Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger.

Arenas, Daniel

SCHAEFFER, Jean-Marie. Art of the Modern Age: Philosophy of Art from Kant to Heidegger. Translated by Steven Rendall. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2000. xvii + 352 pp. Cloth, $29.95--In this volume Jean-Marie Schaeffer offers a detailed and polemical analysis of some of the most important modern aesthetic theories in the German tradition, those of Novalis, Schlegel, Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Heidegger. His thesis is that, despite their great differences, all these theories belong to the same paradigm. He calls it the "speculative theory of art" and claims that it has become the predominant framework according to which spectators and artists have been thinking about the arts for the last two centuries. One should also include in this paradigm Marxist theories and avant-garde movements, which Schaeffer mentions in the conclusion. In addition, this book contains an interesting chapter on Kant showing how his theory "resists the temptation" of becoming a speculative one.

Schaeffer undertakes a powerful criticism of the speculative theory. His main reproach is that it implies a "sacralization of art." By this he means that art is regarded as capable of revealing the fundamental reality of the world, that is, of providing access to some deeper level of reality beyond or behind everyday, mundane reality. In contrast to other human activities--including science which are seen as alienated, inauthentic, or deficient, art is thought to provide some kind of ecstatic knowledge. This emphasis on the cognitive role of art has led to neglecting the pleasure that works of art provide. Moreover, because artistic geniuses are supposed to offer such privileged knowledge, this paradigm ends up exalting them as prophets or priests, as well as separating them more and more from their audiences. In other words, according to Schaeffer, the speculative theory is infused with a certain messianism. Yet Schaeffer argues that, although it grants art such a privileged status, this paradigm is in reality a subjection of art to philosophical discourse.

Another recurrent feature of the speculative theory is, in Schaeffer's view, its historicism--the idea that art has an ultimate goal in which its essence will be realized. Accordingly, art engages in the search for its own essence and becomes progressively self-referential. Schaeffer maintains that this attempt of making itself into its object has been self-destructive. For example, avant-garde movements inherited this view uniting it with the utopian project of the aesthetization of the whole of reality. Since this would make art disappear, Schaeffer concludes that the legitimization that is thought to sustain the arts ends up abolishing them.

Schaeffer also encourages us to reject this theoretical tradition because of its epistemological confusion between a descriptive and an evaluative approach. The authors he analyzes usually select a few works of art excluding many others. This amounts to a gross simplification that overlooks the great variety of artistic possibilities and traditions. Similarly, one often finds a hierarchy in the arts, which typically leads to singling out some of them as canonical and condemning what is often called popular or "low" arts. Schaeffer devotes some interesting pages to showing how the authors belonging to this tradition run into difficulties when they try to deal with specific arts within their theoretical framework.

Finally, Schaeffer not only rejects the speculative theory because it is unfounded or inconsistent but also because he believes that it is to no small extent responsible for the current deadlock in the arts. In this respect, one perhaps misses in this book further arguments to support this belief as well as the belief that theories have such a decisive effect on human actions. In addition, it would have been good to point out more clearly that with all its incoherence, confusion, and dogmatism the speculative theory did not have only negative consequences. As Schaeffer acknowledges, it was, in some way or another, adopted by some of the artists that have created the most fascinating works of art and literature of the past two centuries. If this is so, one could argue that at the end of the day this result is what matters and in this sense the speculative theory could be redeemed, at least partially. In other words, even if it were true that it is now time to rethink our relation to the arts, this does not mean necessarily that the "speculative" experiment was not worthwhile.--Daniel Arenas, University of Chicago.

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