Schoenberg held a Schopenhauer-derived view of the artist as a channel for unconscious will.

Evidence

The practice of giving free tuition resulted from the reverence he had for the true artist, the artist who was driven to create: `He has the feeling that what he does is being dictated to him. As if he were doing it according to the will of some power or other which is in him, whose laws he does not know.’ This concept of the artist as a genius carrying out a will which was concealed from him was a highly traditional one, familiar to the artists of that period primarily from their reading of Schopenhauer. — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School, 295

Categorization

• DEFINE: Clarifies the specific meaning of genius that animates Schoenberg and by extension the early Frankfurt School’s aesthetics.
• XREF: The artist-as-medium-of-unconscious-will idea directly feeds Adorno’s and Benjamin’s views on the artwork as autonomous expression. — connects to: Schoenberg’s drive theory fused Schopenhauer’s genius cult with a belief in constant musical progress — Rolf Wiggershaus, The Frankfurt School: Its History,…, 295; Will-primacy doctrine, not pessimism, is Schopenhauer’s most influential legacy. — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2752

Broader Connections

• Will-primacy doctrine, not pessimism, is Schopenhauer’s most influential legacy. #corroborates (0.85) — Bertrand Russell, History of Western Philosophy, 2752