Dietrich von Hildebrand's wide-ranging two volume Aesthetics is now available in English translation. Aesthetics not only inspires and instructs us on how to look and listen to beautiful beings, it also provides us with fruitful conceptual distinctions for understanding and articulating the aesthetic values and disvalues we experience in nature and art.
As the editors’ introductions and Sir Roger Scruton's wonderful Foreword make clear, von Hildebrand was unable to complete the final revisions of Aesthetics before his death in 1977. Nevertheless, despite having some repetitive passages and not fully developed theoretical insights expressed in less than consistent nomenclature, I found it to be an immensely illuminating work. Aesthetics is replete with von Hildebrand's insightful discriminations, judicious taste, and sometimes brilliant analyses of works of art; unfortunately, we rarely find rigorous arguments to defend them. But even though von Hildebrand will not garner universal consensus on his considered aesthetic judgments, he nevertheless does supply plenty of percipient distinctions that help us to sharpen our disagreements.
The first volume presents his aesthetic theory and the second volume applies this theory to shed light on the aesthetic values and disvalues found in architecture, applied arts, sculpture, painting, literature, and music, and in marriages of these arts, like choral music, opera, and some sculptures, mosaics, and frescos with architecture or architecture and nature. There is so much to say about each volume; I shall limit myself to a few critical remarks before discussing the ideas I found to be the most valuable.
The first volume commences with a defence of the objectivity of aesthetic values and a criticism of rival positions. The theory of objective aesthetic values presented here presupposes von Hildebrand's detailed defense of value theory or axiology articulated elsewhere, e.g., Ethics. He presents many arguments for and against rival positions, and while some of his arguments are quite persuasive, I think aesthetics objectivism can be given a more cogent case against its rivals. Similarly, Thomists will remain unimpressed by von Hildebrand's cursory and sometimes unfair criticisms of the views of Aquinas and Jacques Maritain. The rest of the first volume is dedicated to charting the splendid variety of ways that we can experience three forms of beauty found throughout art and nature.
Von Hildebrand contends beauty is not a genus; beauty is the queen among a rich and diverse family of aesthetic values and disvalues. Following a perfunctory treatment of transcendental and other more formal forms of beauty, the second chapter turns to his threefold division of beauty; this strikes me as a groundbreaking contribution to aesthetics, which merits fuller elaboration. It is best to begin chapter two at the end for his clearest presentation of two forms of sensible beauty as distinct from metaphysical beauty. Metaphysical beauty irradiates from objects whose primary theme is not aesthetic value (pp. 87–9). Metaphysical beauty identifies how individual humans, animals, plants, mountains, moral actions, intellectual brilliance, practical ingenuity, and manifestations of vitality can be indirect bearers of aesthetic values. Sensibles can be direct bearers of beauty in two ways. Beauty of the ‘first power’ is manifest in certain colours, materials, or sounds like a cello, trumpet, or voice. Beauty of the ‘second power’ is von Hildebrand's phenomenological insight in aesthetics; it identifies the nearly ineffable pure qualities that sensibles can bear in nature and art that are neither mere sensible qualities nor irradiating metaphysical values, such as the sky that is joyful, the melody that is melancholic, architectural structures or music that manifest ‘greatness, nobility, victorious, splendor, profound, seriousness, and sacred holiness’ (p. 101). He convincingly argues for the objectivity of this order of beauty as distinct from the other two.
I also learned a great deal from his veritable tour of, what I would characterize as, the virtues and vices of an aesthetic ethos required for looking and listening to aesthetic values and disvalues in art and nature. His rich analysis of attitudes or proclivities for the prosaic or poetic, mediocre, banal, trivial, boring, shallow, ugly or beautiful, elegance, comical, idols of apatheia and virility, sentimentality and exaggerated sensitivity, bourgeois, philistinism, Promethean rebellion, and aestheticism presents a pageant of demarcations indispensable for cultivating aesthetic virtues and teaching students the existential importance of beauty (p. 353).
The second volume applies this aesthetic theory to the distinct aesthetic elements and divisions of artistic types proper to architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, and music. Central to the enjoyment of beautiful art is enjoying its beauty. We should ask ourselves: why do I enjoy this painting or sculpture? Our enjoyment can be misdirected to non-aesthetic themes which are easily substituted for the aesthetic values of art. This occurs whenever we enjoy art due to: our nationalistic or stylistic prejudices; its sheer familiarity (I know that tune! I recognize that painting!); our interests in the objects depicted (religious figures, famous battles); the memories or associations art transports us to; because the art is famous or fashionable. Each of these non-aesthetic themes are substitutes for the genuine aesthetic themes of art and they can be obstacles that distract us from experiencing beauty in art.
Von Hildebrand employs his idea of artistic transposition to illuminate what artists do—as seers (p. 12)—and what it is we are experiencing in works of art: the transformation of the depicted into a depiction. Transposition takes various forms in sculpture, painting, literature, and music, but in the greatest works of art, von Hildebrand seems to distinguish three factors, which I render as questions. First, what is being re-presented? What sensible or metaphysical beauty does the represented bear? What are the natural formal principles of the represented? Second, what innovation, that is, what novel discovery and deeper penetration of this object has been artistically transposed and condensed in the work of art? Third, of what beauty does this masterpiece speak? (pp. 185-188) Whereas abstract art eschews representing natural forms, other contemporary art arbitrarily distorts or disfigures them; pure literalist representations fail to be innovative (pp. 221-225). Each lack the creative intuition, von Hildebrand holds, that is essential to beautiful works of art.
Von Hildebrand's Aesthetics is a valuable work for it demonstrates that ‘art has the significant pedagogical mission of opening our eyes to the treasures of beauty which life and nature possess’ (I.391-2).
