I am taking a course on the German playwright and aesthetic theorist Gotthold Ephraim Lessing. Our most recent discussion focused on Lessing's attempt to differentiate between the plastic arts (painting, sculpture, even film) and writing. Lessing argues--against the current of his time--that the two mediums are essentially different as each has a different goal and different manner of working upon the viewer or reader. Lessing proceeds to give his opinion on what these mediums should depict in order for them to conform to their respective ends and restrictions. Because the plastic arts are visual and give us an immediate depiction of reality, it is necessary that they choose the "most pregnant moment" of an event to paint. The 'most pregnant' moment is not the climactic moment, however. It is not the moment when the bullet strikes the body, when the car hits the individual, or worse, when the sexual act is performed. Lessing believes that the plastic medium must conform to the rules of beauty--and those rules tell us that beauty is moderate. Beauty suggests, it does not shock. If we were to see everything, the moment of greatest distress, or gore, or climax, it would arouse extremely powerful feelings in the viewer that would overpower every other sensation or reflection on the action. Beauty should communicate gentle emotions such as pity, admiration, slight sorrow, etc. Everything else is distasteful and sensationalism.
Lessing's logic here is interesting. To him, art, although imitative, does not have as its object, simply the honest depiction of nature. It should not just imitate what occurs in real life. Art can therefore be restricted as to what it can depict. Lessing believes that science is different. In an aside, he states that since science's goal is truth, it cannot be restricted in any way. This attitude reveals an important aspect of Enlightenment thought. Science is set apart as a thing unto itself, apart from any restraints imposed by culture. It underlines the disingenuous of enlighteners. On the one hand they could argue for the need for moderation and pragmatism in politics that allowed them to accommodate a monarchy and limitations on freedoms. On the other hand, their belief in science as an ultimate truth-producing entity reveals their essentially radical nature: whatever 'science'(or more properly, reason) may tell us, must be followed since it is necessarily true.
