THE PRINCIPLE OF HOPE

Page 809
which is, however, alien precisely to dialectical materialism. As the doctrine of an unfinished world and the real, i.e. processively open wealth of reality precisely in view
of its totality. Which is therefore why art which is material in terms of content together with its theory certainly cannot avoid being an art which is non­wrapped, a
perspective art, one of real instead of merely alleged process. And therefore why art which is material in terms of content together with its theory certainly cannot avoid
being an unclosed one, but a portrayal of the tendency and latency of its Objects occurring in the manner of the pre­appearance driven to an end (cf. Vol. 1, p. 210ff.).
Because of this pre­appearance art is also definitely not a whole, but everywhere only a perspective on to it, a perspective worked out in the portrayed Objects
themselves on to the immanent perfection of these Objects. Hence Lessing's statement by the painter in ‘Emilia Galotti’, a utopian­entelechetic statement: ‘Art must
paint as plastic nature — if there is one — conceived the picture: without the waste which the reluctant matter inevitably makes, without the ruin with which time fights
against it.’ Art is fundamentally defined as real pre­appearance, as an immanent­perfect one — in contrast to religious material. This pre­appearance becomes
attainable precisely through the fact that art drives its subject­matter to an end, in plots, situations and characters, and brings it to a stated resolution in suffering,
happiness and meaning. The statement thus attained is admittedly less than the subject so to speak on one point, namely from the angle of its immediate tangibility, but it
is at the same time always more than this subject, namely from the angle of its immanent executability, of its concentrated­intrinsic execution. This kind of thing is
precisely the opposite of an idealistic correction, though also the opposite of a mere reproduction, one approaching after a fashion the so­called fullness of perfection of
the real; just as if the world, which it is a question of changing in all other cultural functions, were an unattainable masterpiece for art alone. Instead it is only the
predisposition to this, the objective­real possibility for this, such that a strikingly painted forest, a strikingly dramatized historical action certainly surpass their subject in
substantiality, and indeed are only striking as works of art by being able and having to surpass the subject in attainable preappearance. Pre­appearance itself is this
attainable element by virtue of the fact that the job of driving to an end occurs in the dialectically so ramified and open space, in which every Object can be aesthetically
portrayed. Aesthetically, i.e. in a more immanently successful, more materially genuine, more essential way than in the immediately natural or also immediately historical
occurrence of this Object. Thus the watchword of the aesthetically