It is in these statements, the æsthetic and the ethical aspects of his system, that we find the most significant part of Schopenhauer's philosophy. His pessimism left little permanent mark on the course of philosophic thought. It is to the other side of his work that we must look for a fruitful issue, to his statement of the function of art and its meaning for life; his insistence on the will, the active element, as that which has most reality and significance in life; to the part which the feelings, instinct, and impulse play in his system. In all these directions, Schopenhauer's influence has been powerful and far-reaching. To-day he is a stronger force than any other of the great thinkers of his time, overshadowed though he was by them during his lifetime. In Germany especially, his influence is felt as a powerful factor in the thought of the present day.
CHAPTER III
ART
Schopenhauer's theory of the beautiful is the side of his philosophy which has always made so potent an appeal to artists, and to all those lovers of the beautiful, for whom art represents the supreme significance of life.
The present for Schopenhauer is only an infinitesimal moment between two eternities, the past and the future. It is "a flash of light between two darknesses." Now how is man to make the best of this brief moment, under the hard conditions of his destiny? The answer to this question Schopenhauer finds in his theory of the function of art. He links up into intimate relation his theory of æsthetic with his philosophical pessimism, but his pessimism is modified considerably in the process.
There are certain men, he maintains, who can free themselves from the bondage of the will. They can throw off its yoke, and, released from all the aims of desire, they can become disinterested spectators of the real, essential nature of the world. The inner meaning of their clear, deep vision they can interpret to others. Such men are artists, and the interpretation of their vision is the work of art. In art are revealed the eternal truths of the nature of man and the universe, revealed with a power and directness to which science can never attain. Artists, then, are the seers, the visionaries, who penetrate into the hidden, vital principles of things. They alone have power to interpret the half-uttered speech of nature, and disentangle that which is real and essential, the inner truth, from that which is accidental and transitory. The road to philosophy, then, leads through the gateway of art.
In this theory Schopenhauer starts from Plato's doctrine of the Ideas. The particular objects of sense, which we know, are mere appearances. They have no reality in themselves. They arise and pass away, they always become and never are. But there exist also the types and eternal forms of things, which do not enter into time and space, and which remain fixed, subject to no change. These constitute the sole reality. Plato called them the Ideas, and Schopenhauer adopts this term from the Platonic philosophy. The Ideas for Schopenhauer represent the different grades of the objectification of the will, which are manifested in the individuals. These are the eternal forms or prototypes of individual things.
Our knowledge of the ordinary things of sense-experience is indirect, it is gained by way of the intellect. Our knowledge of the Ideas, on the other hand, is direct and immediate, it is gained through intuition. In his account of the Ideas, or the real, essential nature of things, Schopenhauer is treading already the path of mysticism, along which he works out his theories of ethics.