Christina Leary - The Problem of Worldview

September 18th, 2017
Christina Leary - The Problem of Worldview
“The dance reflects the movement of God, which also moves us upon earth, the drama presupposes the holy play between God and man. Verbal art is a hymn of praise in which the Eternal and his works are represented. Architecture reveals to us the lines of the well-built city of God’s creation. Music is the echo of the eternal Gloria” p. 265. We’ve discussed how Van Der Leeuw’s theory of art is a phenomenology, which still confuses me, but I think he views art as a phenomenon because we are constantly questioning what it does, its purpose, and even what qualifies as art without really getting a concrete answer. The book is complex and, for me, hard to follow. However, this quote I thought was very telling. Van Der Leeuw seems to clearly be a religious man who in turn experiences the world of art as necessarily being sacred for it to be good art.
The way he describes art seems to be beautiful to me. The imagery of dancing with God pops to mind and flashbacks of the church choir singing gloria echo in my mind. Although the explanation is beautiful, is it true? Is it necessarily true that those who are not religious or do not believe in God experience the world as chaos. I think that is what Van Der Leeuw is trying to say and it is coherent with his text and overarching argument but is that actually true?

To me art will always be subjective, it seems as though there will never be an objective measure of it. There might be real objective standards as to what beauty is but I do not think we are capable of knowing them for certain. Every qualification or definition is not 100% correct it is just an interpretation of the truth. The truth however, still exists and is concrete, but we may not know it fully here. However, that should not deter us from trying to find out what it is. Some people assert that symmetry and proportions are pleasing to all people, this might be true but I would argue that there are still things that are appealing to some people more than they are to the other. Mere symmetry and proportionality would not make something “art” for me and I would venture to say the same goes for many others. Van Der Leeuw argues that “architecture reveals to us the lines of the well-built city of God’s creation,” essentially arguing that type of architecture is the beautiful type but can a non-religious person understand this. I understand it because I was raised religiously and the existence of God was never questioned. Even now if I try to question it I cannot make sense of the world without God necessarily existing, I cannot connect lines or think outside that worldview and when I can it is extremely difficult. Does the same go for a person who was raised in a way where the existence of God was never valid or believed? Or is this just a personal issue that not many others experience? My interactions tell me it is not. To some, my very notion of trying to question the existence of God is wrong, that is, it is evil to question it. The key question for me then becomes do we ingrain ourselves in our worldviews and make sense of the world that way? Or do we push ourselves outside of them, possibly causing confusion and tension, but done for the sake of getting a bigger picture, for the sake of understanding.

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