Dietrich von Hildebrand - Aesthetics：Volume II

Thinkers and Artists on the Hildebrandian Vision of Beauty

How does the beautiful evangelize? Following Dietrich von Hildebrand, we should say that the truly beautiful is an objective value, to be distinguished from what is merely subjectively satisfying. This means that the beautiful does not merely entertain; rather, it invades, chooses, and changes the one to whom it deigns to appear. It is not absorbed into subjectivity; it rearranges and redirects subjectivity, sending it on a trajectory toward the open sea of the beautiful itself.

BISHOP ROBERT BARRON

Theologian, author, and founder of Word on Fire Ministries

Dietrich von Hildebrand was among the first to recognize the magnitude of the intellectual crisis. He understood the centrality of beauty not merely to art but to philosophy, theology, and ethics. In his ambitious and comprehensive Aesthetics, now translated into English for the first time, von Hildebrand rehabilitates the concept of beauty as an objective rather than purely subjective phenomenon. His systematic account renews the Classical and Christian vision of beauty as a reliable mode of perception that leads humanity toward the true, the good, and ultimately the divine.

DANA GIOIA

Poet and former chairman of the National Endowment for the Arts

In Aesthetics II, Dietrich von Hildebrand offers a thorough reflection on the distinctive characteristics of architecture, sculpture, painting, literature, and music. He guides the mind with clarity even if the reader is not used to systematic intellectual reflection on a topic often relegated to the realm of subjective taste. The objective splendor that lies within a work of art, somehow transcending its human author, is one of many points worth contemplating in this volume. I am convinced that the section on music echoes not just my own experience but that of many performers striving to do justice to the works they bring to life. Whoever is looking for an aesthetic vision of the whole will find Aesthetics II deeply insightful, challenging, and encouraging.

MANFRED HONECK

Grammy-winning conductor

Music Director of the Pittsburgh Symphony Orchestra

I remember so well when, as a young priest in the early 1950s, I was invited to a house owned by the von Hildebrand family, which lay within the boundaries of the parish where I was assigned, to attend one of the conferences he was accustomed to give during his summer visits to Europe. Not surprisingly his theme was beauty, and with great eloquence and enthusiasm he spoke of its philosophical and spiritual importance. The joy and freshness of his understanding of Catholic doctrine were contagious and stood in marked contrast to the dryness of a kind of scholasticism that seemed then to have become stale and brittle. Listening to him, one recognized that it was the transcendent beauty of truth that had captured his heart and his mind.

JOSEPH CARDINAL RATZINGER

Most philosophers of aesthetics content themselves with a few examples from the realm of art, and make no attempt to explore the distinct disciplines or to catalogue all the parts that contribute to the overall aesthetic effect. One purpose of this second volume, however, is to show the completeness of the artistic enterprise, and the way in which it penetrates human life in its entirety, so that the idea of beauty enters our practical activity at every point. We are seeking harmony and order in everything we do, and even if the sublime effects of the most spiritual works of art are beyond our everyday competence, we will always be motivated in our everyday activities by a fundamental need for harmony and an aversion to ugliness.

SIR ROGER SCRUTON

Philosopher and author

Dietrich von Hildebrands engaging studies of different art forms is a marvelous illustration of the way phenomenology is uniquely accessible to a wider readership. Here is philosophy for the sake of the world. The result is a voracious, encyclopedic explorationone is almost tempted to say a rompthrough a range of concrete examples that would deepen anyones appreciation for what the arts can do. Most importantly, in an age of flattening reductionism, this book paints a picture of what it might mean for humanity to find its fullness through cultivating the same range of aesthetic curiosity.

JAMES K. A. SMITH

Professor of philosophy, Calvin College Editor in chief, Image journal

Aesthetics

Dietrich von Hildebrand

Originally published in German as Asthetik. 2. Teil. ber das Wesen des Kunstwerkes und der Knste. Gesammelte Werke Band VI. Regensburg: Habbel; and Stuttgart: Kohlhammer. 1984.

English translation published 2018 by Hildebrand Project, 1235 University Blvd, Steubenville, Ohio 43952

Copyright 2018 Dietrich von Hildebrand Legacy Project

All rights reserved

Cataloguing-in-Publication Information

Von Hildebrand, Dietrich, 18891977 | Scruton, Roger, foreword author | McNeil, Brian, translator | Crosby, John F., 1944, translator and editor | Crosby, John Henry, translator and editor.

[sthetik. English]

Aesthetics : volume II / by Dietrich von Hildebrand ; foreword by Sir Roger Scruton ; translated by Fr. Brian McNeil, John F. Crosby and John Henry Crosby; edited by John F. Crosby and John Henry Crosby.

Includes bibliographical references and index. | Steubenville, OH: Hildebrand Press, 2018.

LCCN 2018909970

ISBN 978-1-939773-10-4

Subjects: LCSH: Aesthetics. | ArtPhilosophy. | Phenomenology and art. | BISAC: PHILOSOPHY / Aesthetics | PHILOSOPHY / Movements / Phenomenology | ART / General

Classification: LCC B3359 .V6 2018| DDC 701dc23

Book design by Mark McGarry, Texas Type & Book Works

Set in Adobe Caslon

Cover Design by Marylouise McGraw

Cover Image: Hall of the Seasons, by Robert Hubert, in the Muse du Louvre, Paris.

Image from Wikimedia Commons.

Front Cover Font: Circular Bold by Laurenz Brunner

www.hildebrandproject.org

SUAVISSIMAE DILECTISSIMAE UXORI

To my most sweet and beloved wife

Contents

by Sir Roger Scruton

Dietrich von Hildebrand

Dietrich von Hildebrand was born in Florence in 1889, and studied philosophy under Adolf Reinach, Max Scheler, and Edmund Husserl. He was received into the Catholic Church in 1914. He distinguished himself with many publications in moral philosophy, in social philosophy, in the philosophy of the interpersonal, and in aesthetics. He taught in Munich, Vienna, and New York. In the 1930s, he was one of the strongest voices in Europe against Nazism. He died in New Rochelle, NY in 1977.

Hildebrand Project

We advance the rich tradition of Christian personalism, especially as developed by Dietrich von Hildebrand and Karol Wojtyla (Pope St. John Paul II), in the service of intellectual and cultural renewal.

Our publications, academic programs, and public events introduce the great personalist thinkers and witnesses of the twentieth century. Animated by a heightened sense of the mystery and dignity of the human person, they developed a personalism that sheds new light on freedom and conscience, the religious transcendence of the person, the relationship between individual and community, the love between man and woman, and the life-giving power of beauty. We connect their vision of the human person with the great traditions of Western and Christian thought, and draw from their personalism in addressing the deepest needs and aspirations of our contemporaries. For more information, please visit: www.hildebrandproject.org