Every age’s art and science will itself as absolute, not as preparation

Evidence

In no age does art consider itself as something which is paving the way for Art: so-called archaic art prepares for classicism only in the eyes of archaeologists; the sculptor who fashioned the Korai of Athens rightfully thought that he was producing a finished work of art; in no age has science considered itself as partial and lacunary; without believing itself to be definitive, it has however, always wanted to be a total expression of the world, and it is in its totality that in each age it again raises the question of its own validity. There we have an example of how man must, in any event, assume his finiteness: not by treating his existence as transitory or relative but by reflecting the infinite within it, that is, by treating it as absolute. There is an art only because at every moment art has willed itself absolutely; likewise there is a liberation of man only if, in aiming at itself, freedom is achieved absolutely in the very fact of aiming at itself. — Simone de Beauvoir, The Ethics of Ambiguity, 124

Categorization

• XREF: The absoluterec-ativity of art ‘in each age’ parallels the ‘epochal’ reading in Lessing’s Laocoon and modern reception theory. — connects to: Every generation knows it will be judged by future standards it cannot foresee — Sarah Bakewell, At the Existentialist Café: Freedom,…, 816