Editor in Chief: Moh. Reza Huwaida Monday, April 29th, 2024

Art is a Virtue of Intellect

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Art is a Virtue  of Intellect

The philosophers tell us that art consists essentially, not in performing a moral act but in making a thing, a work with a view not to the human good of the agent, but to the exigencies and the proper good of the object to be made, and by applying ways of realization predetermined by the nature of the object in the question. Art thus appears as something foreign in itself to the sphere of the human good, almost as something inhuman, and whose exigencies nevertheless are absolute for needless to say  there are no two ways of making an object well of realizing well the work one has conceived  there is but one way and it must not be missed. The philosophers go on to say that this making activity is principally and above all an intellectual activity. Art is a virtue of the intellect, of the practical intellect, and may be termed the virtue proper to working reason. But then, you will say, if art is nothing other than an intellectual virtue of making, whence come its dignity and its ascendancy among us? Why does this branch of our activity draw to it so much human sap? Why has one always and in all peoples admired the poet as much as the sage? It may be answered first that to create, to produce something intellectually, to make an object rationally constructed, is something very great in the world  for man this alone is already a way of imitating Allah the almighty. And I am speaking here of art in general, such as the ancients understood it in short, of art as the virtue of the artisan. But where the maker of works especially becomes an imitator of Allah, where the virtue of art approaches the nobility of things absolute and self sufficient is in that family of arts which by itself alone constitutes a whole spiritual world namely the fine arts. In this respect also human art imitates Allah it realizes in the order of intellectuality, that is to say in the highest order of nature realizes in act one of the fundamental aspects of the ontological likeness of our soul with Allah.

These are some statements which are stated by the great intellectuals and philosophers about art. In our homeland Afghanistan our culture, our community and our tradition throughout the centuries are very rich regarding art and crafts. We had great sublime personalities in art and craft, but unfortunately in the dark era when our country was ruled by some selfish and ignorant figures that was the time when we lost our real essence of art. Being an artist is as if being a person who every second create new thoughts and emotions.

Art is the language of peace, love, harmony and care. Great artists such as Pablo Picasso who was a great and self esteemed painter and sculptor, Leonardo da Vinci the humble and magnificent painter, sculptor and inventors, they were the artists who changed the face of art by their skills and inner potentials. Art is a language of emotions and colors through which you convey your goal and message to the viewers and people. Every color and every scenario which exists in an art has a long and tremendous meaning in depth. In Afghanistan there is a great and absolute stunning talents of being a reverence artist, but sadly they are not groomed and their talents and potentials are not trained due to neglecting the worth and value of art in our country; in spite of having a separate and organized ministry for the culture and information still our artists and painters are ignored by the government.

Art for it is the aspiration and ardent desire of the intelligence considered in the pure state to beget a living being like into it. Everyone utters a word "To be fertile, so as to manifest that which one possesses within oneself, is a great perfection, and it essentially belongs to the intellectual nature”.  Thus in the world of pure spirits, where there is no generation, there is the spiritual production of the mental word, in which the Angel in knowing himself expresses himself to himself, and through which he manifests what he knows to whomever it pleases him among the other pure spirits.

This mental word, it is true, this spiritual utterance remains a quality of the subject it is not a substance it is a sign. In creatures, the intellect does not succeed in producing in similitude of nature another "itself"; it does not, properly speaking, engender; it utters a word, but this word is not a son. This, however, is owing to the essentially deficient condition of the creature; intelligence itself, considered in the pure state, in its pure formal line, desires to engender, to produce, in knowing itself, something which will not be merely a likeness, a sign, an idea of the thing known, but the thing known itself existing for itself.

But note that, accidentally and in a certain respect, there is in the work of art something that better answers the exigencies of the idea of generation: I mean that in his work the great artist is sure to put himself really, he is sure to imprint his own likeness on it; whereas, in the child, because of matter and heredity, one cannot be sure that it is the father or the mother, rather it may be some more or less desirable ancestor who comes to life again and manifests his or her likeness. The father thinks he finds himself again in his child, but it is the grandfather or the great-grandfather, or the mother-in-law, who appears.

There is in the child a terrible unknown quality which does not exist in the work of art. And it is understandable, not that the artist should love his works more than his children, but at least that he should love them with a love almost as personal and, from a certain point of view, less anxious, and that he says in thinking of them. For the purpose of developing art in our country Afghanistan we have to pay attention toward our artist, there is a dire need of grooming their inner talents and natural gifted talents, it is because our arts and artists can be our true representative and ambassador. We need to rehabilitate our lost respect in the world by assuring the people around the world that Afghans are peace loving and harmonious people.

Zainab Ahmadi is a permanent writer of the Daily Outlook Afghanistan. She can be reached at zainab_ktz09@yahoo.com

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