I have a problem with Kai Hammermeister.
And it extends to not being able to remember his family name, but it starts with his chapter on Schopenhauer in this book. He obviously doesn't like Schopenhauer much—fine. But the summing-up that takes place at the end of the chapter seems awfully tendentious and out of place in a book that the author claims to mean as a historical survey:
The problem with Schopenhauer's aesthetic theory is not so much that it is full of inconsistencies and that many questions remain open. That is also the case with Kant's Critique of Judgment, for example, although certainly to a much lesser extent. Much more problematic, however, are Schopenhauer's departures from central positions of idealism. For one, there is the individualistic turn in his aesthetics.... True to the soteriological impetus of his metaphysics at large, the importance of art results from its relevance as a means for relief that it provides for the consumer.... Secondly, the individualistic turn also emphasizes the role of experience in art over and above the work of art itself... Furthermore, Schopenhauer's theory of art complicates both the epistemological and the practical moment of art to the point of reversing their traditional function.
(And so on.) Surely I can't be completely mistaken in thinking that he's enumerating, at best, controversial elements of Schopenhauer's aesthetics, and not necessarily problems with it? Even if Schopenhauer is flat-out wrong in the ways that Hammermeister pretty clearly thinks he is, there's difference between your theory being wrong and its having problems. (Right? I think maybe so.)
Also, whoever edited this book really needs to be fired.
Comments
on 2005-07-03 21:12:17.0, Matt Weiner commented:
How can you possibly fail to remember "Hammermeister"?
and, further, on 2005-07-03 21:23:13.0, ben wolfson commented:
I kept thinking it was "Himmelfarb".