Познание, мораль и политика = Cognition, morality and policy. Учебное пособие

It should also be noted that true art is always elitist. This doesn't necessary mean that pieces of art could be created and comprehended by the selected individuals only (A. Schopenhauer). Absolutely not! True art, as well as the essence of religion and philosophy, is open and created to all. Spiritual truth cannot be hidden, selective, turned into the secret. It is widely available, yet not everyone is willing to relate. Art is a gift of spirit. It is offered and must be donated to everyone for free, pro-bono. But a person is so corrupted and spoiled, that he doesn't want to accept the gift. That is why, only those who want enter elite, creating and comprehending art. Spiritual communion is voluntary. But people try to escape freedom (E. Fromm) because it carries with it responsibility run away from beauty, for it reveals disgrace; hides from faith, as it discloses imperfection and opposition to the spiritual ideals; avoid thinking and philosophizing, because they are laborious; elude truth because it reveals the lie of existence.

Kant reduced art to imitation1, while Schelling and the German romantics, on the contrary, put art above nature. However, their interpretations of genius are similar. I. Kant wrote, that genius «gives art rules», «is the favorite of nature». Kant wrote on the nature of genius's creativity: «Genius himself cannot describe or scientifically justify the way he creates his work – he sets the rules just as nature; that is why the author of the art work, owing to his genius, doesn't realize himself, how the ideas have come to him, and it is not in his power to arbitrarily or systematically make them up or tell the others, how to create similar art works». We may learn everything, stated by the genius mind of I. Newton, «but it is impossible to learn how to create inspired poetry». Talent is enough for science, while art requires genius. This doesn't mean, of course, that there are no geniuses in science. Genius is just excessive for science, turning science into philosophy and art.

G.W.F. Hegel puts art below philosophy and religion, believing, that art is burdened by sensitivity, i.e. expresses the spiri-

1 Kant I. Collected Works: In 8 Vols. Vol. 5. M.: Choro, 1994. P. 8, 57, 64.

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tual idea in a form, inadequate for it. Philosophy only finds an ideal form for an ideal – concept. When an artist expresses a spiritual idea in a material form, there is always an inevitable estrangement and callousness: intention never equals implementation. Unlike Hegel, Schelling believed that philosophy as philosophy itself can never be generally important, and objectivity is given to art only. Art leads to the cognition of a human as a supreme being, while philosophy leads to the cognition of human mind. Thus, what Hegel sees as art's drawback, Schelling sees as art's advantage, because of the sensual form, art becomes widely available to the public and increases its exposure to people. This state is so amazing and exciting, that it leaves a profound impression. Thus, catharsis occurs – purification and purgation of emotions granted by art. Schelling comprehends art as a special kind of spiritual cognition of the Absolution1.

The German philosopher, a contemporary of Schelling, Arthur Schopenhauer equally appreciated art. He placed music particularly high, separating it from all other arts. If I. Kant called music the «game of sensations», for Schopenhauer, as for the ancient Pythagoreans, who had heard the melody of the celestial spheres, music acquires a demiurgic, world-building meaning and character. Music is more primary than the world that arose based on its rhythms.

Speaking of music and poetry, we approached the third level of understanding creativity and art – «spiritual art», i.e. selfcognition. Spiritual creativity is the creation of ideas, meanings, and symbols. It represents self-cognition and is nothing else but the deployment of the essence of an individual. The highest form of art is the creation of self in the act of self-cognition.

However, such pure creativity doesn't exist, as even a spiritual meditation is possible only because of certain symbols and ideas, determining, thus, a sphere of realization. Although, this

1Schelling F.W.J. Lecture on the Philosophy of Art. M.: Mysl, 1966.

P. 498.

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doesn't mean that spiritual creativity cannot be considered as a concept, regardless of the spheres of its activities' implementation. However, the path to such a principled outlining of the concept of spiritual creativity lies in a description of how it carries out different roles in various spheres.

Spiritual creativity is everywhere, and philosophy and faith are the poetry of spirit. N.A. Berdyaev defines philosophy as «the art of cognition in freedom through the creation of ideas...»1. Actual spiritual creativity as self-cognition occurs in three spheres: philosophy, religion, and art. Philosophy and religion express the creative experience of self-cognition in theoretical (conceptual and symbolic) form, whereas art – in practical.

Despite the fact, that the highest form of creativity is selfcognition, self-creation of an individual (and exactly that process may be defined as spiritual, effectively creative as such), aesthetic creativity isn't external to the spirituality and human essence but is rather their constitutive force. Creativity is not a service in relation to metaphysics and ethics, but permeates them, filling them with life. Beauty is as vital to the holistic spiritual human development, as truth and virtue: harmony is created by their unity in love. That is why the great Russian writer and thinker Fyodor Dostoyevsky said, repeating Plato's idea, that «beauty will save the world».

This is justified by creativity, setting a human potential in motion, leading him on the path of self-cognition, i.e. the deployment of the own essence. The human essence is in humanity, so there is an inevitable humanization of a human being. To create oneself is to seek the maximum expression of self-humanity in every deed2.

Creativity and art with the necessity relate to morality.

1Berdyaev N.A. The Philosophy of Freedom. The Meaning of the Creative Act. М.: Pravda, 1989. P. 9.

2Gubin V.D. Culture and Creativity. M.: People’s friendship university, 1987. P. 67.

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But how it is then possible, that in real life genius and evil, art and misanthropy are compatible? Evil and immorality may infect creative nature, distorting it. An individual doesn't always find himself in the state of creativity: by departing from it, he may instantly turn into a villain.

However, an empirical life of a human and society is weaved from contradictions, that invade creative individual and art itself, corrupting its purpose. If such an individual follows the path of evil, he contradicts his creativity, destroys it and his own personality. Such a person is awaited by woes and internal conflicts, and if he doesn't turn to good, then he dies first as an artist, second, as a personality, eventually leading himself to a physical death1.

There is also a problem of the perception of art, especially its newest forms, because the new always contradicts the old, which resists life. The canons of classic art do not always meet the needs of modern society and people. Life nowadays is extremely dynamic and contradictory, an individual's orientation in society is hampered. Art doesn't exist somewhere on the Moon, it exists in real life if art is alive and active. Therefore, art doesn't only create something new, but also symbolically reflects the existing phenomena. The 20th century begot new, unprecedented forms of art, opposing the classic canons of harmony and beauty. But this is art, needed, demanded today. This «chaotic» art is closer to life.

However, along with the new canons of art, pseudocreativity emerges. It is difficult at times to recognize it, as it can actively and massively influence people, especially the young ones. Salvation from pseudo-creativity lies within the field of perception of the classic works of art, general cultural sphere, moral and spiritual development of an individual.

1 Chistyakova O.V. Postmodernism, Christian Patristics, and Values of Peace in the Modern Cultures. In the Context of Educational Process // Proceedings of the 2016 International Conference ICADCE 2016. Volume 64. Paris: Atlantis Press, 2016. P. 994–999.

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Art is a concentrated expression of the aesthetic relation of an individual to reality, manifesting through the concept of beauty, that is permeating all aspects of human activity and representing the essence of art.

Spiritual creativity creates beauty in everything, especially in art, and beauty is the highest expression of harmony and perfection. According to Vl. Solovyov, beauty is one of the parties of the spiritual archetype of the mankind, along with virtue and truth1. This was deeply understood by Plato, who said that beauty has «the ability to be visible and to inspire love»2. The philosopher wrote, that «the lover of beauty is called amorous», that exactly through love to beauty there is a spiritual ascent, as described in his Symposium. Virtue, truth, and beauty are the three aspects of a spiritual life of an individual, with the highest form of beauty being born from the flowering of the soul. Plato and Dostoyevsky speak about the necessity of beauty, becoming the symbol of all human ideals, as a developed person seeks expression of love in the same measure as the manifestation of beauty.

In his «The Brothers Karamazov», Dostoyevsky deepens the concept of beauty and shows, that it is not devoid of contradictions. As long ago as Heraclitus said that harmony holds the contradiction in itself: the cosmos is the most beautiful entity and the scattered litter at the same time. Dostoyevsky thought of beauty proceeding from the soul of a man, his psychology, and spiritual development. The true beauty and its understanding are not given

simply so, they should be suffered thoroughly, just like faith and love3.

Spiritual creativity is a matter of love, for it represents a human's attempt to connect with eternity. When we love a par-

1Solovyov Vl. Three speeches in Memoriam of Dostoyevsky // Works: In 2 Vols. 2nd Ed. Vol. 2. M.: Mysl, 1990. P. 215.

2Plato. Collected Works: In 3 Vols. Vol. 2. M.: Mysl, 1970. P. 215.

3Dostoyevsky F.M. The Complete Works: 30 Vols. Vol. XIV. Leningrad, Nauka, 1976. P. 100.

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ticular person, we perceive the eternal in him. Beauty forms concrete and temporal on the basis of universal and eternal. In a state of spiritual creativity, an individual creates his own existence, cocreating, resembling the Creator. An individual realizes himself in the cognition of his own essence and deployment of the mankind's spiritual archetype. Beauty is the manifestation of the eternal and the infinity in something concrete and specific; love is the reveal of eternity in transience.

§ 4. The essence of beauty

Virtue, truth, and beauty are the three sides of anyone's spiritual life, being certainly ontological in nature with the highest form of beauty being born from the blooming of the souls. Plato, Schelling, Vl. Solovyov, Dostoyevsky talk about the need for beauty to become a symbol of all human ideals, as a developed individual strives for expression of love in the same degree as beauty. Spiritual works create beauty in everything, especially in art, as beauty is the highest expression of harmony and perfection. Beauty is one of the parties of the spiritual archetype of the mankind, along with goodness and truth. Vl. Solovyov wrote that «these three live only in the Union. Virtue, separated from truth and beauty is only an indefinite sense, impotent passion, the abstract truth is just a word, and the beauty without virtue and truth is an idol. <…> Truth is virtue, conceivable by a human mind; beauty is the same virtue and truth, embodied in a living actual form. Its full embodiment is already the end goal, the perfection that is why Dostoevsky said that beauty would save the world»1.

There are two points of view regarding the concept of beauty: the ontological, realistic one (Plato, Schelling, Dostoyevsky, Vl. Solovyov) and deontological, nominalist one. I. Kant sought to justify the latter one. He deontologised aesthetical judgments

1 Solovyov Vl. Three speeches in Memoriam of Dostoyevsky, in Works: In 2 Vols. 2nd Ed. Vol. 2. M.: Mysl, 1990. P. 305–306.

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(«by themselves, they don't contribute to the knowledge of things»); divorced aesthetic and logic, depriving the former of all objectivity and attributing the latter of importance for cognition. For Kant aesthetic is associated with pleasure and displeasure and therefore cannot be applied to cognition: «beauty is that liked without notion». Beauty is «expediency without purpose»1. Kant denied the rule of taste as objective and denied, on this basis, the ideal of beauty. In this case, we are unable to speak of spiritual cognition.

Schelling, the founder of the philosophy of art, on the contrary, defines beauty from the standpoint of truth cognition: «the eternal concept of a thing is undeniably beautiful». According to Plato, a thing's eidos as its prototype contains not only the ontological basis but also the aesthetically beautiful form, aesthetic purpose, and meaning. Beauty is thus ontological – as a phenomenon of truth. Schelling notes in this regard: «The only highest truth is not stray from beauty, beauty is not stray from truth, as truth that is not beauty cannot be truth, like beauty that is not truth cannot be beauty». The philosopher continues: «… those, seeking truth only, reach just a rough naturalism... others, completely alien to truth, create empty and weak facade of a form, that causes delight of the ignorant, calling it beautiful. … the supreme unity of beauty and truth – is the unity of philosophy and poetry: for doesn't philosophy strive for the eternal truth, equal to beauty; and doesn't poetry strive for beauty, knowing no birth and no death, equal to truth?»2. In his 1802 letter to Schlegel, Schelling writes: «… the universe, being in the absolution as an organic whole, remains also as the work of art, as the artistic whole. Music, literature, painting – the arts, as art in general, have their for- itself-being in the absolute». Thus, art in Schelling's teaching is a special kind of spiritual cognition of the absolute. F. Nietzsche defined art as «the great stimulant of life», although, for his coe-

1Kant I. Collected Works: In 8 Vols. Vol. 5. M.: Choro, 1994. P. 64.

2Schelling F.W.J. Lecture on the Philosophy of Art. M.: Mysl, 1966. P. 498.

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val culture, moral truth was not always consistent with life and beauty, so for the philosopher «art is smarter than truth»1.

Vl. Solovyov sought to give art theurgic function. This term is widely used in occultism. Initially, it emerges in the bosom of magic, having hermetic and neoplatonic interpretation. Basically, the term means the possibility of mastering the magical mysterious sources, a certain influence on God. In terms of the Russian theurgists (varying from Vl. Solovyov to the Silver age poets, N. Berdyaev and other figures of the «new religious consciousness») this means the possibility of direct transformation of being through aesthetics, which begets «aesthetic utopianism». Vl. Solovyov wrote in his first «Speech in Memoriam of Dostoyevsky»

(wrongfully, in our opinion, attributing his own thoughts to Dostoevsky): «Artists and poets must once again become priests and prophets, but in <...> the more important and sublime meaning: not only a religious idea is to own them, but they themselves will possess it and consciously manage its earthly incarnations <…>. There are no representatives of such religious art, but there are harbingers, such as Dostoyevsky»2. In this case, the creationist properties of the absolute are being attributed to the artist, poet, creative genie at all. V. Zenkovsky and S. Bulgakov criticized such understanding of the role of art. According to V. Zenkovsky, «the unfortunate idea of a theurgic task of art distorted aesthetic self-consciousness in the symbolism from the inside» (V. Ivanov, A. Blok, A. Bely and others)3. According to S. Bulgakov, «… theurgy as a human effort is impossible and is a misconception of theomachy»4.

V. Zenkovsky also detects «concealed dream of «restoring» humanity», «Christian naturalism» and «aesthetic utopianism»

1Nietzsche F. Selected Works: In 2 Vols. Vol. 1. M.: Mysl, 1990. P. 160.

2Solovyov Vl. Three speeches in Memoriam of Dostoyevsky. P. 294.

3Zenkovsky V.V. Vl. Solovyov's Aesthetic Views // Collected Works. Vol. 1. M., 2008. P. 95.

4Bulgakov S.N. Unfading Light, M.: Respublika, 1994. P. 334.

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(«Schillerism») in Dostoyevsky's world view. The aforementioned utopianism stems from the fact that Dostoyevsky had originally thought of salvation through beauty, considering it in a Platonic manner as something «already existing», «transformed», through which one may understand the truth. This, in turn, derives from his «Christian naturalism», according to which «salvation may and must come from the man himself». «The temptation of naturalism», according to Zenkovsky, is that «in these perspectives, the Church is conceived not as the Body of Christ, not as a theanthropist organism, but as a dwelling power, fused with nature, that had already entered the world …». This especially affects the sermons of the Elder Father Zosima, who views «life as heavens» (already now! – emphasizes Zenkovsky). V. Zenkovsky continues: «All the flavor of naturalism affects the plentitude, the perfection, which is conceived in Christ as the man, somehow related to the common man as his hidden, pristine shrine. For Dostoyevsky, the children shone that beauty, the Elder Father Zosima had already concluded the «secret renovation of all»1. Eschatology, however, shall not destroy the worldly meaning, that the people intend to assert on the planet. Dostoevsky doesn't have pantheistic theanthropism of the subsequent philosopherssophiologists (perhaps, through the lens of which Zenkovsky views Dostoyevsky), but has that «pain of man», the sympathy, the desire to help and individual to attain salvation from sin. It appears to us that Zenkovsky invents Dostoyevsky's themes, which the writer himself wouldn't have interpreted this way.

Anyway, the Russian philosophy chronographer acknowledges in Dostoyevsky his belief that «in the worship beauty, the darkest in an individual transforms», that exactly «through the aesthetic experience the otherwise unavailable higher truth possesses and strengthens a soul» (Alyosha and Grushenka, Prince Myshkin and Nastasya Filipovna). Zenkovsky writes further,

1 Zenkovsky V.V. The Problem of Beauty in Dostoyevsky's Worldview // Collected Works. Vol. 1. M.: Russky Put, 2008. P. 150.

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Dostoyevsky believed that «only in the aesthetic sphere reveals itself a genuine, yet chaotic fullness of everything present in the soul» and believed simultaneously «in aesthetic responsiveness as the most victorious force in all of us»1. Yet Zenkovsky didn't cover the whole of Dostoyevsky's idea of the saving power of beauty. Beauty is not just aesthetic, tragic and, nevertheless, saving and grace-filled phenomenon, but erotic in every sense of the word, spiritual and sensual. Dostoevsky recognized and depicted that deeply, yet this relationship is not sufficiently seen and dealt with in the research literature. Deeply energetic links among gender, beauty, and spiritual renewal are what the writer sought to understand, anticipating in a way the philosophy of gender by V.V. Rozanov. The connection between gender and beauty was already outlined by V. Zenkovsky while analyzing the image of Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov, unjustly almost forgotten by the critics. According to the Russian philosophy chronographer, the novel shows «the problem of gender, lying in the depths of other problems», which, in turn, «go back to the “secret” of gender»; «Not the dialeсtic of “virtue” reveals us the inner unity of the novel, but the dialectic of gender and its sublimations (in terms of modern psychopathology) does» [10. P. 265]. Perhaps, this very comprehension of colossal and profound contradictions in the sphere of gender allowed Dostoyevsky to part with «Schillerism» and simplified humanism in his view on beauty and people in general.

However, the researches follow a certain evolution of Dostoyevsky's view on beauty, extending from Platonism to Orthodox Christianity, from aesthetic utopianism (cf. The Idiot – «beauty will save the world») and naturalism to spiritual moralism and tragic realism («beauty in the world is to be saved»). This evolution was brilliantly disclosed by V. Zenkovsky, who

1 Zenkovsky V.V. Fyodor Pavlovich Karamazov // Around Dostoyevsky: in 2 Vols.: On Dostoyevsky: Collected Articles Ed. By A.L. Bem. M.: Russky Put, 2007. Vol. 1. P. 95.

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