Art

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Dinesh ^club

. . . Why do we care so much about art? Not only the few geniuses who produce it but a vastly greater number, a number many times that of the artists themselves, regard the consumption of art as the most profoundly nourishing activity in life, or at last as something very close to that. Why? Schopenhauer’s answer is, because it provides us with a release, if only momentary, from the prison we ordinarily inhabit. We have seen how he regards the normal human condition as that of the enslavement of the individual to his own willing, to his desires, appetites, needs, fears, fantasies and so on, and now he sees this state as incapable of producing any real, genuinely non-illusory satisfaction or peace of mind. Our restlessness and striving never cease in this world, unless perhaps we are saints. . . . . Everyone’s life ends in this utter destruction of the individual that is death, and most peoples contain other catastrophes along the way. Because of all this, and if only subliminally, we feel our lives to be a state of bondage from which we long for some release that is not death. Now according to Schopenhauer, aesthetic experience provides us with such a release. When we are taken out of ourselves disinterested contemplation of anything -- whether it be work of art or a natural or man-made object -- we are for the duration of that experience released from the tyranny under which we customarily live. . . . ~ Page 170

21 months ago. Edited 21 months ago.

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