title:Analytic of Pure Art ver.1.0e
by Taro Kimura
1998


In both its speculative and its practical employment,
pure art always has its dialectic, for it demands the absolute
totality of conditions for a given conditioned art, and this can
be reached only in art-in-itself. Since, however, all concepts
of art must be referred to intuitions which, for us human beings,
can never be other than sensuous, and which thus let art be
known not as art-in-itself but only as appearances,
appearances being a series of the conditioned art and their
conditions in which the unconditioned art can never be
found, it follows that an unavoidable illusion arises from the
application of art of the totality of conditions (and thus of
the unconditioned art) to appearances as if they were art-
in-itself (for this is the way in which they are considered in
default of a warning critique). But the illusion would never be
noticed as deceptive if it were not betrayed by a conflict of art
with itself in applying to appearances its principle of pre-
supposing the unconditioned art for every conditioned art. Art
is thus forced to investigate this illusion, to find out how it
arises and how it can be removed. This can be done only
through a complete critical examination of the entire pure
faculty of art; the antinomy of pure art, which becomes
obvious in its dialectic, is, in fact, the most fortunate perplexity
in which art could ever have become involved, since
it finally compels us to seek the key to escape from this labyrinth.
This key, when once found, discovers that which we did not seek
and yet need, namely, a view into a higher immutable order of
art in which we already are, and in which to continue our
existence in accordance with the supreme decree of art we
may now, after this discovery, be directed by definite precepts.