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But on to the second point. I think it important to end our semester by understanding that light and timbre have the ability not merely to transform how we perceive formal objects, but also our very selves as observers or hearers in relation to those objects. Have you ever heard it said "I see things now in a different light?" This phrase implies that "I" have changed, that "I" am different, as a result of having seen or heard something--not alone the object cast in a new light. While formal objects may assume different proportions, meanings, or shapes, depending upon the light in which they are viewed, the point is that I myself must change as I view them. Not only so, but the degree to which I change, and the directions I turn, are dependent somehow upon the same light in which they are viewed.While the phrase is most often heard in the context of argumentation, to "see things in a new light" is certainly apropos to the discussion of aesthetics and the fine arts. "To send light into the darkness of men's hearts--such is the duty of the artist" Robert Schumann asserts, acknowledging the function of art not merely to represent forms, but also to engage the human capacity to feel, live, and love deeply. Art does this by allowing us to participate in the feelings, living, and loving of other "self-beings" who, according to Jaspers, cannot become human by themselves but only in communication with other self-beings. Who are these beings? They are, says Nietzsche, artists, who "dare to show us the human being as he is, down to the last muscle, himself and himself alone--even more, that in this rigorous consistency of his uniqueness he is beautiful and worth contemplating, as novel and incredible as every work of nature, and by no means dull."
UNDER CONSTRUCTION
NOTES
- Karl Jaspers, Existenzphilosophie trans. Felix Kaufmann "Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre" (New York: Meridian, 1989), 174.
- Friedrich Nietzsche, "Untimely Meditation on Schopenhauer as Educator" trans. Walter Kaufmann "Existentialism from Dostoevsky to Sartre" (New York: Meridian, 1989), 122.
