Art is characteristic beauty; it is not the
individual, but the living conception of the individual. When the artist
recognizes the eternal idea in an individual, and expresses it
outwardly, he transforms the individual into a world apart, into a
species, into an eternal idea. Characteristic beauty is the fulness of
form which slays form: it does not silence passion, but restrains it as
the banks of a river the waters that flow between them, but do not
overflow.
Schelling's starting-point is the criticism of teleological judgment, as
stated by Kant in his third Critique. Teleology is the union of
theoretic with practical philosophy. But the system would not be
complete, unless we could show the identity of the two worlds, theoretic
and practical, in the subject itself. He must demonstrate the existence
of an activity, which is at once unconscious as nature and conscious as
spirit. This activity we find in Aesthetic, which is therefore "the
general organ of philosophy, the keystone of the whole building."
Poetry and philosophy alone possess the world of the ideal, in which the
real world vanishes. True art is not the impression of the moment, but
the representation of infinite life: it is transcendental intuition
objectified. The time will come when philosophy will return to poetry,
which was its source, and on the new philosophy will arise a new
mythology.
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