AESTHETICS of creation in the infinite I AM’ So Coleridge wrote in 1817 in the thirteenth chapter of his Biographia Literaria; and from that day to this critics and philosophers have debated the exact nature of this lofty faculty The Aesthetics of Schopenhauer No philosopher has given aesthetics a more important role in his total system than Schopenhauer The third book of The World as Will and Idea is largely devoted to the nature of art Aesthetic pleasure, Schopenhauer tells us, following in Kant’s footsteps, consists in the disinterested contemplation of nature or of artefacts When we view a work of art—a nude sculpture, say—it may arouse desire in us: sexual desire perhaps, or desire to acquire the statue If so, we are still under the influence of will, and we are not in a state of contemplation It is only when we view something and admire its beauty without thought of our own desires and needs that we are treating it as a work of art and enjoying an aesthetic experience Disinterested contemplation, which liberates us from the tyranny of the will, may take one of two forms, which Schopenhauer illustrates by describing two different natural landscapes If the scene I am contemplating absorbs my attention without effort, then it is my sense of beauty that is aroused But if the scene is a threatening one, and I have to struggle to escape from fear and achieve a state of contemplation, then what I am encountering is something that is sublime rather than beautiful Schopenhauer, like Kant, calls up various scenes to illustrate the sense of the sublime: foaming torrents pouring between overhanging rocks beneath a sky of thunderclouds; a storm at sea with the waves dashing against cliffs and sending spray into the air amid lightning flashes In such cases, he says: In the undismayed beholder, the two-fold nature of his consciousness reaches the highest degree of distinctness He perceives himself, on the one hand, as an individual, as the frail phenomenon of will, which the slightest touch of these forces can utterly destroy, helpless against powerful nature, dependent, the victim of chance, a vanishing nothing in the presence of stupendous might; and, on the other hand, as the eternal, serene, knowing subject, who as the condition of every object is the sustainer of this whole world, the fearful strife of nature being only his own idea, and he himself free and apart from all desire and necessity in the contemplation of the Ideas This is the full impression of the sublime (WWI 205) 255