“ If the whole world as idea is only the visibility of will, the work of art is to render this visibility more distinct. ”
Arthur Schopenhauer, The World as Will and Representation (1819). copy citation
| Author | Arthur Schopenhauer |
|---|---|
| Source | The World as Will and Representation |
| Topic | visibility art |
| Date | 1819 |
| Language | English |
| Reference | |
| Note | Translated by R. B. Haldane and J. Kemp |
| Weblink | http://www.gutenberg.org/files/38427/38427-h/38427-h.html |
Context
“we must regard art as the higher ascent, the more complete development of all this, for it achieves essentially just what is achieved by the visible world itself, only with greater concentration, more perfectly, with intention and intelligence, and therefore may be called, in the full significance of the word, the flower of life. If the whole world as idea is only the visibility of will, the work of art is to render this visibility more distinct. It is the camera obscura which shows the objects more purely, and enables us to survey them and comprehend them better. It is the play within the play, the stage upon the stage in “Hamlet.”
The pleasure we receive from all beauty, the consolation which art affords, the enthusiasm of the artist, which enables him to forget the cares of life,—the latter an advantage of the man of genius over other men, which alone repays him for the suffering that increases in proportion to the clearness of consciousness, and for the desert loneliness among men of a different race,—all this rests on the fact that the in-itself of life, the will, existence itself, is, as we shall see farther on, a constant sorrow, partly miserable, partly terrible;”
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