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Gestalt in philosophy

NB Translated from an old version (from 2012) of Gestalt on German WP

The study of the relationships between form (Greek: μορφή morphē: form), reality and perception was at all times a central concern of philosophy. Approaches can already be found in Plato's Theory of Forms and his Parable of the cave allegory. In scholasticism, the teaching of Aristotle developed entelechy further (see hylemorphism).

In modern times, no attempt is made to define the term "Gestalt", i.e. to explain it in subordinate and comprehensible or understandable terms; but instead to specify it. The more examples you find of a particular Gestalt, the closer you find yourself to a wholly original shape or form. Thus, the aesthetic treatment of the Gestalt figure has spawned various specifications:

Art criticism

It examines the canonical rules produced by external form, the garb of a thought. Thus, one and the same aesthetic can be moulded (or fashioned) as a poem or a drama, for example. Above all, Christian Wolff took pains with this original research.

"Ecstasy of the spirit"

It arises from the law of form (Gestalt) which unity produces, according to JJ Winckelmann it derives or infers beauty from the unity of God: just as this unity is recognised, so can beauty also be recognised by its own unity. Since God is not a physical object, Winckelmann concludes that the highest beauty appears in its purest form, ie free of matter.

"Disinterested pleasure"

Kant saw (in the shape or form (Gestalt) which leads to disinterested pleasure) a bridge between theoretical cognition and moral action. Beauty is for him on the one hand conceptlessly perceptible, and does not simper (otherwise it would not be without interest), but on the other hand captivates through pure form. Conceptlessness and purity (as the absence of the pathological) constitute - in the beauties of the reception of a beautiful artwork - a method of transitioning between theoretical cognition and moral action.

"Aesthetic game"

For Schiller, the aesthetic game unites the two basic instincts of man; the carnal/erotic impulse, and the instinct for form. The former merges into life, the latter into form. The play instinct/'ludic drive' now combines these two so that its purpose becomes the living form (lebende Gestalt). In the game, neither things which are simply thought (the form instinct) nor things which are purely sensed (the sensuous/carnal instinct) come into existence, but both equally. Schiller thereby tried to avoid the one-sidedness of previous aesthetic theories which sought beauty either a): only in the "lifeless form" or b): only in a psychological explanation (affection/sympathy) which took no account of the form [in itself].

Form/Shape as the essence of things

In form, Goethe saw an expression of the essence of things. This is possible if the artwork has style. In this way, to the intuitively perceiving anschauenden (nicht ansehenden) Betrachter (seeing (not merely looking) beholder, the essential form of the horses' heads from the Parthenon reveals itself. (Goethe also transferred this "looking" on to living nature and thus came to his Morphology.)

"The Urphänomen is not to be regarded as a basic theorem leading to a variety of consequences, but rather as a basic manifestation enveloping the specifications of form for the beholder.” (Letter to von Buttel, 3 May 1827, Goethe 1996)

Urphänomen

On 24 February 1821, Hegel wrote to Goethe highlighting the importance he attached to the Urphänomen (original phenomenon) and his reading of its place in Goethean science (ie a non-Newtonian, holistic approach):

The Urphänomen is not to be regarded as a basic theorem leading to a variety of consequences, but rather as a basic manifestation enveloping the specifications of form for the beholder.” (Letter to von Buttel, 3 May 1827, Goethe 1996)

“This spiritual breath – it is of this that I really wished to speak and that alone is worth speaking of – is what has necessarily given me such great delight in Your Excellency’s exposition of the phenomena surrounding entoptic colours [phenomena within the observer's own eye].

What is simple and abstract, what you strikingly call the Urphänomen, you place at the very beginning. You then show how the intervention of further spheres of influence and circumstances generates the concrete phenomena, and you regulate the whole progression so that the succession proceeds from simple conditions to the more composite, and so that the complex now appears in full clarity through this decomposition.

To ferret out the Urphänomen, to free it from those further environs which are accidental to it, to apprehend as we say abstractly – this I take to be a matter of spiritual intelligence for nature, just as I take that course generally to be the truly scientific knowledge in this field” (Hegel 1984:698)

For Goethe, a phenomenon was its own theory, and the more examples of it you find, the clearer the underlying Urphänomen will become; and with the help of non-logical intuitive perception (Anschaung) the

An anecdote told of Goethe (which W. H. Auden found very endearing) relates how Goethe "suddenly got out of the carriage to examine a stone, and I heard him say: “Well, well! how did you get here?"

Rather than try to define a phenomenon in accordance with an often pre-conceived theory, Goethe called for the investigation of as many specific instances of similar phenomena as possible.

In the end, all words are defined in terms of each other - there is apparently no original word or concept from which all others grow or take their meanings(but cf OM); thus an attempt to use language to define a phenomenon results in self-reference, circularity, a uroboros.

Hegel concludes by attempting to construe/derive Gestalt as the unmediated expression of an inner being. Within this inner being, the idea discloses itself as a sensuous appearance/manifestation. Beauty is thus defined by a form (or shape) which reflects a vibrant and ensouled inward existence.

References

Notes

Sources

• Hegel, G. W. F. (1984). Hegel: The Letters. Trans. Butler, Clark and Seiler, Christiane. Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press. ISBN 9780253327154.

• Anna Maria Hennen: Die Gestalt der Lebewesen. Versuch einer Erklärung im Sinne der aristotelisch-scholastischen Philosophie (in German). Königshausen und Neumann, Würzburg 2000, ISBN 3-8260-1800-1.
• Wolfgang Metzger: Psychologie. Die Entwicklung ihrer Grundannahmen seit der Einführung des Experiments. Steinkopff, Darmstadt 1954; Krammer, Wien 2001 (6. Aufl.), ISBN 978-3-90181107-4.
• Wolfgang Metzger: Figural-Wahrnehmung. In: Norbert Bischof, Wolfgang Metzger (Hrsg.): Allgemeine Psychologie. Halbband 1, Wahrnehmung und Bewußtsein. Hogrefe, Göttingen 1974 (2. Aufl.), ISBN 3-8017-0006-2.
• Friedrich Sander: Experimentelle Ergebnisse der Gestaltpsychologie. In: Bericht über den 10. Kongreß der Deutschen Gesellschaft für Psychologie in Bonn 1927. Jena 1928, S. 23-87.