Illustrations: Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer, Rembrandt Harmensz, van Ryn. The Metropolitan Museum of Art. Purchased with special funds and gifts of Friends of the Museum, 1961.
I. What should arrest us about Rembrandt’s Aristotle is his gaze. However, to reach the original in the Metropolitan Museum on the edge of Central Park in New York, we must be in motion. We must make our way to and then through a modern city. There is no way to approach this painting on foot and in silence. No wonder then that when we arrive at the original we find it hard to enter into the solitude of Aristotle. Nor does the museum always help us. The voices of the paid guides are hard to ignore; and their loud familiarity is as distracting as the silent familiarity of the guards who shift from foot to foot, vacant-eyed, waiting for a break. Meanwhile, the crowds shuffle past. Most are disappointed. These visitors to Rembrandt’s Aristotle are attracted or they would not visit, and yet they move on.[1] Perhaps philosophy always disappoints mere visitors. We learn from Aristotle himself of a visit that the curious made to Heraclitus:
An anecdote tells of an explanation that Heraclitus is said to have given strangers who wanted to approach him. Upon approaching they found him warming himself at a stove. They stopped surprised and all the more so because as they hesitated he encouraged them and bade them come in with the words: ‘For here too there are gods present.’
(de part. anim., A5, 645a 17)
Heidegger has stressed the important things about this passage:
The group of unknown visitors in its inquisitive curiosity about the thinker is disappointed and puzzled at first by his abode. It believes that it must find the thinker in conditions which, contrary to man’s usual way of living, show everywhere traits of the exceptional and the rare, and, therefore, the sensational. The group hopes to find through its visit with the thinker things which, at least for a time, will provide material for entertaining small talk. The strangers who wish to visit the thinker hope to see him perhaps precisely at the moment when, sunk in profound meditation, he is thinking. The visitors wish to experience this, not in order to be affected by his thinking, but merely so that they will be able to say that they have seen and heard one who is reputed to be a thinker. Instead, the inquisitive ones find Heraclitus at a stove. This is a pretty ordinary and insignificant place. True enough, bread is baked there. But Heraclitus is not even busy with baking at the stove. He is there only to warm himself, and so he betrays the whole poverty of his life at this spot which is in itself prosaic. The glimpse of a freezing thinker offers little of interest. And so the inquisitive ones at this dis-appointing sight immediately lose their desire to come any closer. What are they to do there? This ordinary dull event of someone cold and – standing by the stove one can find any time in his own home. Then, why look up a thinker? The visitors are about to leave again. Heraclitus reads the disappointed curiosity in their faces. He realizes that with the crowd the mere absence of an expected sensation is enough to make those who have just come leave. Therefore, he heartens them. He especially urges them to enter with the words: gar kai entauthat theos / ELVW ‘YCip XW EVTCiVOCi OEOVS.** ‘There are Gods present even here.’ This statement puts the abode, ethos / bOos} of the thinker and his doing in a different light. Whether the visitors have understood the statement immediately or at all and then seen everything in this different light, the story does not tell. But that the story was told and transmitted to us today, is due to the fact that what it reports is of the bearing of this thinker and characterizes it. Kai entautha /EVTCiVOCi ** ‘Even here,’ at the baking oven, at this common place, where all things and every condition, each act and thought, are familiar and current, i.e., securer, ‘even there’ in the sphere of the secure, einai theos /**ELVW OEOVS, it is so ‘that even there there are gods present.’3
Yet the disappointment ancient visitors felt before Heraclitus differs from the disappointment modern visitors feel before Rembrandt’s Aristotle. His Aristotle is not freezing and precisely this may disappoint the modern visitor. He would prefer to find the philosopher beside a stove in a bakery or a hut, or in the garage, the hospital, or the bedroom, or along the barricaded streets. Everywhere but in a study.
II. To disappointment may be added offense. Nothing puts off the modern visitor of Rembrandt’s Aristotle more, I think, than the philosopher’s rich dress. Is it not enough to be handsome? Need one dress so splendidly? Look at the speckles of gold which shine from his large dark beret. Need a philosopher or any man adorn himself with rings and earrings and drape an expensive glittery chain across his breast? How well his jewelry is set off by his dark garments. This splendor is deliberate. But for the modern visitor the most offensive glory is likely to dwell in the sleeves with their thousand hand-sewn folds, the work of many a seamstress for many an hour. I learned how offensive the rich dress of Aristotle is to the modern visitor from an outspoken student some years ago who announced that such dress is incompatible with philosophy. He wanted, I think, philosophy to be clothed in the rags of St. Francis or the overalls of Marx. Or in a combination of rags and overalls: the dress chosen by Simone Weil. The sight of the wealthy, handsome, and richly-appareled philosopher is not edifying.
If we want the world all denim and corduroy and no silk, we are bound to be offended or disappointed by Rembrandt’s Aristotle and our preference in dress will also insure that we are not arrested by Aristotle’s gaze. Today he who would live the vita contemplativa has a bad conscience; he will be shy, and he must be furtive. To others he must pretend that time spent walking with friends and with thoughts is “for the sake of health.” Finally, he will believe it himself and taste leisure only along with a bad cold. That solitude is a pleasure must not be mentioned among those who cannot bear to be alone with themselves. Where in antiquity one was embarrassed to labor or enter business, today one is embarrassed to loaf and invite thoughts. 4 We moderns know perfectly well how to hurry. Our life is filled with errands, engines, and phone calls. What is hard for us is to sit still and gaze. To learn how to gaze we must strain against what prevails around us, crowds in museums, and not only in museums. <<Pascal, small room>>
Tonight I am looking at Rembrandt’s Aristotle not in the museum but in my study, but I do so after a day spent taking apart the engine of my oId car. 5 A more modern machine or a more modern activity I cannot think of. (Couldn’t the superiority of modernity over antiquity be stated rather simply: the ancients did not have motor cars? **Heidegger on combustian engine) An engine is an exacting teacher, and it dirties all its pupils. I have bathed and put on fresh clothes to approach Rembrandt’s Aristotle. Still, under my nails some dark thick grease remains, a mark of the day’s immersion. Heraclitus might say, “There too, in the garage, the gods are dwelling.” 6 But Rembrandt’s ancient Aristotle would reply, “Elsewhere as well. He who has an old car or an old house in the country has need of clothes in which he cannot pull a head, grind a valve, mow a field, hoe nine bean rows, or tend the honey bees.” Dressed as Rembrandt’s Aristotle is, there are very few things you can do. Dressed as he is, one is almost compelled to think and to gaze.
III. Titles are meant to guide our eyes, but the title this painting has born, “Aristotle Contemplating the Bust of Homer,” troubles our eyes as much as it guides them. **Steinberg on Vasari deliberately misleading.** If we look at Aristotle and trace imaginary lines from his eyes, we readily discover that his eyes do not rest upon the bust of Homer at all. A minute ago he may have been looking at the bust, but now he looks beyond it, not elsewhere or at random but in a mental direction suggested by the bust. Aristotle’s hand lies on the bust, while the thought which put it there goes beyond it (as it should). So perhaps Aristotle contemplates Homer but certainly not the bust of Homer. Let us leave until later the adequacy of the word “contemplation” and turn instead to the word “Aristotle” in the title with a beginner’s question: is the title correct? Is this really meant to be Aristotle? How can we tell?
Evidence from the time of the painting’s commission suggests that this is indeed meant to be Aristotle. 8 From faraway Sicily a wealthy nobleman named Don Antonio Ruffo sent to Amsterdam to commission from Rembrandt a “philosopher.” ** And the family records, only recently brought to light, confirm that the philosopher here depicted is Aristotle, for they mention “copia del costo e spese del quadro dell’ Aristotle.” 9 The choice of Aristotle to fulfill the general instruction of Don Ruffo’s commission seems to belong to Rembrandt himself. 10 Perhaps also the inclusion of Homer (in the bust) and of Alexander as well, for the image of Aristotle’s famous pupil appears on the pendant which hangs from the chain he has given to his teacher. Don Ruffo seems to have responded favorably and discerningly to these inclusions, for a few years later he ordered both “a Homer” and “an Alexander” to go with his “philosopher.” It is not unnatural to think that he meant them to hang on either side of Rembrandt’s Aristotle.
What then is the correct title? The family records speak of an “Aristotle.” Do we need more? Perhaps what is enough for the family record-keeper, enough to say “yes, that one” and pass on down the list rapidly, is enough for us too, even though we do not intend to pass on rapidly. While we are looking we do not need titles; only later and far away, in the course of a conversation far from the Metropolitan Museum do we need something short to call up the right image to the mind’s eye. For such occasions Rembrandt’s “Aristotle” will do. But if we wish something more inviting and something which will encourage the right expectations, in ourselves as well as others, then I believe we will do better to refer to Rembrandt’s “Aristotle Gazing.” Meanwhile, seated here gazing, we can ignore the title.
Rembrandt stood before this very canvas many times. When he first stood before it, it was blank. What questions faced him? The commission from Don Ruffo said, give me “a philosopher.” Very well, which one? Which philosopher would we choose to paint? Socrates? Plato? Machiavelli? Galileo? Descartes? **11 Nietzsche?** 12 Bacon? And if it were suggested that the chosen philosopher should be with the bust of a poet, who might we choose. Bacon with the bust of Shakespeare? No. Bacon never refers to Shakespeare. The only other candidate would have to be Heidegger with the bust of Hölderlin? And who would we commission to paint it? Raphael? Giorgione? Titian or Velaquez? Or Edvard Munch? Or might we ask a painter who never painted a philosopher before? Breughel? Fra Angelico? Or Van Gogh?
Rembrandt chose Aristotle. Or if indeed Don Ruffo himself asked for Aristotle, then Rembrandt, in accepting the commission, chose Aristotle. Perhaps we will understand Rembrandt’s choice of Aristotle better if we ask another question he must have faced: how is a philosopher to be portrayed? How is philosophy made visible? Could one paint a man in such a way that, even without the title, everyone would know him to be a philosopher? The most famous pictorial answer to these questions, before Rembrandt, is Raphael’s “School of Athens,” a picture in which Aristotle figures prominently. It is a crowded scene. A few figures seem cloaked in the walking solitude of thought, but the emphasis falls upon activity, upon learning and teaching. It really is a school. Such an emphasis is proper to any attempt to make ancient philosophy visible. Socrates may have stood entranced in thought, embarrassed the old, and conversed alluringly with the young without forming a school, Plato may have written without ever revealing his true teaching (as he affirms in the Seventh Letter), but the pupil and inheritor of these two, Aristotle, wrote as “a teacher of those who know” (in Dante’s phrase). Raphael’s “School of Athens” is Platonic in its central depiction of Plato and Aristotle conversing and it is Aristotelian in its surrounding studies, for what is dense and united in Plato is discerningly separated into disciplines by Aristotle; thus while the pupils of Socrates and Plato differ quite a bit from each other, the pupils of Aristotle resemble each other; they have a “school resemblance” and would naturally make a university. By showing Aristotle alone and gazing, Rembrandt shows philosophy and Aristotle in quite a different light. 13
III. What most strikes us about Aristotle is his gaze. As we gaze at him gazing, we may begin to discover gazing. Gazing is attentive, even intense, but it is not staring. As children we engaged in staring contests. To win them you had to make your opponent turn his eyes away, either by making him laugh, or embarrassing him, or simply outlasting him. To keep your own eyes staring, you must go blank, not see what is in front of you; the trick is to keep one’s lids open and one’s mind shut.14 ***The ultimate achievement in this direction belongs to Wa Shay Wen, who manages to sleep with his eyes open, deceiving his Communist torturers.** Such staring can be heroic, but not philosophic, like gazing. Our natural way of looking at things seems to require that we move our eyes around, move from feature to feature, and also alternate periods of resting our eyes on something with periods of looking away:
Wahrend ich einen Gegenstand sehe, kann ich ihn nicht vorstellen.
While I am looking at an object I cannot imagine it.
Wittgenstein, Zettel, 622
Hence, to reflect upon an object in front of us, to think about it, we usually look away from it as well as look at it. In conversation, for example, eyes make contact but not all the time; so the person who looks you in the eye all the time is just as deficient as the one who never looks you in the eye. Then with persons or objects there are those moments, not the least pensive, when we put our eyes to the side of the person or object, leave them open, but really look with the mind’s eye. 15
This is exactly what Aristotle does. He looks away from the bust of Homer; while he rests his open eyes a bit past the bust; he views Homer with the mind’s eye. To think of Homer or dwell with him, you must look away from the bust of Homer. The bust is an image, something which invites its viewer to “look for Homer” elsewhere than in stone. Perhaps Aristotle thinks of the whole of the Iliad and Odyssey, or its epitome, the new shield of Achilleus that shows war and peace. If he thinks of the whole of those stories, what makes them parts of a whole, then he is thinking with Homer. And then Aristotle dwells with Homer on the Blessed Isles.
While I have been writing tonight I have been “looking away” from the painting. In order to write I must look down at the page, but my mind is not wholly where my eyes are; in my mind’s eye I see the painting. I both imagine it and in addition think about it. Thinking about it, I treat it as an image, as an invitation to understand Aristotle, to understand this very “looking away” which characterizes Rembrandt’s image of him, and even to understand what Aristotle understands. **In the divided line in the Republic, this kind of inquiry is called dianoetic ikasia, for it works through the image to something beyond it, perhaps to the ideas, but always with gratitude to the image.** What is thinking? The painting might reply: “All there is to thinking is seeing something noticeable which makes you see something you weren’t noticing which makes you see something that’s not even visible.”[2]
This wonderful painting of Rembrantd’s shows a certain way of looking and does so so as to provoke that very same way of looking in its beholder. What this painting provokes begins to show us what it would mean to be Aristotle. When the beholder asks, what does Aristotle see? or what kind of seeing is this?, and what is he thinking? questions which the painting provokes, he is beginning to understand what it means to philosophize. Philosophizing, here painted in the person of Aristotle, is visible in a certain kind of looking, one which is first ocular and direct but incomplete without a then looking away which opens the mind’s eye.
According to Rembrandt, philosophy cannot be made truly visible except if it be painted so as to arouse a philosophic gaze. Any description of philosophy that does not incite to philosophy must be made from the outside, from the vantage point of a non-philosopher, or of a philosopher who has forgot himself, who adopted the stance of a visitor when he knew better, when he knew that there are no visitors in philosophy, only dwellers.
Rembrandt chose to portray Aristotle philosophizing, and to do so he has recourse to something common, to the look in a man’s face which we call a “faraway” look. We look at such a man, and we know he is seeing something else than what is right before his open eyes. Certain landscapes, ones which lift the valley-dweller’s eyes to ridges and mountains, make this look more common among one people than another. While walking with friends or thoughts in alpine landscapes, one’s eyes involuntarily alight on some peak or high meadow. Such sights not only draw one’s steps on but also one’s thoughts, giving eye and mind something faraway to feed on. The Italian painters love to place such clear Alpine landscapes in the distance behind their Madonnas and other Biblical scenes. And let us acknowledge it: not only distant but pointless things are conducive to thought. Everyone knows the contribution which a flickering fire can make to conversation, permitting thoughtful silence which would otherwise be awkward. Smoke curling gracefully from a teacher’s pipe has made many a silence in a class productive. In Moliere’s Misanthrope one man explains that he came to despise another when he watched him “spend three-quarters of an hour spitting into a well, so as to make circles in the water,” not appreciating, perhaps, the wonderful thoughts which can arise from spreading circles in a pool. Here too there may be gods dwelling. Amsterdam, of course, does not provide such mountain views; nor does Aristotle need them to look as he does.
What is important is that the gaze of the philosopher is the deepening of something common, something commonly available. Here as elsewhere in his work Rembrandt works the same way; to understand and make visible the rare, the remote, or the past, he has recourse to the immediate, available, and common. To discover what Christ looks like, he inspects the faces in the streets of the Amsterdam Ghetto. To show what Aristotle looks like, he looks at the way a faraway thought overcomes a man. Because he saw what was in front of him, he could see the faraway and because he saw what was far away, he could see more thoughtfully what was in front of him. In this respect he and his Aristotle are alike; both gaze. But while an Aristotle without hands is possible, a Rembrandt without hands is not. <<likewise eyes>>
Rembrandt has not given us a familiar Aristotle. We do not see “the Stagarite,” an epithet which honors but does not approach. Nor do we see the famous teacher and law-giver, “the teacher of those who know.” The Aristotle of Raphael’s School of Athens is such a teacher. One admires and even worships philosophy in his person, but one does not understand it from within, and indeed one is not placed so as to. Only in Rembrandt’s Aristotle do we see the source of these impressive and effectual teachings. Before teaching there was learning, before school there must be thinking. To non-philosophers philosophy is a teaching which makes a school, and they value it especially for those of its consequences which make ordinary life more, amusing (paradox), more clear (astronomy), or more comfortable (mathematical physics), or more secure (maxims to live by). Raphael has portrayed philosophy primarily from this point of view. It remained for Rembrandt to uncover the source of all these things, a source which like a fountain running over takes no thought of the basin it falls into or of the citizens who draw daily water from it. To the question “how should the philosopher be portrayed?” Rembrandt answers, “how else but philosophizing.” In a way it is an obvious answer, but also one which can only be given by someone who has it in him to philosophize.
By exhibiting philosophy as a certain look in the eye Rembrandt characterizes philosophy as a way of looking at all things human, divine, and natural. This way of looking is something chosen, cultivated, and habitual with Aristotle. A whole way of life goes with it, supports it, and in turn is crowned by it. That philosophy is a way of life Rembrandt has emphasized by reminding us of other ways of life which differ from the philosopher’s. The bust of Homer reminds us of the life of the poet, and the image of Alexander reminds us of the life of the political man.
IV. How right Rembrandt is to include these ways of life and just these persons. The very theme of the most choice worthy way of life is often treated by Aristotle himself. Early in the Ethics (IV), it seems that the palm will go to the gentleman or great-souled man; leave out the eyes of Rembrandt’s Aristotle, and you have a portrait of such a man. Put those eyes back in, and you have a visible gloss on the last books of the Ethics where something higher than the gentleman or great-souled man appears, the man who cultivates the divine nous in himself, the philosopher (1177a-1179b). Nor are poetry and Homer out of place in Rembrandt’s Aristotle. In the course of his instructive treatise on poetry, Aristotle most often and most highly praises Homer. The same is true of politics and Alexander. Aristotle treated the political life in his Politics and his Ethics, and his relations to Alexander are manifold. Alexander was first his pupil and later his benefactor. That Rembrandt’s Aristotle wears a gold chain from Alexander reminds us that it was Alexander who endowed the Peripatetic School in Athens. Nor is the rank which these three lives have in Aristotle far off from the rank suggested by Rembrandt’s painting. The eyes tell us the ranking. The pensive eyes of the philosopher find no answering light in the dim eyes of Homer, while the eyes of the political man, Alexander, are not visible at all beneath his miniature visor.
Since Aristotle is turned toward Homer, we may well do the same. The opposition of the blind Homer and the deep-eyed Aristotle seems an absolute one. Most men with eyes find the sight of a blind man discomfiting; they feel both privileged and vulnerable, and both feelings make them uneasy. 16 What makes most men uneasy prompts a philosopher to thought. Aristotle is not discomfited by the blind Homer; instead he thinks about sight. In order to be a poet, you need not have eyes; blind Homer shows this. To be a philosopher, need one have eyes? It is hard to say. Aristotle has eyes, and we know of no notable example of a philosopher without eyes, yet there seems no necessity in this coincidence. (There is a man for whom eyes are necessary, but we will speak of him later.) Isn’t the blind Homer only a more absolute case of “looking away” (as we were saying of the philosopher); isn’t Homer only a more striking case of a man with a “faraway look” in his eyes, and if so, then is not poetry akin to philosophy? Something of the kind is suggested by the fact that Aristotle has a bust of Homer in his study, by the sensitive way he touches the head (not with a flat hand, but with the heel and the finger tips), and of course by his thoughtful turning in the direction of the bust, but the precise nature of the kinship is elusive. The stone bust of Homer manages to convey both the blindness of Homer and at the same time his intelligence and nobility, to show us both the vacant eyes of Homer and at the same time the marvelous mind’s eye from which flowed those clear, beautiful images. Is it the quality of that mind’s eye which justifies the admiration of Aristotle and constitutes the kinship of philosophy and poetry?
A few years later Rembrandt painted a separate Homer; even more than the bust of Homer, this painting shows us the mental concentration on some faraway thing which constitutes the kinship of the poet and the philosopher. Yet two differences remain. Judging from the painting of Homer dictating, 17 the concentration of the poet is not pure. He concentrates in order to make something present; for the gazing Aristotle, some thing simply is present. Homer waits for and at the same time invites and welcomes the Muses. He is like a man who awaits a rider on a white horse in the distance and by so doing welcomes him closer. In this respect Rembrandt’s Homer reminds us of his Matthew with the angel at his ear. (What Rembrandt’s Aristotle thinks of such muses and such angels is by no means clear.) One difference remains. The gazing Aristotle is silent, and Homer speaks. What Homer speaks, his scribe records on a scroll, while to writing and teaching the gazing Aristotle pays no heed whatever.
The relation of poetry and philosophy has long been characterized as a quarrel. The teacher of the teacher of Aristotle was Socrates, and as he explains in his Apology, the first attacks against philosophy in his person were brought by poetry in the person of Aristophanes. The counterattack by the immediate pupil of Socrates is well known, as also is the reconciliation offered by Aristotle’s Poetics. Rembrandt’s Aristotle accords with that reconciliation. There are differences between Aristotle and Homer, but not enough to make a quarrel.
In writing of this painting I have used the word philosophy and the word philosopher, and the other pair, poetry and poet. These words come easily to one’s pen; they are familiar and especially familiar as opposites. Already, however, in the course of our gazing together, that thoughtful gazer and maker Rembrandt has taken us beyond that familiar opposition. For he indicates a higher ground which unites the two. In Homer we see a wonder which speaks, in Aristotle a wonder which gazes. Each of these wonders shares something. Each is a certain kind of attention: perhaps we should say they both behold something, the one with the eye and mind’s eye, the other with the ear and mind’s ear. Who is to say which is higher or more comprehensive? Aristotle the philosopher turns to Homer . . . perhaps Aristotle’s writings are only a spelling out of Homer’s poems. Perhaps Aristotle’s works are only long footnotes to Homer. This would make Rembrandt’s view of Aristotle something like Heidegger’s view of himself, for Heidegger contemplates the bust of Hölderlin. It is surely a long question. In any case Homer and Aristotle, poetic wonder and philosophic wonder, share more than the old quarrel of poetry and philosophy would suggest. In what follows then, while I use the old words “philosopher” and poet, we must remember that while the one gazes and the other hearkens, they are united in wonder.
<<< after publication, remarks added in January 1983>>>
If the way of life of the poet and the way of life of the prince are subordinated to that of the philosopher, they are also brought into relation to each other. The gazing of the philosopher is a gazing at something and a gazing with the mind’s eye that arises from some thing. We have in this painting a portrait of Aristotle for whom self-consciousness, or rather nous ** thinking of itself, is something that arises in the course of and as a consequence of thinking about things other than itself. This is not Descartes in his well-heated solitary room, or even enigmatic Heraclitus beside his stove; and it is not Heidegger in his Hütte in the Schwarzwald trying to get back to something primal. When Aristotle thinks of Being it is not through a negation of beings but through them. Very many modern philosophers, especially the late ones, ignore politics and ethics; Bergson, Whitehead, Wittgenstein and Heidegger, though there may be ethical implications in and political consequences of their views, provide no politics or ethics, and others who do treat human life, such as James and Dewey ignore both physics and metaphysics. Not Aristotle. Nor is Rembrandt’s portrait of Aristotle like Nietzsche, as for example portrayed by Edvard Munch, solitary on a bridge high in the mountains. For Aristotle although the philosophic life is superior to others it is not lived all the time. Even if the philosopher could maintain himself solitary and self-sufficient, it is not clear that he should or if he did so, whether he would remain a philosopher. And so Aristotle attended not only to Being, but to physis, to ethics (or character), to the parts and causes of animals, in short to such a scope of inquiries that no one since has equaled him in this respect. As Vico said, “To equal one ancient thinker, you would have to have a whole modern university.” By which he surely meant “and even then you would not have such a thinker.” Because thinkers come whole; no crowd of dwarves, however competent in each his speciality, can supply the want of such a wholeness.
<<<Could skip this paragraph>>>
The wholeness of Aristotle has something to do with his respect for opinion. Without ever mistaking opinion for knowledge, he sees that many opinions contain some portion of the truth. His way is to walk (or peripitate) through the opinions, rejecting, discarding, combing, refining, combining, or harmonizing, until something deeply unifying that holds together surfaces and depth, namely truth, appears. He would never say, with Nietzsche, “error is cowardice,” begin with a vow of suspicion, like Descartes, or a shunning of ordinary language, like Heidegger. He is content to examine whatever opinion including language, the repository of the observations and estimations of mankind, and take whatever in the way of contributions and hints they provide. (His disposition toward opinion rather reminds us of Shakespeare’s disposition toward his plots, all but a few of which he was content to take from others.) So Aristotle’s “technical terms” are, unlike those of almost all philosophers since, but a step from the market, the house, the law court, and magistry; in his ousia we still recognize the meaning of the word in the phrase “a man of substance.” Only Machiavelli, Montaigne, Pascal and Nietzsche, among modern thinkers have such a relation to language and among these only Montaigne also has something of Aristotle’s disposition to opinion. It is then right for Rembrandt to portray Aristotle in relation to the poet and to the prince, for the Aristotle who wrote the Poetics and the Politics attended to the several ways truth appears in the various regions of the whole. Because Aristotle’s thinking was whole and parted, it was never tempted to become systematic. [?move this paragraph? but where?]
V. In addition to poetry there are two other arts present in Rembrandt’s Aristotle. The bust of Homer is the fruit of the sculptor’s art, while the painting as a whole is the fruit of the painter’s art. For their appreciation and for their production, both arts require men who are not blind. Something of the quality of a sculpture can be appreciated by touch alone, but the blind cannot judge how the light falls on a figure. It is possible to be a blind poet or even a blind philosopher, but not a blind sculptor or a blind painter. Yet while blindness is equally to be feared by sculptor and painter, sight is not equally appreciated by both. Sculpture lasts longer than painting; it is more readily copied; it can be walked around; it can be touched; it has a physical presence; it succeeds beautifully in representing bodies, their solidity and weight, and the sense of presence which goes with these. But sculpture cannot equal painting in the representation of the most expressive part of a man: the eyes. All sculpture is a little like the bust of the blind Homer. The light, the expressiveness, the intelligence, and spiritedness which come from the soul and give motion and liveliness to the body shine most often in the eyes, and it is painting which best represents them. If it is just to call Rembrandt the painter, as it is to call Aristotle the philosopher, it is so because he excells in the representation of the eyes, the way they look, the way they look out, and the way they look away. The painter understand the philosopher to gaze, as he does. To paint the gazing Aristotle, indeed all his persons, Rembrandt must have gazed as his Aristotle does.
The kinship of the way of life of the philosopher to the poet and to the painter is further emphasized by Rembrandt’s inclusion of a way of life which is distant from all these, the life of the political man, represented by the image of Alexander which hangs from the chain which adorns the philosopher. The philosopher’s left hand touches this chain, the gift of his pupil, but there is no sign in his disposition or in his hand to suggest that the pleasures of the political life merit comparison to those of the philosophic life. It is fitting that the prince offer gifts to the philosopher, that he see that he is adorned with rich attire, and see that his school is amply endowed. The suggestion that such chains bind philosophers to princes is, in this case,18 a misinterpretation. Alexander was the happy exception among princes, one who knew how to honor philosophers because he esteemed philosophy above politics.
VI. Rembrandt’s Aristotle is a portrait of antique philosophy in a truly antique setting, with the philosopher flanked by his chief rivals, the poet and the prince; and the whole is composed so as to emphasize the difference between antiquity and Christianity, or a strain of Christianity, for the figure of Aristotle in his study with a bust should remind us of all those pictures, some by Rembrandt and many by others, of the saint in his study. These Christian saints do not contemplate a bust of Homer; in its place we find a skull.19 Of course Homer is dead, and perhaps this contributes to the pensiveness of the philosopher, but it does not disappoint or agitate him. It is a Christian conviction that “death is the wages of sin,” that death is unnatural, that it does not belong to our original Edenic condition, and that, consequently, the ways of God need to be justified to man (Milton). The skull is a fitting image of these convictions, one quite foreign to antiquity which pictured death as a “sleeping youth” and called it “the brother of sleep” (Homer).20 The sobriety of ancient convictions are fully represented in Rembrandt’s Aristotle.
Rembrandt’s portrait of antique philosophy is also to be distinguished from Jewish Biblical religion. Rembrandt often paints Rabbis conversing together or studying alone; almost always they have their precious books with them. The relation of antique philosophy to books is not less serious, but it is both less exclusive and less absorbed. Not knowing or acknowledging a book revealed by God or a god, it did not subordinate all books to one and study it alone with fervor. So, the shelf which we see behind the bust of Homer in Aristotle’s study has more than one book on it.
Rembrandt’s Jews are students and readers of their precious book, but he does not show us the moment of its divine revelation. To understand such revelation, we must look at one of his Christian portraits, his St. Matthew, where the rapt gospel writer listens to a beautiful angel. The angel whispers, and he writes. No such angel visits the antique philosopher’s study, for Rembrandt’s Aristotle trusts to unaided human powers to appreciate this sunlit world and fathom the mysteries which border it.
Still, the antique Aristotle speaks of wonder, but not of mystery, and this should suggest to us that Rembrandt’s Aristotle is not purely antique. The antique Aristotle appreciated the sunlit world of appearances, and he ascended from them to the even brighter sun of mind (nous) itself. The clear sunlit open air of Raphael’s School of Athens, where sunlight descends from the sky, for though for the school is set in the new St. Peter’s imagined by Bramante. 21 it without any ceiling, better accords with the antique Aristotle than Rembrandt’s. An Aristotle with light pouring in a window and a more tranquil look upon his face, an Aristotle by Vermeer, would capture the antique Aristotle better. Here, as so often in Rembrandt, the setting for the study is cavernous, and here not even the usual faint or baffled light of day shines in. We cannot tell whether Aristotle contemplates in the day or in the night. Here, as elsewhere in Rembrandt’s work, light stands out from darkness; it does not vanquish the darkness or sweep it away; it dwells uneasy and also more bright in a darkness from which it cannot separate itself utterly. 22 Judged by natural understanding, this light is mysterious. Without a natural source, it arises from page, hand, and face, from both the mind and the thing it ardently sees. Perhaps the soul of Rembrandt’s Aristotle is taught to burn more bright in darkness by Biblical religion23 with its sense of silent depths.24 If Rembrandt’s Aristotle is truly antique, then it is the antique Aristotle as discovered by Heidegger, one who points to the hiddenness of Being as much as to its unhiddenness. ***Gospel of John, light in darkness; noctistille, sp?
VII In his Aristotle Rembrandt has portrayed the spirit of ancient philosophy. And he has composed this painting, in contrast to others of his, so as bring out profound differences of soul and purpose, between ancient and modern philosophy. Here in Rembrandt’s Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp.25 we see as in the Aristotle, a group of figures with one man, the leader and teacher, in the center, surrounded by others, his pupils (as Alexander was), and with one figure dead (as Homer was). In each painting, the central figure is at work, but here in the Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Nicolaas Tulp to be “at work” is to be active, invasive, and charitable. Tulp is a “Dr.” in the narrowed modern sense (which our children assert if some learned person with a Ph.d. has been introduced to them, “he’s not a real doctor.”) Never mind that one of Dr. Tulp’s remedy’s was 50 cups of tea, for he is said to have once cured a man who thought his bottom was made of glass. The man intended to cure human beings. Aristotle didn’t. To be sure, Tulp is here showing the wonderful intelligent design of the body, especially evident in the hand of the dead Aris Kindt, but also in the hand that holds the instrument, and the other hand that gestures. Dr Tulp with his anatomizing hand and Rembrandt with his painting hand alike celebrate the wonder of man, the only thing in creation worthy to be an image of the Creator himself. However, such wonder as may be in Tulp is in the service of knowledge and such knowledge is in the service of curing men.
Ancient philosophy begins in wonder, in wonder, keeps dwelling in wonder, even as it ascends to intellect itself; it gazes like Rembrandt’s Aristotle. Modern or scientific philosophy begins with a corpse, dwells in the shadow of the death, calls for a conquest of Nature, to relieve man’s estate, and fashions weapons for the coming war, weapons like the method of Descartes, the mathematization of physics, and the scalpel of Dr. Tulp. The modern philosopher proposes to relieve man’s condition, while the ancient philosopher proposed to understand it.26 Thus in the Cave in the Republic, the philosopher descending back from the lighted world, would fain bring out some few of the cave-dwellers imprisoned by shadows, while the modern Enlighted philosopher would either try to bring all men out of the cave or try light up the whole cave with his artifical torch. The Ancient philosopher dwells in the study; the former will be found in the palaces and senates, in garages and laboratories, in the streets and in the hospital. The cool competence of the modern philosopher is well exhibited by Dr. Tulp, but for his fundamental restlessness we may look to Rembrandt’s print of Dr. Faustus in his study, a study he abaondoned. Modern philosophy according to Rembrandt is the hand of Tulp with the soul of Faustus. Technique in the service of restlessness.
However, in his Aristotle Rembrandt has portrayed not simply the spirit of ancient philosophy but the spririt of philosophy itself, for the vividness with which he represents Aristotle gazing shows that this way of looking and the living that flows from it is not dependent upon the times but available everywhere and always. This lesson, which is also an invitation, is shown by another painting Here in the later Anatomy Lesson of Dr. Deyman, as in the Dr. Tulp, we find a doctor and a corpse, but what a different look. The ‘doctor’ is first of all a man. In his hand he holds a section of the corpse’s skull. Meanwhile he gazes with a faraway look. This “faraway” look is closer to the look on Aristotle’s face than to the look on the face of the absorbed, yet fundamentally distracted Dr. Tulp. Even if one begins with a corpse instead of a bust of Homer, one may gaze as Aristotle does. And with the corpse, seen from this unusual angle, from the feet toward the head, what a handsome face too, Rembrandt has reminded us of Christ, his corpse, for Rembrandt would expect us, some of us, to remember the first painting of anyone from this angle, the Christ of Mantegna. This brings us full circle. To Rembrandt, man is more an Aristotle with the corpse of Christ, than he is a Dr. Tulp. Or should we say that we have more to learn from Aristotle and Christ, the gaze of the one and the corpse of the other than from the absorbtion of Tulp and the corpse of the executed criminal Aris Kindt.
Comment: when delivered as a lecture, the pace may be too swift at the end (not enough time to gaze at the pictures, or to fully appreciate the contrast between Aristotle and Tulp-Faust; stress on “this is not a skull” too strong?; consider integrating comments on xity in late footnotes.
That Rodin’s “Thinker” is no thinker. Brooding
Restlessness in museums, contra Pascal, stay home in a small room.
How there is sensitivity in both A’s hands, in the one affirming Homer, in the other what? Toward Alexander?
Umm . . . when would I put my hand on Homer in my study? Only when I needed his strength.
NOTES:
1. Before its publication in The College: the St. John’s Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 2 (January 1980), this essay was delivered to the Philadelphia Political Philosophy Seminar at Bryn Mawr, The Independent Journal of Philosophy in Vienna, at the University of Dallas, Dickinson College, and Russell Sage College. Afterwards, deliveries to various audiences, especially the Philosophisces Seminar at Heidelberg and the International Theological Institute at Gaming (Austria), have led to additions. Many thanks to all these audiences for the opportunity to improve these reflections. For close ups of the painting, visit: http://82nd-and-fifth.metmuseum.org/rembrandt-rembrandt-van-rijn-dutch-aristotle-with-a-bust-of-homer-61.198.
2. The translation of this passage from Aristotle’s Parts of Animals is from Edgar Lohner’s translation of Heidegger’s “Letter on Humanism” in Philosophy in the Twentieth Century, ed. W. Barrett and H. D. Aiken (New York, 1962), 296ff.
3. Platons Lehre von der Wahrheit, Mit einem Brief über den “Humanismus” (Bern: Francke Verlag, 1947), paragraphs 76-78; again the translation is that of Edgar Lohner.
4. Here I follow Nietzsche, Die Fröhliche Wissenschaft, 329.
5. For supervision in this task and for many a good conversation, I thank my friend Lee Gohlike.
6. So, too, might Robert Pirsig whose Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance (New York, 1974) has much to say about techne and its place in our modern Western lives.
7. See the sensitive observations of Julius Held in the title essay from his Rembrandt’s Aristotle and Other Rembrandt Studies (Princeton, 1969); throughout, I am indebted to his observations and his learning; his dedication to the task of preserving our precious heritage by ardent study is, to my mind, exemplary. In his second edition, Held takes respectful note of my essay; that he also expresses puzzlement that my essay was not published in an art-historical journal, testifies to the insularity of disciplinary specialization everywhere in academe, which Nietzsche criticized as the emancipation of scholarship from philosophy.
8. Held, 5ff. 9. Held, 12. These words are “found in a copy written in November 1662 of the original shipping bill of 1654.” 10. Held, 12-13.
11. Would it be possible to paint Descartes in accord with his own teaching? As a thinking ego and a mechanical body? Frans Hals’ portrait of Descartes may be the solution; the solitary thinking ego stares out of a pale face itself engulfed in darkness; towards the bottom of the painting an awkward hand appears; it is so awkwardly placed that it hardly belongs with the face above. This reminds us that in Descartes’ teaching the relation between the thinking ego and the body is quite perplexing.
12. Edvard Munch’s ideal portrait of Nietzsche places the philosopher on a bridge beside an abyss; he listens to the scream which pierces nature but he does not join it. See Reinhold Heller, Munch: The Scream (New York, 1973).
13. According to Otto Benesch, Rembrandt (New York, 1957), 92, Rembrandt was familiar with Raphael’s image of ancient philosophy.
14. Here the contestant might be aided by modern accounts of sight which regard sight as merely a matter of “cones and rods.” By repeating “it is only cones and rods,” one may succeed in ignoring what one sees.
15. This expression is Shakespeare’s gift to all English speakers (Hamlet 1.1.112 and 1.2.185); its Italian equivalent is Dante’s gift to his people (Paradiso X).
16. Consider the way the one-eyed stare of Julius Civilus in Rembrandt’s “The Oath of the Batavians” affects his potential coconspirators and also the viewer. For grants which helped me travel to Stockholm to study this painting I wish to thank NEH and Franklin and Marshall College.
17. Part of this painting, a part which seems to have included two students taking dictation, has been cut away. Held, II. See also Herbert von. Einem “Rembrandt und Homer,” Wallraf-Richartz Jahrbuch (Köln, 1952), XIV, 182-205.
18. Here I disagree with Held’s interpretation of the thoughts which this chain brings to Aristotle. Held adduces many examples of scholars who felt they were chained to princes whose chains they accepted. These examples tempt us to forget something unusual in the relation of Aristotle and Alexander. Alexander was the pupil of the man he rewarded. The chain is not a temptation; just as Aristotle acknowledges with his right hand that philosophy is stimulated by poetry, so does he acknowledge with his left hand (touching the chain) that philosophy needs to be supported by politics. While lower than philosophy or poetry, politics is not only not ignored, it even has its dignity; witness the separate picture of Alexander, and in the rest of Rembrandt’s work, for example his Polish Rider and his Oath of the Batavians, meant for the new town hall in Amsterdam.
19. True of other painters, but of only one Rembrandt I have discovered (#175, Bauch).
20. See Lessing’s essay, “Wie Die Alten Den Tod Cebildet,” Gesammelte Werke, Zweiter Band (München, 1959),963-1015.
21. Kenneth Clark in his Civilization series. That Aristotle and Plato stand in the place of Christ crucified seems to me a reasonable conjecture.
22. The contrast of darkness and light seems in accord with the emphasis which Rembrandt has given to the contrast of blindness and sight. So far as I know, Aristotle himself never refers to the blindness of Homer.
23. It should be noted that Rembrandt’s Christianity seems in turn to be sweetened by something which may be antique, for unlike so many others, he never, or almost never (see Note 19 above and also his etchings of St. Jerome in his Study), offers us a skull for contemplation.
24. In the first chapter of his Mimesis, (Princeton, 1968) Erich Auerbach contrasts the narrative intention of Homer, who wishes to make everything visible, with the narrative effect of the Biblical story of Abraham and Isaac, whose every brief word is surrounded with silence and fraught with depth. Cf. the remarks of Paul Valery on the sense of inner depth which Rembrandt likes to create around his shut-in philosophers, in his essay “The Return from Holland,” Collected Works in English (Princeton, 1968), IX, 82.
25. For a fuller exploration of this painting and what it suggests about modern scientific medicine, see the present author’s dialogue, “Looking at the Body,” Hastings Center Reports, V, 2 (April, 1975), 21-28. The contrast of Tulp and Aristotle might serve to remind us that the current discussion of medical ethics should not be confined, as it largely is, to isolated situations, quandaries, and cases, but must, for the very clarification of these cases, include consideration of the way of life of the participants. Often we do the deeds we do because we have long ago chosen to be who we are. If we find the conduct of modern doctors wanting, we should examine not only their conduct, but the education which formed them. So, too, if we are discontented with modern medicine, we should ask what we most desire from medicine and whether a contented way of life can be based on this desire.
26. In terms of Plato’s image of the cave, as Allan Bloom has stressed in his commentary on the Republic (New York, 1968), 403, the ancient philosopher is a guide: he leads a few cave dwellers out of the cave; while the modern philosopher is a torch-bearer: he brings light into the cave. Il
[1] Before its publication in The College: the St. John’s Review, Vol. XXXI, No. 2 (January 1980), this essay was delivered to the Philadelphia Political Philosophy Seminar at Bryn Mawr, The Independent Journal of Philosophy in Vienna, at the University of Dallas, Dickinson College, and Russell Sage College. Afterwards, deliveries to various audiences, especially the Philosophisces Seminar at Heidelberg and the International Theological Institute at Gaming (Austria), have led to additions. Many thanks to all these audiences for the opportunity to improve these reflections.
[2] The remark on thinking is somewhere in Norman F. Maclean’s A River Runs Through It.
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