Allegory and the West

Gadamer traces the development of the notion of symbol and the corresponding, and contemporaneous, devaluation of allegory. Allegory came to be identified with “non-art” as experiential-expressive notions of art and poetry developed in post-Kantian romanticism.

Along the way, he notes the importance that allegory played in the formation of Western civilization. An aesthetics rooted in genius (as was the aesthetic theory of romanticism) cannot give a prominent role to allegory, which “rests on firm traditions, and always has a fixed, statable meaning which does not resist rational comprehension through the concept.” In fact, allegory has always been linked to dogmatics:

“with the rationalization of the mythical (as in the Greek Enlightenment), or with the Christian interpretation of Scripture in terms of doctrinal unity (as in patristics), and finally with the reconciliation of the Christian tradition and classical culture, which is the basis of the art and literature of modern Europe and whose last universal form was the baroque. With the breakup of this tradition allegory too was finished.” Part of the story here is art’s liberation from any sort of dogmatic constraints: “the moment art freed itself from all dogmatic bonds and could be defined as the unconscious production of genius, allegory inevitably became aesthetically suspect.”

But the revival of interest in the baroque that was taking place when Gadamer was writing (and which we see continuing in Deleuze’s The Fold and in Radical Orthodoxy) suggests a possible rehabilitation of allegory as well. During the nineteenth century “aesthetics was founded on the freedom of the symbol-making activity of the mind,” but Gadamer suggests that “this symbol-making [is] also in fact limited by the continued existence of a mythical, allegorical tradition.” Once admitted, “the contrast between smbol and allegory again becomes relative, whereas the prejudice of the aesthetics of Erlebnis [experience] made it appear absolute.” And this in turn challenges a century-long (at least) tradition of aesthetics, and suggests the need to revise “basic concepts of aesthetics.”