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APPEARANCE OF THE OUTER WORLD 177
EPISTEMOLOGY OF AESTHETICS
It is high time that an epistemology of the work of art be created. Up to now aesthetics have done very little in the direction of ascertaining how great is the share of object and of presentation respectively in the birth of a work of art. The result of such an investigation is surprising enough. It appears that it is precisely the single object, or existence quiescent in its own self, which is absorbed easily and without residue in the presented picture and transformed into an absolute visual phenomenon. For in every sequence of events there is something transcending the picture, something which does not entirely transform itself into visual presentation. This something is causality. We can see each phase of every happening as a separate entity, but that one of them causes the other is something we can only know, something that can never appear in the shot as a visual picture. An isolated object complete in itself, which is neither cause nor effect but merely a spectacle — such an object is divorced from time and space, as it is cut off from the chain of causality. It no longer belongs to any of the Kantian categories as an object, only as a picture. And that picture may be a spectacle or a vision and it is almost a matter of indifference which of the two it is. Here we have the immaterial theme of the absolute film.
APPEARANCE OF THE OUTER WORLD
Such impressions as Basset or Ivens put on the screen are no longer presentations of some concrete reality; but they nevertheless have real existence as visual impressions. They are mere spectacles, but they can often be seen in the external world. A mirage is only a delusion, but as such it can naturally be seen. Such visual impressions are not like the visions of a dream nor like the images evoked in the memory, which subconsciously blend into each other as figments of the mind. The pictures of Ivens are only pictures, but Ivens has seen them, some one else might have seen them too and they were optical phenomena susceptible of being photographed.
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