The Art of Reason

Abstract

“Imagination envisions the reconciliation of the individual with the whole, of desire with realization, of happiness with reason. While this harmony has been removed into utopia by the established reality principles, phantasy insists that it must and can become real, that behind the illusion lies knowledge. … The analysis of the cognition function of phantasy thus leads to aesthetics as the “science of beauty”... . The very commitment of art to form vitiates the negation of unfreedom in art.” —Herbert Marcuse (1966) Aesthetico-symbolic representation of art in all its forms constitutes repressed reality which is otherwise painful. This cathartic function of art unveils truth based on reason. Marcuse sums up the dualism of Aristotelian reason: “Art survives only where it can cancel itself, where it saves its substance by denying its traditional form and thereby denying reconciliation: where it becomes surrealistic and tonal. Otherwise, art shares the fate of all genuine human communication: it dues off.” (Marcuse 1866, p. 145).