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as if he professed a religion, is much used to contradicting common opinion (parà dóxan) and
neither wants nor knows how to be “condescending”. If, with regard to Plato, one could speak of
“the artist” in Wilde’s terms, only a philosopher –and by delegation- could be considered as
such, since only he succeeds in seeing the Idea to the extent of surrendering to it. But it is the
Idea which is at the summit of the hierarchy. On the contrary, Wilde, the proud artist, brings
down the Idea from its superior realm in order to locate it in the only place he believes it is really
perceptible, that is to say, in the mind of every man who shapes models to which all the rest will
adapt itself, exactly as Wilde’s image was in great measure the incarnation of Aestheticism –
whose “idea” he also contributed to create 19 . The artist is precisely the best “equipped” man to
understand that ancient play of copies and models, but, as we shall see immediately, he opens his
eyes not only to the Platonic theory of ideas, but also to Hegel’s system of contraries –and also
Heraclitean, of course- which permits him to unmask Metaphysics. We see the result in The
Truth of Masks, a very “dangerous” one, since it implies to set the Truth free of all univocal
meanings into which Western Thought has so often imprisoned it:
. ‘A Truth in art is that whose contradictory is also true. And just as it is only in art-criticism, and
through it, that we can apprehend the Platonic theory of ideas, so it is only in art-criticism, and
through it, that we can realise Hegel's system of contraries. The truths of metaphysics are the truths
of masks’ (TM, CW 1172).
And, applying his theories strictly, Wilde proves that he knows how to create and propose
new models of searchers for –at least- double truths. Philosophy should become young,
iridescent, winged, foolish; it should be set free of the sadness of responsibility and become
addicted to pleasure. Philosophy, in short, should be a bacchante who worships Dionysus
because, only thus, after having become used to the wine of intellectual boldness, it will be
capable of questioning everything. If from Philosophy we pass to the philosopher, that Lord
Henry Wotton in The Picture of Dorian Gray could be the emblem:
. (Having dinner at Lady Agatha’s): “He played with the idea… tossed it into the air and
transformed it; let it escape and recaptured it; made it iridescent with fancy and winged it with
paradox. The praise of folly, as be went on, soared into a philosophy, and philosophy herself
became young, and catching the mad music of pleasure, wearing, one might fancy, her winestained
robe and wreath of ivy, danced like a Bacchante over the hills of life… He felt that the eyes
of Dorian Gray were fixed on him, and the consciousness that amongst his audience there was one
whose temperament he wished to fascinate seemed to give his wit keenness and to lend colour to
his imagination. He was brilliant, fantastic, irresponsible” (DG, CW 43) 20 .
Maybe now we shall be able to understand much better another of Lord Henry’s sentiments
and even to try to find an acceptable definition of “paradox” in Wilde:
. ‘The way of paradoxes is the way of truth. To test reality we must see it on the tight rope. When
the verities become acrobats, we can judge them’ (DG, CW 42).
dependence on worldly values and needs” (Reggi, V. Op, cit., p. 36. About the relations between French
Decadence –Gautier, Balzac, Baudelaire, Huysmans, etc.- and Wilde’s work, see e.g.: McEvansoneya, Ph.
“Oscar Wilde and Decadence in Art”. Irish Studies 11 (1995) 14-19.
19 Bearing in mind the title of my article, it might be worth taking also into account anti-aestheticism in
19th century; see e.g.: Richards, B. “Wilde and Anti-Aestheticism”. Wildean 20 (2002) 14-27.
20 On the “praise of folly” and its relation to Erasmus and the whole Renaissance tradition, see e.g.:
Quadri; M. Op. cit., 86.
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