The Will to Art (interview question #5)
Dr Simon Ussher has started emailing me interview questions about my recent books on aesthetics (see here). Over coming weeks I’ll post my responses to his questions.
Before engaging you on social and political issues, let us delve deeper into your notion of the ‘Will to Art’. This is perhaps the most obscure philosophical concept in your recent work. What do you mean by the Will to Art? Is this an aspect of human nature? Or is it a cosmological, or even a metaphysical, idea?
Yes, the ‘Will to Art’ is the foundational idea I’ve been trying to articulate over the last few years. It operates simultaneously at several levels – existential, anthropological, evolutionary, political, and cosmological. And part of the challenge is that these dimensions cannot be entirely separated from one another, so it is hard to present this idea simply and concisely. But I am obligated to try – so thank you for the question – even as the sands of my own thinking continue to shift and take form.
As I formulate it, the Will to Art is the fundamental creative impulse or force that gave rise to the universe and which is driving creative evolution onwards. Think of it, perhaps, as the universe’s underlying aesthetic energy or as a cosmological instinct to create. Through this interpretive lens, I am inviting readers to consider the possibility that the universe itself is fundamentally an aesthetic phenomenon, understood as a process of creative evolution that is developing, albeit agonistically, towards ever-increasing opportunities for artistic and aesthetic experience.
I hasten to add that this aesthetic universe I imagine is not a singular, self-conscious being or deity, but it attains consciousness through the evolution of diverse experiential nodes in the fabric of existence. In the case of humanity, these nodes of consciousness have become reflective, visionary, poetic and self-aware. And thus the aesthetic universe experiences itself through us – homo aestheticus – the art-created art creators.
However, this creative impulse – the Will to Art – is not a blindly urging force. According to the interpretation I offer, the telos or goal of the universe is beauty, although I believe this is only a ‘tendency’ in the universe rather than a predetermined outcome. The guiding ideal of beauty is defined not as mere cosmetic ornamentation or prettiness, but as the pleasurable and meaningful experience of art and nature. Beauty is about giving significant form to the content of our lives, or simply appreciating the inherent significant form of wild nature. From this perspective, the cosmos is a sensuous and artful reality that is unfolding in time in order to experience itself through the genesis and diversity of conscious and creative life.
But again, this mythopoetic account of reality predetermines nothing, since art is inherently unpredictable and the evolution of artistic being is unforeseeable. The endpoint is not built into the original conditions. Obviously, the world is grossly unjust and may remain so. But in an aesthetic universe, hope resides in the possibility of moving towards a more beautiful and humane world, through the exuberant fertility of free and creative struggle. To speak of the Will to Art, then, is to infuse the world with an underlying tendency toward artistic and aesthetic flourishing. The struggle for life and liberty is the latent ideal of beauty trying to realise itself through the Will to Art.
At the human level, the Will to Art refers to the deep impulse toward creative expression, aesthetic experience, and self-fashioning that seems intrinsic to our species. Human beings are not content merely to survive biologically. We shape, ornament, narrate, ritualise, symbolise, and beautify existence. We turn necessity into style, for better or for worse. We have been known to decorate tools, sing while working, invent myths, paint caves, compose symphonies, cultivate gardens, write poems, and construct identities. Even in conditions of material deprivation, artistic and symbolic activity persists. That fact tells us something profound about human nature and the defining impulses that drive us.
In that sense, yes, I do regard the Will to Art as an aspect of human nature – though I would immediately add that ‘human nature’ itself is dynamic, unfinished, and historically conditioned. The human being is not a static entity but a process of becoming. Still, throughout history and across cultures, we repeatedly encounter this aesthetic impulse asserting itself. In my book SMPLCTY I describe this as a kind of existential hunger for beauty and meaning.
But I am also trying to say something more ambitious than that. The concept is indebted to Schopenhauer’s ‘Will to Live’ and Nietzsche’s ‘Will to Power’, but I reinterpret and develop those perspectives. I invite reflection on the possibility that the most fundamental universal force is not merely a will to ‘life’, nor an aggressive will to ‘power’, but rather a will to ‘art’. After all, what are life and power for? I’m proposing an answer. My suggestion is that evolution itself can be understood as a progressively creative process culminating – at least for now – in conscious beings capable of art and artistic self-reflection. This evolutionary process seeks to universalise opportunities for artistic expression, to revel in the sublime joys of creativity, and to share in the sacred and sensuous experience of beauty. The universe doesn’t merely have an instinct for freedom. It wants to achieve freedom so it can experience its own art and creativity.
Now, I should stress that I do not mean this as a rigid metaphysical doctrine or a scientifically demonstrable thesis. It is better understood as a mythopoetic or philosophical interpretation of existence – an attempt to make sense of the strange fact that the universe has produced creatures who create art, seek beauty, and ask questions about meaning. Throughout my recent writings, I repeatedly explore the idea that existence may be inescapably aesthetic. That is, reality does not come to us with fixed meanings already embedded within it. Meaning must be created. Human beings therefore relate to their own lives rather like how artists relate to raw materials. The Will to Art is the impulse driving that creative process onwards.
This is not so much a definition of a concept as a declaration of an undertaking – the announcement of a journey. (Or rather, all definitions are acts of creation, and all acts of creation are journeys.) At the cosmological level, I have proposed that consciousness and creativity may represent the universe becoming capable of experiencing itself aesthetically. Indeed, I believe our aesthetic universe seeks to experience itself, not self-consciously but instinctively. This is obviously not a scientific proposition in the ordinary sense. It is a pragmatic invitation to ‘think of things this way’ and see whether doing so bears fruit. In other words, the Will to Art is closer to a philosophical cosmology or existential mythology.
But to describe the Will to Art as a mythology is not to denigrate it. Myths matter. Human beings always live through orienting narratives, whether religious, political, or economic. Modern consumer capitalism also has its mythology – progress, growth, accumulation, utility-maximisation, technological salvation. I am attempting to articulate an alternative civilisational mythos grounded in beauty, sufficiency, and creative becoming. In doing so, I am perfectly aware that the Will to Art could be described as a ‘grand narrative’ or a ‘story’. But it is not for that reason untrue. The Will to Art is a metaphor to live by: to be judged, not according to its correspondence to a pre-existing reality, but according to its effects. It begins as an invitation to experiment, and can only be justified by its results.
The reason I believe this aesthetic interpretation of existence matters politically is that industrial civilisation systematically represses and commodifies this universal creative impulse. Consumer capitalism promises fulfillment through consumption, but the deeper yearning beneath consumption is often aesthetic and existential. People seek meaning, vitality, transcendence, participation, self-creation. When those needs are denied healthier forms of expression, they become displaced into consumer identities, spectacle, accumulation, or just technological distraction.
That is why I argue that an ecological civilisation must become, in some sense, a civilisation of art. Not because everyone would become a professional artist, but because life itself would become more consciously aesthetic – more participatory, creative, sensuous, and meaningful. The ‘poet-farmer’ becomes my archetype for this transformed mode of being: a person who lives simply in material terms while exploring existence through creativity and aesthetic experience.
So ultimately the Will to Art names both a human impulse and a way of interpreting the fundamental driving force of the cosmos. It is an attempt to affirm life aesthetically in an age increasingly overshadowed by ecological crisis, nihilism, and collapse. Even if the universe is finite, tragic, and indifferent, there remains this astonishing fact: beings have emerged who can create beauty, experience wonder, and make meaning together.
Art and beauty exist. This is a fact. Are we not obliged, then, to reverse engineer a cosmological narrative that explains how and why? I believe we should hesitate to stay silent on the mysteries of existence simply out of fear of being wrong, when doing so ensures we have no chance of living in some positive but uncertain truth.
