An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art

provide richmaterialfor products of art; its elaboration andformrequire a

talent that has been academically trained, in order to make a use of it that

can stand up to the power of judgment.”^13 Without craft, training, and form,

inspiration“in its lawless form”is all too likely to produce“nothing but

nonsense.”^14 In order to avoid this, the artist must hold

up his work [to the demands of taste], and, after many, often laborious

attempts to satisfy it...[find] the form that contents him;...this is not as it

were a matter of inspiration or a free swing of the mental powers, but a slow

and indeed painstaking improvement, in order to let [the form of the work]

become adequate to the thought and yet not detrimental to the freedom in the

play of the mental powers.^15

Nonetheless,“it is in regard to [genius and imagination] that [a work]

deserves to be calledinspired, [even though it is] only in regard to [taste and

judgment] that it deserves to be called...beautiful.”^16

The work of genius serves crucially as the vehicle offreemeaning-making

of and in culture, over and above the necessities of survival and commerce.

The product of genius serves others“as a model...against which [they] may

test their own talent.”^17 When others respond to the work of genius, then its

power and status as a work of genius are confirmed, and those who take it up

become successors to its maker-as-precursor.

In this way the product of a genius...is an example, not for imitation, but for

emulation by another genius, who is thereby awakened to the feeling of his

own originality, to exercise freedom from coercion in his art in such a way

that [that successor art] thereby itself acquires a new rule, [through] which the

[precursor] talent shows itself as exemplary.^18

The making of a meaningful work that is in this way free from coercion is

our means of creating human culture as second nature, as a fit home for

humanity.

The imagination (as a productive cognitive faculty) is, namely, very powerful

in creating, as it were, another nature out of the material which the real

one gives it. We entertain ourselves with it when experience seems too

(^13) Ibid., §47, p. 189. (^14) Ibid., §50, p. 197. (^15) Ibid., §50, p. 191.
(^16) Ibid., §50, p. 197. (^17) Ibid., §47, p. 188.
(^18) Ibid., §49, pp. 195–96; translation corrected.
118 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art