Philosophical Aesthetics

Philosophical Aesthetics

Is there an aesthetics of philosophy? Does philosophical discourse have a foundation in sense and sensibility? If the answer to these questions is affirmative and there is in some sense a philosophical aesthetics, what conclusions might be drawn for philosophical education?

Put another way: Does philosophy require the power of the imagination and the product of this power-image? Or is philosophy the product of the pure concept, the rational idea? Does philosophical reason rest upon a logic that resides in thought alone that is expressed essentially in principles and arguments disconnected from images and sentiment?

The Philosophical Imaginary

The French philosopher Michèle Le Doeuff says:

Whether one looks for a characterization of philosophical discourse to Plato, to Hegel or to Bréhier, one always meets with a reference to the rational, the concept, the argued, the logical, the abstract. Even when a certain coyness leads some authorities to pretend that they do not know what philosophy is, no agnosticism remains about what philosophy is not. Philosophy is not a story, not a pictorial description, not a work of pure literature. Philosophical discourse is inscribed and declares its status as philosophy through a break with myth, fable, the poetic, the domain of the image. ¹

Le Doeuff continues:

If, however, one goes looking for this philosophy in the texts which are meant to embody it, the least that can be said is that it is not to be found there in a pure state. We shall also find statues that breathe the scent of roses, comedies, tragedies, architects, foundations, dwellings, doors and windows, sand, navigators, various musical instruments, islands, clocks, horses, donkeys and even a lion, representatives of every craft and trade, scenes of sea and storm, forests and trees: in short, a whole pictorial world sufficient to decorate even the dryest "History of Philosophy." ²

Le Doeuff points to Hegel's work as an example of the claim that the sole form of philosophy is thought. Yet the works of Hegel, like those of Plato, are full of images. Plato and Hegel are masters of metaphor. One can say of them what Aristotle says in the Poetics, that "the greatest thing by far is to be a master of metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learnt from others and it is a sign of genius. For the right use of metaphor requires an eye for similarities in dissimilars." ³ Despite his mastery of metaphor, in the Republic Plato uses his doctrine of eidos to criticize the power of eikon to present truth. Hegel, in the Phenomenology, uses his doctrine of the Begriff to claim that the Bild cannot produce the science of the absolute. Plato and Hegel say one thing in their texts, but in the texts themselves they do another. Plato's dialogues are filled with metaphors and likely stories from the Ring of Gyges to the metaphor of the Sun to the tale of Atlantis, as are Hegel's works, from the "night in which all cows are black" to the phrenological skull to the owl of Minerva that flies only at the falling of dusk.

How are we to comprehend the extremes of philosophical doctrine on the one hand and the discourse that expresses it on the other? Is the discourse simply the outer shell of the doctrine, inessential to its truth, or does the doctrine itself require for its truth all that is needed for its proper statement?

I wish to seek the answer to this by connecting Plato to Hegel, using Vico as an intermediary, in particular Vico's conception of la sapienza poetica (poetic wisdom) and his conception of the universale fantastico (imaginative universal). My claim is that philosophical discourse, as well as philosophy itself, depends upon an aesthetic that cannot be overcome by reason, that there is a philosophical imaginary that necessarily accompanies philosophical rationality. The concept, the idea, always has a shadow, a doppelgänger through which...