Friday, August 31, 2018

BEAUTY: THREE VIEWS

Hegel:

“Fine art is not real art till it is in this sense free, and only achieves its highest task when it has taken its place in the same sphere with religion and philosophy and has become simply a mode of revealing to consciousness and bringing to utterance the Divine Nature, the deepest interests of humanity, and the most comprehensive truths of the mind. It is in works of art that nations have deposited the profoundest intuitions and ideas of their hearts, and fine art is frequently the key — with many nations there is no other — to the understanding of their wisdom and their religion.” [1]

Abhinavagupta:

“For Abhinavagupta, in other words, art, the spirituality path and the divine reality were clearly one and the same. In the mind of Abhinavagupta, this cosmos is God’s artistic creation, a creation within which every smallest unit of that creation itself embodies and reflects the divine Artist which is its origin. For this reason, artistic expression — be it poetry, drama, music painting or any other artistic medium — is just as capable of bringing about spiritual realization as yogic practice. For Abhinavagupta, the artist is a yogin and the yogin is an artist. The ultimate artistic expression is life itself which presents the opportunity for the attainment of spiritual realization, an event which empowers the individual to recognize his or her own identity as non-distinct from the identity of that ultimate Artist who is the source and very body of creation itself.” [2]

Herbert V. Guenther:

“Insight into life and Being ultimately springs from creative, and by implication, artistic imagination. Therefore, the fine arts not only can give us knowledge, but also, through their influence on our lives, give form to our emotive experiences. The close relationship between Tantrism and the fine arts underlines the importance of learning to see reality as a symbol of life and feeling, not as a sign that points to something other than itself. The meaning of life is in living it.” [3]

[1]   Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics, trans. Bernard Bosanquet, ed. and intro. Michael Inwood (Harmondsworth: Penguin,1993), p. 9.

[2]   Dr. Jeffrey S. Lidke, A Thousand Years of Abhinavagupta, Sutra Journal, January, 2016. [ONLINE HERE]

[3]   Herbert V. Guenther, The Tantric View of Life, Shambhala Publications, Boulder & London, 1976, p. 147.

IMAGE: Cover of a Shakta Manuscript with Uma-Maheshvara

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