Black Bucket Essays
Volume 1, Issue 2
Normalize difference until there is no space between self and other.
Fritz Horstman
In 1818 Arthur Schopenhauer described a spectrum between beauty and the sublime in The World as Will and Representation, paraphrased here:
Beauty is the pleasure of perceiving an object that cannot hurt the observer; such as seeing flowers in sunlight.
The weakest sublimity is the pleasure of perceiving an object that cannot hurt the observer, but is devoid of life; such as sunlight on stones.
A less weak sublimity is the pleasure of seeing an environment that couldn’t sustain the observer: a barren mountain or desert.
Sublimity is the pleasure of perceiving objects that threaten to hurt the observer; such as a raging river or a very high cliff.
A fuller sublimity is the pleasure of perceiving destructive nature: a volcano or earthquake.
The fullest form of the sublime is pleasure from the knowledge of the observer’s nothingness and oneness with nature, of comprehending the immensity of the universe.
Schopenhauer does not say that pleasure is gained just from knowledge of a destructive nature, but of perceiving it. That is to say that the earthquake must be felt and danger must be near for the pleasure to really be sublime. That denies our animal instinct for survival and concern for our kin. It assumes an understanding of the fullest sublimity, and of the observer’s nothingness: if I am truly nothing, then so are my friends; and so are these feelings and sensations; these moments are nothing.
When I come across a snake in the forest I almost always have a moment of shear terror, before I control myself and can take in the sublimity of the creature. I have often thought about how very other a snake is to me. When I think about extraterrestrials, which I cannot help but do when extending the concept of otherness, I wonder what my reaction would be to an encounter with a sentient intelligent alien. I expect it would be an exaggerated version of my gut reaction to snakes. I would probably scream, vomit, and pass out.
Maybe it’s spiders or bats for you. Whatever it is that upon unexpected encounter gives you extreme willies, magnify that to extraterrestrial levels and try to imagine how you’d react. That is otherness in a vaguely anthropomorphic form, which is to say that it’s easier to imagine sentient beings than more other others. The many unknown planets and distant motes of dust are way, way other. They are overwhelming in their age, distance, duration, quantity and eternity. To attempt to understand my oneness with them is much harder than it is to imagine the shock of seeing a UFO’s disembarking crew. But as with snakes, I think I would eventually master my shock at that sublimity and possibly take pleasure from the sublime weirdness of nature; whereas the few times I’ve pulled back my curtain of self-absorption and fleetingly perceived the enormity of the universe, I’ve been struck dumb, and so insignificant.
While those encounters with the most sublime, brief and unfocused as they have been, were not particularly pleasurable, they added enormously to the pleasure of every other level on Schopenhauer’s spectrum. How much more beautiful is the iris in sunlight when both it and I are no more or less important than the distant galaxies. And the snakes and aliens: we’re all in it together, and we’re all beautiful and sublime and to each other we’re all weird as hell.
Volume 1, Issue 2
Normalize difference until there is no space between self and other.
Fritz Horstman
In 1818 Arthur Schopenhauer described a spectrum between beauty and the sublime in The World as Will and Representation, paraphrased here:
Beauty is the pleasure of perceiving an object that cannot hurt the observer; such as seeing flowers in sunlight.
The weakest sublimity is the pleasure of perceiving an object that cannot hurt the observer, but is devoid of life; such as sunlight on stones.
A less weak sublimity is the pleasure of seeing an environment that couldn’t sustain the observer: a barren mountain or desert.
Sublimity is the pleasure of perceiving objects that threaten to hurt the observer; such as a raging river or a very high cliff.
A fuller sublimity is the pleasure of perceiving destructive nature: a volcano or earthquake.
The fullest form of the sublime is pleasure from the knowledge of the observer’s nothingness and oneness with nature, of comprehending the immensity of the universe.
Schopenhauer does not say that pleasure is gained just from knowledge of a destructive nature, but of perceiving it. That is to say that the earthquake must be felt and danger must be near for the pleasure to really be sublime. That denies our animal instinct for survival and concern for our kin. It assumes an understanding of the fullest sublimity, and of the observer’s nothingness: if I am truly nothing, then so are my friends; and so are these feelings and sensations; these moments are nothing.
When I come across a snake in the forest I almost always have a moment of shear terror, before I control myself and can take in the sublimity of the creature. I have often thought about how very other a snake is to me. When I think about extraterrestrials, which I cannot help but do when extending the concept of otherness, I wonder what my reaction would be to an encounter with a sentient intelligent alien. I expect it would be an exaggerated version of my gut reaction to snakes. I would probably scream, vomit, and pass out.
Maybe it’s spiders or bats for you. Whatever it is that upon unexpected encounter gives you extreme willies, magnify that to extraterrestrial levels and try to imagine how you’d react. That is otherness in a vaguely anthropomorphic form, which is to say that it’s easier to imagine sentient beings than more other others. The many unknown planets and distant motes of dust are way, way other. They are overwhelming in their age, distance, duration, quantity and eternity. To attempt to understand my oneness with them is much harder than it is to imagine the shock of seeing a UFO’s disembarking crew. But as with snakes, I think I would eventually master my shock at that sublimity and possibly take pleasure from the sublime weirdness of nature; whereas the few times I’ve pulled back my curtain of self-absorption and fleetingly perceived the enormity of the universe, I’ve been struck dumb, and so insignificant.
While those encounters with the most sublime, brief and unfocused as they have been, were not particularly pleasurable, they added enormously to the pleasure of every other level on Schopenhauer’s spectrum. How much more beautiful is the iris in sunlight when both it and I are no more or less important than the distant galaxies. And the snakes and aliens: we’re all in it together, and we’re all beautiful and sublime and to each other we’re all weird as hell.