Aug 2, 2025
Posted by Samuel Alexander on Aug 2, 2025 | 0 comments
Recently I published Homo Aestheticus: Philosophical Fragments on the Will to Art, available at most online bookstores in paperback, hardback, and also as a pdf (on a pay ‘what you want’ basis, edit the price as you wish).
In coming days and weeks I’ll post some of the chapters here on the Simplicity Collective.
Here is chapter 3.
Creative Evolution
85. At the beginning was the Original Aesthetic Event – the Tone. Thereafter the aesthetic universe has been unfolding dialectically through movements of creative evolution.
86. But why is there something and not nothing? Where did all this come from? And where is it going? As one stares into the infinite abyss, such questions can induce a shudder between the shoulder blades, ushering in peak aesthetic emotions – the mystical mood – from which one never recovers.
87. Thinking has to start somewhere. All stories have beginnings. A musical composition commences with a single sound, even if that opening note is infinitely complex.
88. The Will to Art is the unconditioned cause of itself – music without a musician.
89. Two hundred billion trillion stars. Some might be tempted to suggest that this aesthetic universe is a very inefficient means of creating merely one (known) planet with the conditions necessary for artistic being. Shouldn’t we rather be astounded at how few stars were needed to create something as astonishing as music?
90. Music, being the purest reflection of the Will to Art, can never be fully captured by conceptualization; it is untranslatable and uncontainable. This is why it is an impoverishment of existence to relate to the world purely in cognitive terms, for there is something ‘unsayable’ – something beyond words – which nevertheless feels of ultimate concern.
91. Philosophers know when to stay quiet; thankfully, poets and musicians do not.
92. More than other artforms, absolute music (i.e. music without words) weakens the hold that concepts have on us, and it even promises, at times, to leave the imagination perfectly free.
93. The Big Bang was not just an extension of space-time out of nothing, but also an interior explosion of the creative spirit, of wildness. Paradoxically, it was both the cause and effect of the Will to Art.
94. The cosmos evolves, albeit agonistically, to experience itself through the genesis and diversity of conscious and creative life. To experience itself – this is important.
95. The aesthetic universe is not a singular, conscious being, but it attains consciousness through the development of diverse experiential nodes in the fabric of existence.
96. In the case of homo aestheticus, these nodes of consciousness have become reflective, visionary, poetic, and self-aware.
97. Through us, the Will to Art shapes its own fate, as opposed to merely being the determinate product of mechanistic physical laws and biological processes.
98. Due to its inherent wildness, the outcome of this evolutionary process is unknowable in advance.
99. To those who insist on denying free will and embracing materialistic determinism: be determined if you wish. The choice to be free is ours, if we choose it.
100. It is more important to feel free than to know freedom.
101. Art can liberate the mind by stirring the senses, and by liberating the senses, art can stir the soul – even, at times, to stillness.
102. The Will to Life evolves into the Will to Power, culminating in the Will to Art (such that the cosmological process was the Will to Art all along).
103. The aesthetic universe is an infinite organic unity of which we are all an interconnected part – more like a plant than a machine.
104. Humanity is still learning how to conceive of and inhabit that ambiguous but thrilling space between the cosmos as a ‘divine creation’ and the cosmos as merely ‘docile matter’.
105. Nature is more than an It (an object) but less than a Thou (a subject).
106. Just as the acorn has the oak built into its nature, this cosmology has art built into its nature.
107. The Will to Art seeks creative expression and the blossoming of sensuous aesthetic experience in the name of beauty. Only by satisfying the Will to Art does the wheel stops turning; only through beauty can there be peace.
108. Take nothing on blind faith: the Will to Art is a theory to test in practice. Consider living as if the purpose of the universe is to struggle toward beauty, and see what happens to the atmosphere of existence. (If life becomes progressively richer and more tranquil, continue along the path).
109. Is this an overly romantic reading of existence? It is too early to tell – which means it is too early to dismiss.
110. The end state of creative evolution is not built into the original conditions. In the dialectical unfolding of the Will to Art, there are only tendencies.
111. It follows that nothing is preordained in an aesthetic universe. The future must be imagined and given form.
112. We are tasked, each moment, with painting ourselves into the picture, layer after layer. In time, we might even paint a harmonious picture that induces the aesthetic experience of beauty – in the same way artworks that depict suffering can be beautiful even though they do not themselves induce suffering but rather help us transcend it.
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