[This was to be a continuing column for In Principle. This is the first installment. The second installment was actually done and sent to Kurt just before the newsletter (and club) went belly up. A few months later, I offered it for publication in Summa Philosophiae as An Enlightening Scotsman.]
Hi, I'm Daniel Ust. Most of you know me as the former point man for the Central Jersey Objectivists. I got tired of organizing that group and now I'm only on the newsletter staff as Assistant Editor. With this new column, I hope to bring to light people, ideas, and events that have been overlooked.
Let me start with something I've been working on: Goethe. Goethe was your jack-of-all-trades type Enlightenment man. Kind of like a German version of Leonard da Vinci or Thomas Jefferson. The similarities go deeper than you might guess. Goethe not only dabbled in painting, like da Vinci – though I'd hardly say da Vinci was a dabbler – he also poured out an immense helping of letters and essays, like Jefferson. (His life was roughly contemporaneous with Jefferson's too.) The stuff he wrote makes even a hack like Stephen King look meager by comparison. It totals about thirty volumes! [Note: this is only the stuff translated into English so far.]
"Big deal! Why waste time on some dead guy who scribbled a lot!?!" You say. Wait a minute! I'm just giving you background here. I'm building up to the idea that Ayn Rand may have been influenced by Goethe. Before going on, let me bring up some conditions that I would have to meet to venture such a possibility. One of these is the obvious one: Goethe wrote his stuff before Rand wrote hers. Thus, Rand might have read Goethe. Next, I would have to find some evidence that she did read Goethe. Finally, I would need to show that there is some similarity of Rand's ideas to Goethe's – even if this is only by evolution. (The last point means that her ideas [on art] might be an improvement on his, just as hers [on philosophy] are an improvement on Aristotle.)
With these caveats in mind, let's start with the last point. We already have an answer to the first: Rand came after Goethe. The next is much harder to prove, since I don't have access to Rand's notebooks and she had a habit of not citing all her sources. (Note: this is not so much a flaw as some might believe. She wrote for the popular audience. Extensive footnoting and citation would have added length and probably distracted her readers.)
As evidence of the similarity, I offer the following quote from Goethe:
"Style... rests on the most fundamental principle of cognition, on the essence of things – to the extent that it is granted us to perceive this essence in visible and tangible form." ("Simple Imitation, Manner, Style" in Essays on Art and Literature (EAL), p72)
Compare this to one from Rand:
"An artist does not fake reality – he stylizes it. He selects those aspects of existence which he regards as metaphysically significant – and by isolating and stressing them, by omitting the insignificant and accidental, he presents his view of existence." (The Romantic Manifesto (RM), p36 [emphasis in the original])
Goethe and Rand are virtually saying the same thing. Goethe is a little less clear, but the gist is the same: he and her believe art focuses [on] the essentials of its subject. Rand tells us more of how this is done, "by isolating and stressing" the important and omitting the insignificant and accidental." (It should be emphasized that this is within the context of the artist's metaphysical value-judgments. For instance, a Medieval Christian artist would stress suffering and redemption through faith and minimize or omit people helping themselves or enjoying life on earth.)
Let's look at another quote from Goethe:
"... the true connoisseur [of art] sees not only the realism of what is imitated but also the excellence in the selection of subject matter, the imaginativeness in composition, and the supra-natural spirit of this micro-world of art. He feels that he must rise to the level of the artist in order to enjoy the work, that he must focus his scattered energies on the work of art, that he must live with it, must see it again and again, and thus achieve a higher level of awareness." ("On Realism in Art" in EAL, p78)
A very similar view is held by Rand.
"The sensory-perceptual awareness of an adult does not consist of mere sense data... but of automatized integrations that combine sense data with a vast context of conceptual knowledge. The visual arts refine and direct the sensory elements of these integrations. By means of selectivity, of emphasis and omission, these arts lead man's sight to the conceptual context intended by the artist. They teach man to see more precisely and to find deeper meaning in his field of vision." (RM, p47)
Even though Goethe is talking about all art and Rand is concentrating on painting, we again find them saying virtually the same thing. The selectivity and stylization of [the] artistic subject guide our experience of it. This leads to "a higher level of awareness" allowing us "to find deeper meaning" in that same experience. Rand again is much clearer. (Perhaps this might be the result of translation, but I doubt it.)
So perhaps Rand refined Goethe. Do these refinements go beyond mere stylistic ones? I think so. Though Goethe's style is not that bad – he wrote for the popular audience too – he does hint at a mixed philosophy. We know he was basically pro-reason and pro-empirical. However, he was also a Christian. In the second of his quotes above, he mentions "the supra-natural spirit of this micro-world of art." This does not sound at all metaphysical. Instead, it fits into an idealistic worldview – [viz.,] there is something beyond the natural world.
But despite these handicaps, Goethe came very close to Rand's formulations. Was she influenced by him? I'll leave the answer to this to the future.
Realizing that Rand isn't the final word in art – I hope – we can still praise this achievement. I'm sure there is much more waiting to be learned from Goethe and others like him. That's much more important than tracing intellectual family trees.