can never be known by an individual, but only by him who, above all desires and all personalities, has risen to the pure subject of knowing; It can only be attained by geniuses, and by those who are in the mind of geniuses by raising their pure cognitive faculties, most likely by the works of geniuses.The Idea is therefore not unconditionally, but only conditionally, communicable to men, since the Idea, both grasped and reproduced in a work of art, arouses [individually] only according to the level of their own intelligence. Notice.For this reason it happens that the finest works of all the arts, the most precious products of genius, must always remain incomprehensible to the dull majority of mankind.There is a gap between these works and the majority of people. The majority of people cannot approach this kind of heavenly scriptures, just as the common people cannot approach the princes and princes.It is true that the most unrefined people regard recognized masterpieces as authority, but only in order not to expose their own imbecility.At this time they are always ready, without saying anything, to disparage these masterpieces, and if anyone allows him to believe that it is possible to do so without exposing themselves, then they are ashamed of everything great and beautiful--things that have never been seen. It does not arouse their appreciation, so it hurts their self-esteem. Since the creators of these things have hated them for a long time, now they can happily vent their hatred.It turns out that if a person wants to voluntarily recognize the value of others and respect the value of others, he must have his own value.This is the reason why [one] must be humble in spite of merit, and why [people] often give too much credit to this virtue [of others].Of all the sisterly virtues, humility is the only one that every man who dares to praise any eminent person, in order to quench and remove [men's own] unworthy wrath, always adds to his praise.But what is humility other than feigned servility?Is not humility the means by which men [have to], in this vile and envious world, beg forgiveness from those who have none because they have merit and merit?It turns out that whoever is not conceited because of ineffectiveness is not humility, but honesty.

Ideas are differentiated into many ones with the help of the time and space forms of our intuitive experience.The concept, on the contrary, is the one recovered from many by the abstraction of our reason. This may be called the unity after the event, while the former may be called the unity before the event.Finally, one can express the difference between concepts and ideas by the metaphor that one can say that a concept is like an inanimate container into which one puts things one after the other in a disorderly manner, except for what one puts into them. (due to synthetic judgment), and can no longer come up with (due to analytical judgment).Ideas, on the other hand, develop in him, whoever grasps them, representations which are new to their eponymous concepts.An idea is like a living, developing, fecund organism which produces what was not contained in it.

From all that has been said, then, the concept, however useful it is to life, so useful, so necessary, and so fruitful to science, is never fruitful to art.On the contrary, the realized idea is the true and only source of any authentic work of art.Ideas, in their eminently primitive nature, can only be drawn from life itself, from nature, from the world, and only true geniuses or those who have risen to the rank of geniuses in a moment of excitement can do so.It is only from such immediate sensations that real, eternally vital deeds can arise.Just because ideas are and will remain intuitive, the artist is not aware of the purport and goal of his works in the abstract, and what emerges in front of him is not a concept, but an idea.Therefore, he could give no reason for what he did.He is, as people say, working unconsciously, or instinctively, only from what he feels.On the contrary, the imitator, the affectator, the imitator, the slave, all these people in art start from the concept.They memorize in true masterpieces what delights and what impresses; and when they have made this clear, they take it conceptually, that is, in the abstract, and then cunningly, overtly or covertly, imitate.Like parasitic plants, they absorb nutrients from other people's works, and like leeches, they are the color of their nutrients.Yes, one can go further and say that they are like machines. Although the machines can crush and mix the things put in, they can never digest them, so that the ingredients put in still exist and can still be extracted from the mixture. Find it out, sift it out.On the contrary, only genius can be compared to an organic, assimilative, metamorphic, productive body.Because although he has been educated and nurtured by his predecessors and their works, it is life and the world itself that directly conceive him through the impressions of things he sees.Therefore, not even the best education can detract from his originality.All imitators, all affectators embody the essence of other people's exemplary works in concepts, but concepts can never endow a work with inner life.The epoch itself, that is, the ignorant masses of each period, only know concepts and cling to concepts, so they are willing to accept those pretentious works with loud applause.However, these works have lost their appreciative value within a few years, because the spirit of the times, that is, some popular concepts, have changed by themselves, and those works can only take root on these concepts.Only true masterpieces, which are directly drawn from nature, from life, can be as immortal as nature itself, and always retain its original moving force.For these works belong not to any age, but to [the whole] human race.It is for this reason that they disdain to conform to their own age, which accepts them lukewarmly.And because these works often indirectly and negatively expose contemporary mistakes, even if [people] admit these works, they always hesitate to move forward, nor do they sincerely want to.What offsets all this, however, is their ability to be immortal, to retain a vivid, still novel appeal in the farthest future.Then they will no longer be overlooked and misunderstood, for the few judging men of the centuries have crowned and sanctioned them by admiring them.The speeches of these few people gradually increased to constitute authority.

This authority alone is the referee in people's minds if they have any hope for the hereafter.It's all just a few individuals who show up one after another.It turns out that the masses and crowds of later generations, no matter what era they are in, are still the same as the masses and crowds of today. They were, are, and will still be obedient and obtuse. —Let people read the indictments of the great men of every century against their contemporaries, which always sound as if they were uttered today, for [they were] of the same race.In every age, in every art, the empty frame takes the place of the spirit.The spirit is always only the property of an individual, but the pattern is an old garment that has been taken off by a recently recognized spiritual phenomenon.From all this, there is no other way of gaining the admiration of posterity than at the expense of the approval of the present, and vice versa.