What rips apart the wholeness of a work of art is more damaging than useful to its contemplation.

From the premise that “The nature of the beautiful consists precisely in the fact that its inner essence lies outside of the limits of the power of thought, in its origination, in its own coming-to-be,” Moritz infers that “in the case of the beautiful, the power of thought can no longer ask, why is it beautiful?” (ibid., p. 564). The essence of beauty thus escapes ordinary conceptual thought. This is the basis for Moritz’s argument, in another essay entitled “The Signature of the Beautiful,” tha