Chapter 2.
7. Person and art (1)
The central position of 'person' in Rosmini's account of anthropological philosophy becomes transparently clear when we encounter his thoughts on the philosophy of art. Ars artis gratia would be abhorrent to his vision, in which the perfection of the person, itself dependent upon the light of being, is seen as the source and culmination of all that is worthwhile in human existence. And because his views on art reflect his feelings on every particular aspect of life that seeks complete autonomy and freedom from the restraint of personal integrity, it will be helpful to greater understanding of his general outlook if we consider carefully this aspect of his philosophy.
The artist's tasks, all of which are necessarily imitative in some way, consist in representing truth and beauty by showing contemporaries how these two things are contained in what they contemplate. The two elements cannot be separated: truth is being as it presents itself to the mind; beauty is the order in which being appears, that is, the proportion between the parts of being that we contemplate. In so far as classicism and romanticism try to separate the two, both are inadequate.
Classicism, in taking an 'historical system' as its ideal, is fearful of subordinating truth to beauty; romanticism, which is afraid of sacrificing beauty to truth, tends towards an 'idealist system' in the sense that it wishes to re-present facts as they should be rather than as they are. Neither view takes sufficient account of the presence of sin, or moral evil, in the world: classicism is excessively optimistic and falsifies its re-presentation of reality by excluding all that is evil and hence ugly; romanticism re-presents its own ideals (themselves a limitation of reality), as beautiful, irrespective of any relationship they may have in practice with what actually exists.
The solution, according to Rosmini, is to bring the two sides together through the concept of 'verisimilitude', understood as an attempt to describe something that 'could probably have occurred'. The facts narrated or portrayed need not have happened, but because they could have taken place they present some credibility to the artist's contemporaries. In this way, the artist does not risk abandoning the truth - he is not presenting pure invention. At the same time, beauty is not rejected - evil never takes primary place in a work of art.
Rosmini does not neglect the obvious objection to this theory of art. We are not impressing moralism on art, he says: the canons described are merely expressive of reality. The artist does not preach, but he does represent reality as it is. What is ugly is not neglected, but it finds its own level in the great canvas of being where it serves always as a contrast which throws into light the great positive features presented by reality. On the other hand, evil and ugliness are not allowed to assert themselves as though they presented some positive aspect of reality.
It is not difficult to see that behind Rosmini's philosophy of art lies an intense preoccupation with the providence and goodness of the supreme Being whose creation is the object of the artist's contemplation. In the last analysis, art must re-present creation, in which 'everything is very good', and towards which even evil must make its contribution.
But Rosmini goes further than offering a basically religious foundation to genuine artistic work. He also maintains that the notion of creation, essentially a Jewish contribution to the understanding of reality but now assimilated by Christianity, provides through revelation an indefinite expansion of the zone of verisimilitude available to the artist. No merely secular imagination, for example, could reach out to depict the Last Supper and the mystery of the Eucharist because these things, and many like them, could never have entered the ambit of secular experience whose limits are essentially restricted to natural and intellectual ideals of beauty. Such imagination cannot reach out to the moral ideal of beauty contained in the totality of things.
Only Christian revelation provides the elements of totality that the human mind looks for in vain with its own powers. Aided by revelation, the artist can seek total truth and beauty, and so come gradually to discover the order and beauty of the universe, furnished as it is with the laws and aims that its Creator has provided for it. It is precisely this possibility of total vision that is always lacking not only in pagan art, but in any branch of knowledge which seeks its own absolute autonomy independently of personal integrity.
Rosmini's philosophy of art was initially developed during the first period of his maturity (1827). Much later in life (1845-55) his understanding of the concept of beauty grew through his examination of the nature of being. His later work (2) posits five elements of beauty: objectivity, unity, plurality, totality, and the mental approval that distinguishes beauty from order. Objectivity enables the artist to seize upon the essence of what he wishes to portray; unity, plurality and totality spring from this essence and permit it to be portrayed in such a way that it elicits applause (the fifth element) from the mind contemplating the universe anew under the direction of the artist.
Although the appreciation of a work of art is not possible for all at the same level - artistic genius and taste, the outcome of natural gifts and education, differ from person to person -everyone is capable of appreciating beauty in some way. Indeed, appreciation on the part of both artist and critic can rise to enthusiasm when the former produces and the latter applauds a work of art that constitutes an imaginative surprise for them both. Such beauty perfects the artist and the beholder, provided it is not isolated from the totality of what is beautiful. In other words, the spirit in contact with beauty becomes beautiful itself if it does not neglect greater for lesser beauty.
The universe itself is a work of art as the execution of a theme present in the mind of the Creator. Human beings, who possess objectivity itself in the idea of being, and thus share in the objective essence and unity of what is created, come through gradual experience (plurality) to appreciate more and more (totality) the beauty of God's work of art as unending 'surprises' are placed before them. God, the supreme Being, who knew from the beginning what he intended in creation, allows us to come little by little to the concrete realisation of that which we know only indeterminately and naturally in the light of being.
Notes
(1). Cf. Sull'Idillio e sulla nuova letturatura italiana (Essay on the Idyll and the New Italian Literature), in Opuscoli filosofici, vol. 1, Milan 1827.
(2). Cf. the chapter Della bellezza (On Beauty), in the Teosofia (Theosophy) [1859], EN, bk 3, Rome 1938.