Editing Arthur Schopenhauer (section)

=== Art and aesthetics ===
{{Main|Arthur Schopenhauer's aesthetics}}
[[File:Johannes Vermeer - Het melkmeisje - Google Art Project.jpg|thumb|In his main work, Schopenhauer praised the [[Dutch Golden Age painting|Dutch Golden Age artists]], who "directed such purely objective perception to the most insignificant objects, and set up a lasting monument of their objectivity and spiritual peace in paintings of ''[[still life]]''. The aesthetic beholder does not contemplate this without emotion."<ref>''The World as Will and Representation'', Vol. 1, §38</ref>]]
For Schopenhauer, human "willing"—desiring, craving, etc.—is at the root of [[suffering]]. A temporary way to escape this pain is through aesthetic contemplation. Here one moves away from ordinary cognizance of individual things to cognizance of eternal Platonic ''Ideas''—in other words, cognizance that is free from the service of will. In aesthetic contemplation, one no longer perceives an object of perception as something from which one is separated; rather "it is as if the object alone existed without anyone perceiving it, and one can thus no longer separate the perceiver from the perception, but the two have become one, the entirety of consciousness entirely filled and occupied by a single perceptual image".<ref>''The World as Will and Representation,'' Vol. 1, §34</ref> Subject and object are no longer distinguishable, and the ''Idea'' comes to the fore.

From this aesthetic immersion, one is no longer an individual who suffers as a result of servitude to one's individual will but, rather, becomes a "pure, will-less, painless, timeless, subject of cognition". The pure, will-less subject of cognition is cognizant only of Ideas, not individual things: this is a kind of cognition that is unconcerned with relations between objects according to the Principle of Sufficient Reason (time, space, cause and effect) and instead involves complete absorption in the object.

Art is the practical consequence of this brief aesthetic contemplation, since it attempts to depict the essence/pure Ideas of the world. Music, for Schopenhauer, is the purest form of art because it is the one that depicts the will itself without it appearing as subject to the Principle of Sufficient Reason, therefore as an individual object. According to [[Daniel Albright]], "Schopenhauer thought that [[philosophy of music|music]] was the only art that did not merely copy ideas, but actually embodied the will itself".<ref>Daniel Albright, ''Modernism and Music'', 2004, p. 39, footnote 34</ref> He deemed music a timeless, universal language comprehended everywhere, that can imbue global enthusiasm, if in possession of a significant melody.<ref name=Music >{{cite book|last=Schopenhauer|first=Arthur|title=Essays and Aphorisms|year=1970|publisher=Penguin Classics |isbn=978-0-14-044227-4|page=[https://archive.org/details/essaysaphorisms00scho/page/162 162]|url=https://archive.org/details/essaysaphorisms00scho/page/162}}</ref>