햄릿의 쥐덫과 쇼펜하우어의 예술

Abstract

The main purpose of this article is to provide a concise systematic summary of Schopenhauer’s theory of art, centered on the concepts of genius and tragedy, and to determine its place in the history of Western aesthetics. Our work will be paralleled by an analysis of Shakespeare’s Hamlet, a classic beloved by most Western intellectuals, including Schopenhauer. In other words, we will approach the goal of the paper through the method of ‘transcoding’, that is, understanding Schopenhauer through Hamlet and understanding Hamlet through Schopenhauer. In addition, the paper will reveal the extent to which Schopenhauer’s theory of art belongs to the tradition of Western aesthetics and the extent to which it can deviate from it. For Schopenhauer, art has the power to reveal truth. Like the play Hamlet staged to ascertain the truth of his father’s death, art is a microcosm of the stage on which it is staged, the stage of life. For him, art is like Hamlet’s mousetrap (to capture the truth). And art is the work of a genius. It is the product of a creative artist who captures the Ideas i.e. the proper object of the will. Schopenhauer’s concept of genius relies on Kant’s, but instead of originality, its association with madness is emphasized. There are grades of art based on the level of will objectification, and the genre that occupies the highest status, with the exception of music, is tragedy. Tragedy concentrates the suffering of life. The effect of tragedy is maximized when catastrophic events occur not because of any particular malice or coincidence, but because of the relationships between people of ordinary character. This kind of tragedy deals with the destruction of different characters as they pursue their own desires. In tragedy, people witness and sympathize with the painful fate that humans inevitably face, and in doing so, they gain temporary freedom from their will. Finally, this paper will show that Schopenhauer’s tragic aesthetics functions, on the one hand, as a threshold to an ethics of sympathy and, on the other hand, as a bombshell that blows up the binary rationalist philosophical system.