Philosophy, science and art differ principally according totheir subject-matter and also the means by which they reflect,transform and express it. In a certain sense, art, likephilosophy, reflects reality in its relation to man, anddepicts man, his spiritual world, and the relations betweenindividuals in their interaction with the world.
We live not in a primevally pure world, but in a world that isknown and has been transformed, a world where everything has,as it were, been given a "human angle", a world permeatedwith our attitudes towards it, our needs, ideas, aims, ideals,joys and sufferings, a world that is part of the vortex of ourexistence. If we were to remove this "human factor" fromthe world, its sometimes inexpressible, profoundly intimaterelationship with man, we should be confronted by a desert ofgrey infinity, where everything was indifferent to everythingelse. Nature, considered in isolation from man, is for mansimply nothing, an empty abstraction existing in the shadowyworld of dehumanised thought. The whole infinite range of ourrelationships to the world stems from the sum-total of ourinteractions with it. We are able to consider our environmentrationally through the gigantic historical prism of science,philosophy and art, which are capable of expressing life as atempestuous flood of contradictions that come into being,develop, are resolved and negated in order to generate newcontradictions.
No scientifically, let alone artistically, thinking person canremain deaf to the wise voice of true philosophy, can fail tostudy it as a vitally necessary sphere of culture, as thesource of world-view and method. Equally true is the fact thatno thinking and emotionally developed person can remainindifferent to literature, poetry, music, painting, sculptureand architecture. Obviously, one may be to some extentindifferent to some highly specialised science, but it isimpossible to live an intellectually full life if one rejectsphilosophy and art. The person who is indifferent to thesespheres deliberately condemns himself to a depressingnarrowness of outlook.
Does not the artistic principle in philosophical thoughtdeserve the attention of, and do credit to, the thinking mind,and vice versa? In a certain generalised sense the truephilosopher is like the poet. He, too, must possess theaesthetic gift of free associative thinking in integralimages. And in general one cannot achieve true perfection ofcreative thought in any field without developing the abilityto perceive reality from the aesthetic standpoint. Withoutthis precious intellectual prism through which people view theworld everything that goes beyond the empirical description offacts, beyond formulae and graphs may look dim and indistinct.
Scientists who lack an aesthetic element in their makeup aredry-as-dust pedants, and artists who have no knowledge ofphilosophy and science are not very interesting people either,for they have little to offer above elementary commonsense. The true artist, on the other hand, constantlyrefreshes himself with the discoveries of the sciences andphilosophy. While philosophy and science tend to draw us into"the forest of abstractions", art smiles upon everything,endowing it with its integrating, colourful imagery.
Life is so structured that for a man to be fully conscious ofit he needs all these forms of intellectual activity, whichcomplement each other and build up an integral perception ofthe world and versatile orientation in it.
The biographies of many scientists and philosophers indicatethat the great minds, despite their total dedication toresearch, were deeply interested in art and themselves wrotepoetry and novels, painted pictures, played musicalinstruments and moulded sculpture. How did Einstein live, forexample? He thought, wrote, and also played the violin, fromwhich he was seldom parted no matter where he went or whom hevisited. Norbert Wiener, the founder of cybernetics, wrotenovels, Darwin was deeply interested in Shakespeare, Miltonand Shelley. Niels Bohr venerated Goethe and Shakespeare;Hegel made an exhaustive study of world art and the science ofhis day. The formation of Marx's philosophical and scientificviews was deeply influenced by literature. Aeschylus,Shakespeare, Dante, Cervantes, Milton, Goethe, Balzac andHeine were his favourite authors. He responded sensitively tothe appearance of significant works of art and himself wrotepoetry and fairy-tales. The radiance of a broad culture shinesforth from the work of this genius. Lenin was not onlyacquainted with art but also wrote specialised articles aboutit. His philosophical, sociological and economic works arestudded with apt literary references. And what a delight hetook in music!
In short, the great men of theory were by no means dryrationalists. They were gifted with an aesthetic appreciation ofthe world. And no wonder, for art is a powerful catalyst forsuch abilities as power of imagination, keen intuition and theknack of association, abilities needed by both scientists andphilosophers.
If we take the history of Oriental culture, we find that itscharacteristic feature is the organic synthesis of an artisticcomprehension of the world with its philosophical andscientific perception. This blending of the philosophical andthe artistic is inherent in all peoples, as can be seen fromtheir sayings, proverbs, aphorisms, tales and legends, whichabound in vividly expressed wisdom.
If we are to develop effective thinking, we must not excludeany specifically human feature from participation in creativeactivity. The gift of perception, penetrating observation ofreality, mathematical and physical precision, depth ofanalysis, a free, forward-looking imagination, a joyful loveof life—these are all necessary to be able to grasp,comprehend and express phenomena, and this is the only way atrue work of art can appear, no matter what its subject maybe.
Can one imagine our culture without the jewels ofphilosophical thought that were contributed to it by humangenius? Or without its artistic values? Can one conceive ofthe development of contemporary culture without thelife-giving rays of meditative art embodied in the works ofsuch people as Dante, Goethe, Leo Tolstoy, Balzac, Pushkin,Lermontov, Dostoyevsky, Tchaikovsky, and Beethoven? Culturewould have had a very different history but for the brilliantminds that gave us their masterpieces of painting, music,poetry and prose. The whole world of our thoughts and feelingswould have been different, and incomparably poorer. And we, asindividuals, would also have been flawed. The intellectualatmosphere that surrounds us from childhood, the style ofthinking that permeates folk sayings, tales and songs, thebooks we have read, the paintings and sculptures we haveadmired, the music we have heard, the view of the world andhumanity that we have absorbed thanks to our contact with thetreasures of art, has not all this contributed to theformation of our individual self? Did it not teach us to thinkphilosophically and perceive and transform the worldaesthetically?
An indispensable feature of art is its ability to conveyinformation in an evaluative aspect. Art is a combination ofman's cognitive and evaluative attitudes to reality recordedin words, colours, plastic forms or melodically arrangedsounds. Like philosophy, art also has a profoundlycommunicative function. Through it people communicate to oneanother their feelings, their most intimate and infinitelyvaried and poignant thoughts. A common feature of art andphilosophy is thewealth they both contain of cognitive, moral and socialsubstance. Science is responsible to society for a truereflection of the world and no more. Its function is topredict events. On the basis of scientific discoveries one canbuild various technical devices, control production and socialprocesses, cure the sick and educate the ignorant. The mainresponsibility of art to society is the formation of a view ofthe world, a true and large-scale assessment of events, arational, reasoning orientation of man in the world aroundhim, a true assessment of his own self. But why does art havethis function? Because in its great productions it is not onlyconsummately artistic but also profoundly philosophical. Howdeeply philosophical, for instance, are the verses of Shakespeare, Goethe, Lermontov, Verhaeren! And indeed all the greatwriters, poets, composers, sculptors, architects, painters, inshort, all the most outstanding and brilliant exponents of artwere imbued with a sense of the exceptional importance ofprogressive philosophy and not only kept abreast of but wereoften responsible for its achievements. How profound wereTolstoy's artistically expressed meditations on the role ofthe individual and the people in the historical process (forexample, Napoleon and Kutuzov, or the Russian people in thewar of liberation of 1812, as portrayed in War andPeace), on freedom and necessity, on the consciousand the unconscious in human behaviour. Consider thepsychological and philosophical depth and the artistic powerwith which Balzac revealed the social types in the society ofhis day in all their diversity (the idea of greed andacquisitiveness in the character of Gobseck!). Howphilosophical are the artistic and publicistic works ofVoltaire, Rousseau, Diderot, Thomas Mann, Heine, Herzen,Chernyshevsky and many others. If we turn to science fiction,we find that it is full of scientific and philosophicalreflections, of varying visions of the future of science,technology and human existence in general. Quite often itsplot is a series of mental experiments. However, neither thescientific nor the philosophical content, no matter how fullyexpressed in a work of art, constitutes its specificelement. We never speak of any work of art, no matter howpowerful, as a study, whereas creative work in philosophy is astudy, an inquiry, and it is characterised above all not byits artistic but by its scientific qualities, although itsartistic aspect is highly valued and has more than purelyaesthetic significance. The crown of philosophical inquiry istruth and prediction, whereas in art it is artistic truth, notaccuracy of reproduction, in the sense of a copy of whatexists, but a lifelike portrayal of typically possiblephenomena in either their developed or potential form. If artproduced only truths similar to scientific truths, there wouldbe no masterpieces ofworld art. The immortality of great masterpieces lies in thepower of their artistic generalisation, generalisation of themost complex phenomenon in the world—man and hisrelations with his fellow men.
Some people believe that the specific feature of art is thatthe artist expresses his own intellectual world, his ownintrinsic individuality. But this is not quite true. In anyactive creativity, any act that reflects and transforms life,a person also expresses himself. And the higher the level ofcreativity, in this case artistic, the higher the level ofgeneralisation, and hence the universal, despite all theindividuality of the form. "Man's individuality orsingularity is not a barrier to the universality of the will,but is subordinated to it. A just or moral, in other words, afine action, although performed by one individual, isnevertheless approved by all. Everyone recognises himself orhis own will in this act. Here there occurs the same thing asin a work of art. Even those who could not create such a workfind their own essence expressed therein. Such a work istherefore truly universal. The more its individual creatordissolves in it, the more approval it earns."[1]
The aesthetic principle is not the specific element inphilosophy although it is present there. Naturally, philosophyis distinguished from the other sciences by its being relatedfar more closely to the aesthetic principle, to art. Itsynthesises the everyday experience of the people andsomething from the other sciences, and also something from artwithout confining itself to any of them. The aesthetic elementis also present in any science. By some scientists it is evenregarded as a criterion of truth: the true is elegant andhighly refined in its structure. The beauty, the elegance ofan experiment, or of any theoretical construction, especiallyif it sparkles with wit, does credit to scientific thought,evokes our legitimate admiration and affords us intellectualand aesthetic pleasure. Quite often this elegance shows itselfin a meaningful brevity, for genius is usually simplyexpressed, without superfluous words. So truth and beauty aresisters, although not always.
In philosophy this aesthetic principle is expressed morepowerfully and fully. It is not only more synthetic andintegrated than science. In its very social purpose it is, orshould be, closer and more understandable to the masses of thepeople. It should not be separated from them by the"barbed wire" of a formalised, let alone a mathematisedlanguage.
A considerable number of philosophical works have been writtenin poetic and artistic form. Actually they are not poetry butphilosophical thoughts expressed as poetry. Many brilliantworks of philosophy are couched in such fine language thatthey read like great works of both science and art. Inspiredby their genius, the great philosophers clothed their profoundthoughts in images of astonishing aptness.
Many people draw attention to the fact that the achievementsof science, no matter how significant they once were, areconstantly being reviewed, whereas the masterpieces of artsurvive the centuries in all the splendour of theirindividuality. But have you noticed that something similarhappens in philosophy too? The works of the great philosophersretain their inimitable value through the centuries. So inphilosophy, just as in art, history is of specialimportance. Whereas the works of the classical naturalscientists are expounded in textbooks and few people read themin the original, the classical works of philosophy must beread in the original in order to gain a full appreciation ofphilosophical culture. Every great philosopher is unique inhis intellectual and moral value; he teaches us to perceivethe world and ourselves profoundly and in their most subtleaspects.
What has been said does not, of course, imply that philosophymay ultimately be reduced to a form of art. Philosophicaltreatises do not become works of art even when they areexpressed in the colourful and deeply symbolical language ofpoetry, as was often the case in ancient times, in thephilosophy of the Renaissance and the New Age. Take Plato, forexample. He had a colourful world-view, its very form evokesadmiration. He is aesthetic all the way through. Or take thephilosophical views of the French materialists of the 18thcentury. They are simultaneously splendid works of art, fullof humour, satire and barbed witticisms aimed at religion,scholasticism, and so on. Their works still delight us withthe brilliance of their form, which clothes subtle andprofound thoughts. Or again, take the philosophical ideas ofTolstoy or Dostoyevsky, in which their masterpieces aresteeped. We began by dealing with the aesthetic principle inphilosophy. But to a no less degree one can speak also of thephilosophical principle in art. Probably the closest thing tophilosophy is poetry, which has the power to make laconic butprofound generalisations about both social and individuallife, moral phenomena, and the relationship between man andthe universe.
The metaphorical language of art, far from being alien tophilosophy and other sciences, is an essential condition forevery new step into the unknown.
The similar and the specific in philosophy and art can also beseen in the nature of generalisation. Philosophy usesgeneralisations and its generalisations are of an extremelybroad, virtually universal character. Its categories of thegeneral, the particular and the unique are both interconnectedand yet separate concepts. In art, on the other hand, thegeneral, the particular and the unique are alloyed in the veryfabric of the artistic image. Philosophy is theoretical frombeginning to end, whereas art is sensuous andimaginal. Philosophical thought reflects its subject-matter inconcepts, in categories; art is characterised, on the otherhand, by emotional and imaginal reflection and bytransformation of reality. This is not to say, of course, thatart, particularly in its verbal form, in belleslettres, and even more so in the intellectual typeof novel, contains no concepts. Dostoyevsky's novels arethree-quarters philosophical. The same applies to the works ofGoethe, for example, for whom feeling and a philosophicalunderstanding of nature, expressed in both artistic form andscientific analysis, were his life's work. The scientific,philosophical and artistic approaches were organic inGoethe. His work as a thinker is inseparable from that of theartist. When composing his works of art, he is at the sametime a philosopher. He achieves the greatest aesthetic powerin those very works (Prometheus andFaust) where the unity of artist andphilosopher is most organic. Can we distinguish clearlybetween the philosophical and aesthetic principles inFaust? All that can be said is that nogenius could have created such a work without a synthesis ofthe philosophical, aesthetic and the scientific.
Without a certain degree of intellect there can be no subtlefeelings and from this it follows that art, whichaesthetically expresses man's emotional-intellectual world inhis relationship to the environment, is bound to feel theimpact of philosophy and the other sciences. A world-view maycome into art but not as an intrinsic part of it. We can speakof the philosophical content of art, just as we can speak ofthe philosophical content of science, when the scientistbegins to consider the essential nature of his science, itsmoral value, social responsibility, and so on. These areactually philosophical questions and they do not form part ofthe specific nature of the given science. Rather they are theself-awareness of the science, just as the artist'sreflections on the nature of art, its social meaning, and soon, are the self-awareness of art. And this is in factphilosophy, whose categories permeate all forms of thought,including that of the artist. Without them no artist couldgeneralise, identify the typical in the particular fact,assess the quality of his subject-matter, preserve proportion,the most vital element in aesthetic imagination, or comprehendthe contradictions of life in such a way as to give them fullexpression.
The work of the artist is not spontaneous. It always followssome kind of plan and it is most effective when talent isguided by a world-view, when the artist has something to tellpeople, much more rarely is it effective when it comes aboutas a result of the accidental associative play of theimagination, and never is it effective when it is a result ofblind instinct. The keen attention that is given to theproblems of method is a sign of progress in both modernscience and art, a sign of the increasing interaction of allaspects of intellectual life—science, philosophy, andart.
