Lecture: Philosophy of Art

Scope and Intent
Set against the late Romantic search for foundations after political and spiritual upheavals, the lecture frames art as a primary mode of knowledge. Art is presented neither as ornament nor mere entertainment but as a privileged way of approaching truth that eludes discursive concepts. Its task is to reconcile finite experience with the intimation of the infinite, transforming reflection into sensuous form without exhausting mystery.

Art, Knowledge, and the Organon of Culture
Artworks are treated as thinking forms: they do not argue but show. The lecture insists that imagination and reason are not opposing faculties; they cooperate in a higher synthesis. Art serves as an organon of culture, educating feeling and judgment, forming character, and mediating between philosophy, religion, and everyday life. The criterion of success lies in inner necessity, an organic coherence in which parts and whole mutually illuminate one another.

Symbol, Allegory, and Irony
The symbolic artwork unites meaning and form so intimately that neither can be abstracted without loss. Allegory, by contrast, points beyond itself through a detachable sign. The lecture values symbol as the higher mode, yet reserves a place for allegory within reflective art. Romantic irony appears as disciplined self-awareness: the artist acknowledges the artwork’s finitude even while striving toward the infinite. Properly understood, irony does not dissolve commitment; it steadies it, preventing dogmatism and mannerism.

Classical and Romantic
A historical polarity structures the argument. Classical art, epitomized by the Greeks, embodies the ideal in serene, determinate forms; its beauty lies in perfected limits. Romantic art emerges with Christianity and modern inwardness; it is dynamic, fragmentary, and open-ended, seeking to reveal the infinite within the finite. The lecture refuses a simple hierarchy. Each mode has a legitimate vocation, yet modernity’s deepest task belongs to the romantic: to bear the weight of self-consciousness without losing form.

Myth, Religion, and the Life of Forms
Myth is not a repository of fables but a living matrix of meaning through which a community intuits its origin and destiny. Ancient myth gave classical form its plasticity; Christian revelation redirected symbolism toward interiority, grace, and history. The lecture portrays the highest art as a communion of the beautiful with the holy: not ecclesiastical propaganda, but a transfiguration of experience where freedom meets tradition and individuality meets universality.

History, Nations, and Comparative Perspective
Art develops historically rather than according to timeless rules. National literatures are genuine laboratories of form, each bearing a distinct rhythm of language, custom, and faith. The lecture encourages comparative study and translation as arts in their own right, expanding the horizon of taste and renewing creativity by contact with difference.

Genius, Criticism, and the Work
Genius is less an isolated thunderbolt than a power to form living wholes. The artwork is an organism, not a mechanism; rules arise from it rather than preceding it. Correspondingly, criticism is not external policing but a creative continuation of the work, a reflective counterpart that clarifies, completes, and sometimes corrects. Interpretation proceeds in a circle between parts and whole, demanding patience, tact, and sympathy.

Measure and Vocation
Art’s vocation is measured by its capacity to intensify life while orienting it toward truth. The lecture closes with a call for works that are at once rigorous and free, conscious and inspired, rooted in history yet open to the future, a progressive, universal poetry in which the diverse arts converge without losing their voices.