Schopenhauer and aesthetic appreciation.

If you look with craving then you see things in terms of sensuous attractiveness, but if you look without craving you see things in terms of beauty. The Buddha does say that one of the signs, one of the characteristics, of being without craving is that you see everything as beautiful. You do not see everything as sensually attractive, you see everything as purely beautiful, because it's a disinterested attention. I think Schopenhauer emphasised this point, that aesthetic appreciation has disinterest. It was rather a contemplation, it was a pure delight in the object for its own sake; you didn't want to make any personal use of the object. This is also the difference between the lust which is stimulated by the sensuously attractive and the sense of beauty which is stimulated by the pure beauty. I mean, when it's a question of lust, you want to grab, when it's a question of aesthetic appreciation, you just want to stand back and contemplate. Schopenhauer used to say that in the aesthetic experience the will to live is suspended. If there's a beautiful painting, or if there's a beautiful melody, you just want to enjoy it, you just want to absorb yourself in it, surrender yourself to it, you don't want to do anything with it, you don't want to make use of it. So in the same way, if you see a really beautiful woman, you just appreciated her as a beautiful woman, you wouldn't want to do anything with her, you'd just be quite happy gazing and gazing, appreciating her beauty. But, needless to say, that's not our usual attitude, we don't usually see aesthetically, we see in terms of sensuous attractiveness hence craving springs up, or we see in terms of sensuous attractiveness because the craving is there, looking round, searching for an object.

[You can read Sangharakshita’s thoughts and reflections on:
Nietzsche, Milton, Handel and artistic inspiration.
Nietzsche, Goethe and the enemy.
Nietzsche, Zen and Sudden Enlightenment.
Kant, the Buddha and the limits of reason.
The limits of space and time.
Baudelaire and awareness of others.
Spiritual friends.
Giving style to one’s character.
Anarchism.
Schopenhauer and the will to live.
Schopenhauer and aesthetic appreciation.
Mozart and pauses.
Mozart and the unpredictable.
Mozart and the concentrated mind.

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Dernière mise à jour:
21 juillet, 2008.