Collected Works of Nolini Kanta Gupta - Vol. 2

The Philosopher as an Artist and Philosophy as an Art

I WONDER why Philosophy has never been considered as a variety of Art. Philosophy is admired for the depth and height of its substance, for its endeavour to discover the ultimate Truth, for its one-pointed adherence to the supremely Real; but precisely because it does so it is set in opposition to Art which is reputed as the domain of the ideal, the imaginative or the fictitious. Indeed it is the antagonism between the two that has always been emphasised and upheld as an axiomatic truth and an indisputable fact. Of course, old Milton (he was young, however, when he wrote these lines) says that philosophy is divine and charming:

Not harsh, and crabbed as dull fools suppose,

But musical as is Apollo's lute.!

Well, I am not sure if the poet was anything more than being metaphorically rhapsodical, at the most he had only a poetic perception, he did not give us the scientific truth of the matter.

In the face of established opinion and tradition (and in the wake of the prophetic poet) I propose to demonstrate that Philosophy has as much claim to be called an art, as any other orthodox art, painting or sculpture or music or architecture. I do not refer to the element of philosophy-perhaps the very large element of philosophy -that is imbedded and ingrained in every Art; I speak of Philosophy by itself as a distinct type of authentic art. I mean that Philosophy is composed or created in the same way as any other art and the philosopher is moved and driven by the inspiration and impulsion of a genuine artist. Now, what is Art? Please do not be perturbed by the question. I am not trying to enter into the philosophy-the metaphysics

¹ Comus, I, 477-8.

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of it, but only into the science - the physics - of it. Whatever else it may be, the sine qua non, the minimum requisite of art is that it must be a thing of beauty, that is to say, it must possess a beautiful form. Even the Vedic Rishi says that the poet by his poetic power created a heavenly form -kavih kavitva divi rupam asajat. As a matter of fact, a supreme beauty of form has often marked the very apex of artistic creation. Now, what does the Philosopher do? The sculptor hews beautiful forms out of marble, the poet fashions beautiful forms out of words, the musician shapes beautiful forms out of sounds. And the philosopher? The philosopher, I submit, builds beautiful forms out of thoughts and concepts. Thoughts and concepts are the raw materials out of which the artist philosopher creates mosaics and patterns and designs architectonic edifices. For what else are philosophic systems? A system means, above all, a form of beauty, symmetrical and harmonious, a unified whole, rounded and polished and firmly holding together. Even as in Art, truth, bare sheer truth is not the object of philosophical inquiry either. Has it not been considered sufficient for a truth to be philosophically true, if it is consistent, if it does not involve self-contradiction? The equation runs: Truth=Self-consistency; Error=Self-contradiction. To discover the absolute truth is not the philosopher's task-it is an ambitious enterprise as futile and as much of a maya as the pursuit of absolute space, absolute time or absolute motion in Science. Philosophy has nothing more to do-and nothing less-than to evolve or build up a system, in other words, a

self-consistent whole (of concepts, in this case). Art also does exactly the same thing. Self-contradiction means at bottom, want of harmony, balance, symmetry, unity, and self-consistency means the contrary of these things-the two terms used by philosophy are only the logical formulation of an essentially aesthetic value.

Take, for example, the philosophical system of Kant or of Hegel or of our own Shankara. What a beautiful edifice of thought each one has reared! How cogent and compact, organised and poised and finely modelled! Shankara's reminds me of a tower, strong and slender, mounting straight and tapering into a vanishing point among the clouds; it has the characteristic linear movement of Indian melody. On the other

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hand, the march of the Kantian Critiques or of the Hegelian Dialectic has a broader base and involves a composite strain, a balancing of contraries, a blending of diverse notes: there

is something here of the amplitude and comprehensiveness of harmonic architecture (without perhaps a corresponding degree of altitude).

All these systems, commonly called philosophical, appear to me supremely artistic. The logical intellect has worked here. exactly like a chisel or a brush in the hands of the artist. It did not care for truth per se, its prime preoccupation was arrangement, disposition; the problem it set before itself was how best to present a consistent and unified, that is to say, a beautiful whole.

But the philosopher's stone is not, after all, a myth, as is being proved by modern science. Even so, the philosopher's truth -the truth, that is to say, in the noumenal sense, to which he aspires in his heart of hearts-is also existent. There is a reality apart from and beyond all relativities and contin­gencies: truth is not mere self-consistence, it is self-existence. Art and philosophy as an art may not comprehend it, but they circuit round it and even have glimpses of it and touch it, though the vision they have more often aberrates, distorting a rope into a snake.

It is a grain of this truth that is the substance and the core of all true art and philosophy. Philosophy works upon this secret strand by its logic, art by imagination-although logic and imagination may not be so incommensurable as they are commonly thought to be; even so, both art and philosophy arrive at the same result, viz., the building of a beautiful superstructure.

This golden core of truth comes from elsewhere-it is beyond the mayic circle of art and philosophy. To have access to it, a lid overhead is to be broken through-rather, as it is said, it is that that breaks through of its own accord and reveals its identity.

Plato would not tolerate the poets in his ideal society since they care too much for beauty and very little for the true and good. He wanted it all to be a kingdom of philosophers. I am afraid Plato's philosopher is not true to type, the type set up by his great disciple. Plato's philosopher is no longer

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an artist, he has become a mystic-a Rishi in our language.

For we must remember that Plato himself was really more of a poet than a philosopher. Very few among the great representative souls of humanity surpassed him in the true poetic afflatus. The poet and the mystic -Kavi and Rishi - are the same in our ancient lore. However these two, Plato and Aristotle, the mystic and the philosopher, the master and the disciple, combine to form one of these dual personalities which Nature seems to like and throws up from time to time in her evolutionary march-not as a mere study in contrast, a token of her dialectical process, but rather as a movement of polarity making for a greater comprehensiveness and richer values. They may be taken as the symbol of a great synthesis that humanity needs and is preparing. The role of the mystic is to envisage and unveil the truth, the supernal reality which the mind cannot grasp nor all the critical apparatus of human reason demonstrate and to bring it down and present it to the understanding and apprehending consciousness. The philosopher comes at this stage: he receives and gathers all that is given to him, arranges and systematises, puts the whole thing in a frame as it were.

The poet-philosopher or the philosopher-poet, whichever way we may put it, is a new formation of the human consciousness that is coming upon us. A wide and rationalising (not

rationalistic) intelligence deploying and marshalling out a deep intuitive and direct Knowledge-that is the pattern of human mind developing in the new age. Bergson's was a harbinger, a definite landmark on the way. Sri Aurobindo's The Life Divine arrives and opens the very portals of the marvellous temple city of a dynamic integral knowledge.

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