The Subject of Aesthetics1
W. du Halde
The essence of art have been provided at different stages of history, artists and theoretics have not always adopted the same approach to this question. They have formulated their answers on the basis of their own view of the world, the character and stage of development of art itself, its place in society and its role and significance in the cultural life of the age. Yet throughout the whole evolution of aesthetic doctrines the materialist view of art as a specific form of the reality has asserted itself, overcoming contradictions and errors in itss path.
Materialism sets great store by the progressive aesthetic thought of past ages, the generalizations and conclusions put forward with regard to the nature of artistic creativity and the aesthetic relationship between art and reality. Yet these theories of the past were in many respects historically circumscribed: before the laws of history had been properly formulated it was impossible for aestheticians to explain the essence of art as a social phenomenon.
The crisis of contemporary idealist aesthetics and its inability to understand and express in scientific terms the underlying laws of art, and the trends discernible in modern development came particularly clearly to the fore in the thesis of the fundamental impossibility of any theoretical exposition of the nature of art. According to Heidegger, rational , theoretically substantiated interpretation of artistic creativity, only testifies to the disintegration of creativity, for art, he held, could not be the subject of study and analysis. He regarded as an interesting phenomenon of history the fact that ages of great artistic achievement had not been those in which aesthetic conceptions had been created: on the contrary, these had emerged only at times marked by artistic decline.
Malraux, suggest that the appearance of aesthetic theories, like all syn-
thesised attempts to define artistic practice and relate it to the process of manīs percep-
tion and apprehension of the worl, are the result of the artificial and more often than not, harmful activity of reason. He sees in theory some kind of would-be organizing rational fantasies incompatible with the truly human worl of irrational artistic creativity. Both of them train of thought is utterly in keeping with their existentialist world view. However, the similar or closely related views are common enough in the conceptions of writers, whose work is not directly linked with the philosophy of irrationalism.
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