hegel’s aesthetics- lectures on fine art

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Hegel's Aesthetics

Hegels Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Introduction

(from the Glen Gray edition)

I. We will study fine art. The beauty of art is higher than the

beauty of nature, as spirit (a term with no necessarily religious

connotations: Geistmeans mind and culture, too) is higher

than nature. Man, finite spiritwhere spirit becomes conscious ofitselfis the artist. He is natural . . . and more.

There are two arguments (opposed to Hegel) claiming that

art cannot be discussed philosophically; art is incapable of

rigorous and disciplined treatment.

(1) The first objection to philosophical aesthetics to which

Hegel replies is that art is simply supposed to be charming. It

belongs to the relaxation and recreation of spiritual life (25).

Therefore, so serious treatment of art is inappropriate and

pedantic. Art might even seem to be a luxury which might soften

ones character unless it were justified by its moral contentbut

adding a moral message to art does not constitute a philosophical

approach. Art seems to deal with mere sense appearances, not

with concepts.

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(2) The second objection to philosophical aesthetics to

which Hegel replies is that art tries to be free and diverse and by

its very intention beyond the grasp of concepts. Therefore aphilosophical reflection on art is impossible.

Hegel replies to these arguments that he intends to deal

only with that art whose purpose is not merely to charm, but to be

one mode and form through which the divine, the profoundest

interests of mankind, and spiritual truths of the widest range, are

brought home to consciousness and expressed (29). We usually

set up a split between the Infinite beyond and the poor present,

the finite here and now. Art heals this split.

If you believe that the objects of the senses are the real

truth, then you will find art to be mere deception; but in fact such

objects only have meaning insofar as they are animated by a

spiritual significance. Otherwise they are mere dust. If the things

of the senses get their value through their

mental/spiritual/cultural significance, then a philosopher has

something to contribute to appreciating art.

Mind is competent to appreciate its own products. Art is a

product of mind; therefore, philosophy, which is minds reflection

upon its own activities, is competent to study art. Indeed, mind

can better appreciate art than it can understand nature.

In the times of the ancient Greeks, people found in their

sculpture the very presentations of their gods. Nowadays, art

makes us think more, turns us within. This is yet another reason

why philosophy can appropriately discuss art.

The creative process may look disorderly, but principles of

mind are at work nonetheless; and it is the task of philosophy to

bring them to light. What mind has made, mind can interpret.


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II. There are many ways to approach the study of art

(1) We can approach art empiricallyby experience andobservation.

a. We can study the facts about art history, gain knowledge about

the conditions under which the work was produced. We can form

generalizations. We can formulate rules. These rules then will be

especially insisted upon when artistic inspiration is lacking.

General rules, say, about making poetry, are fine, but they do not

show the would-be poet how to make the concrete decisions

necessary in writing a poem.

b. We can go about formulating theories of beauty. We can

criticize the theories of others and advance new definitions. In

this process some excellent ideas have been published, but it is

necessary always to remain in contact with the works themselves.

The better theories make us more aware of the content or theme

or meaning of the work and of the manner in which it is presented

the essence and the detail. Every word or tone or brush stroke

should help delineate the inner truth of the work.

c. As we come to appreciate genius and become more

philosophically advanced, we learn that we must go beyond the

conventional rules and come to appreciate a wider range of

works.

A good basis in scholarship will always be valuable to the

theorist and to the connoisseur.

(2) We can approach art by starting with the beautifulnot

as an abstract generalization from many art works but as a living

spiritual value.

(3) Philosophy must integrate both the living spiritual


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universal value of beauty with the variety of particular works in

history.

III. What is fine art? [literally beautiful art.]

Where do we get our concept of fine art? Let us start from

common, ordinary ideas (each to be discussed in detail). (1) A

work of art is no product of nature. It is brought into being

through the agency of man. (2) It is created essentially for man,

and, what is more, it is to a greater or less degree produced in a

sensory medium and addressed to mans senses. (3) Art contains

an end or purpose bound up with it.

(1) Some object that people have thought that art is a

production of an external object that can be learned like any craft.

But art is not following rules. It is bound as spiritual activity to

work by drawing on its own resources, and to bring before the

minds eye a quite other and richer content and ampler individual

creations than any abstract formulas can dictate. (52)

Today the opposite extreme is popular. No longer is the

rule-directed method in vogue, but we see art as the product of a

genius giving vent to his impulse. But this view forgets the role of

craftsmanship.

What human need stimulates artistic production? The

universal need for expression in art lies, therefore, in mans

rational impulse to exalt the inner and outer world into a spiritual

consciousness for himself, as an object in which he recognizes his

own self. Art, in other words, takes materials from the outer

world and inspiration from the inner world and brings them

together into a unity in which man can see himself. I made it is

the satisfaction that art brings to every maker. Self-expression


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further implies that the artist somehow puts himself outside of

himself, and so can recognize himself in his product. For Hegel

this is especially important, since nature and man are notultimately different, not ultimately divided, separate, unresolved.

For me to recognize my essential nature outside myself in art

prepares the way for me to recognize my essential nature in the

world as a whole.

(2) When we observe that the art work is set in a sensory

medium (e.g., colors or tones) and is thus limited, we usually

mean that the work ought to elicitfeeling . . . noblefeelings, base

feelings, extreme feelings, any feelings at all, so long as it evokes

feelings. But this notion of art as evoking feeling is just as empty

and formalistic in its way as any of the old rules about how to

make art. No specific content is implied. Furthermore, free rein

is given to personal whim.

The work is addressed not only to the senses but to the

mind. It is not like a natural object to which we might relate in

the mode of desire. (A proper aesthetic response to a painting of a

mountain stream is not to be thirsty for the water represented in

the painting.) Thus, the interest of art distinguishes itself from

the practical interest ofdesireby the fact that it permits its object

to subsist freely and in independence, while desire utilizes it in its

own service by its destruction. On the other hand, artistic

contemplation differs from theoretical consideration by the

scientific intelligence, in cherishing interest for the object as an

individual existence, and not setting to work to transmute it into

its universal thought and concept (66). Experience of art is

unlike science, because science, theoretical speculation, is

uninterested in the individuality of its object. It studies water, not


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this glass as opposed to that one. Experience of art is unlike

ordinary sense experience, because our customary encounter with

things shows our desires to dominate and consume, while inaesthetic experience we enjoy just beholding the work and are

even indifferent to whether it really exists or not.

(3) What is the end, goal, or purpose of art? Some people

have believed that the purpose of art was imitationcopying

nature. Hegel says that mere imitation is superfluous. The artist

is never as good as nature herself. Such art draws all our

attention to the cleverness of the artist in making such a lifelike

representation. This becomes boring and trivial, like ridiculous

parlor tricks. The theory of imitation cannot account for

architecture, and this theory is once again empty of content,

indifferent to the beautiful and the ugly.

If someone says, Everything is the content of art, once

again an empty statement has been made. For Hegel, the

statement is not only empty but false. The concept of art has

normative implications, and not just anything will count.

The quest for unity and purpose has led reflective thinkers

to the view that art is supposed to mitigate the passions, tame the

savage beast in man by representing an objectification of such

passion so as to induce recognition and reflection. If I create a

drama about cruelty, I may enable my audience to recognize on

stage the actions they secretly desire to do; they may then improve

themselves by reflecting upon the characters and actions in the

play. This type of art is edification; it becomes moralistic very

quickly.

Art does instructbut not by presenting an abstract

doctrine that could be stated independently of the work. The


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work must never be the mere shell, the cover for the presentation

of a thesis. Stories that could be adequately summed up on a brief

moral are not real art.In the modern period it is customary for people to assume a

complete opposition between moral law and the sensuous

impulses of mans nature. In modern culture man live in two

contradictory worlds at once; so that even consciousness wanders

back and forward in this contradiction, and . . . is unable to satisfy

itself. For on the one side, we see man a prisoner in common

reality and earthly temporality, oppressed by want and poverty,

hard driven by nature, entangled in matter, in sensuous aims and

their enjoyments. On the other side, he exalts himself to eternal

ideas, to a realm of laws and attributions, strips the world of its

living and flourishing reality and dissolves it into abstractions . . .

. (85). Neither side alone possesses the truth. Philosophy must

bring the material and the ideal together and must show their

specific concrete harmony.

IV. Kant achieved the insight that art unifies the split between

nature and man, between (sensory) object and (conscious)

subject, between (sensuous) impulse and (rational) form. Kant

posits (asserts the existence of) a subjective sense of beauty that

all men possess. Hegel wants to show that our subjective sense of

beauty is objectively valid.

Kant distinguished aesthetic perception from ordinary

sense perception with its attendant practical desires. Kant

believed that our sense of beauty is an intuition, not a concept; for

Hegel, there is a concept, but we are usually not conscious of it

when we experience something as beautiful.


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For Kant and Hegel the aesthetic object has its purpose

within itself. Its purpose is to be a beautiful totality. If we say

that its purpose lies outside itself, it would have an external end.But if art is to reflect the divine, it, as appearance, must have the

quality of self-containedness that the divine whole has.

Once art is seen as having its purpose within itself, art

transcends the customary conceptual oppositions of modern

understanding. To think in terms of cause versus effect, or

content versus form, of means versus ends, of universal versus

particular, of feeling versus thought, of nature versus freedom is

to think in terms of obsolete dualities. The point is not to do away

with concept in appreciating art, but to do away with nave

oppositions between concepts. The Infinite and the finite have

much more to do with each other than customary understanding

can recognize.

V. The content of art must be capable of being

represented. I cannot have an art-work about the relation of

implication that holds between some two mathematical

theorems. T.S. Eliot criticized Shakespeare for attempting to deal

in Hamlet with something that could not be presented on the

stage. Whether or not this particular criticism is justified, it does

illustrate what Hegel has in mind.

The work of art . . . is essentially a question, an address to

the responsive heart, an appeal to affections and to minds (105).

Here is Hegels criterion for excellence in art: Inasmuch as

the task of art is to represent the Idea to direct perception in

sensuous shape, and not in the form of thought or of pure

spirituality as such, and seeing that this work of representation


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has its value and dignity in the correspondence and the unity of

the two sides, i.e., of the Idea and its plastic embodiment, it

follows that the level and excellence of art in attaining arealization adequate to its Idea must depend upon the grade of

inwardness and unity with which Idea and shape display

themselves as fused into one (106).

There are three types of art, corresponding to three

historical periods, three ways of conceiving of God, and three

ways of thinking and feeling.

(1) Symbolic. The God concept, the Idea, is here vague,

poorly defined, or indefinite, indeterminate, lacking definite

characteristics. The Idea conceived in this way has no implication

for individuals. Art strains to find a way of expressing this infinite

Indefinite at all. Perhaps the Idea is attached arbitrarily to some

natural object as its (symbolic) significance. Seeking in nature for

the expression of the abstractly conceived Idea, the artist chooses

the distorted, the indefinite, the huge, the contrasting, and the

gloriousbut these forms are still determinate, still definite, and

cannot unite with the Idea as abstract. The Idea becomes

negative, sublimewith respect to which all earthly form is

inadequate. Eastern pantheism is the religious expression of this

stage of the Idea: everything and nothing represents the Absolute.

The emotions expressed here are yearning, fermentation, mystery,

and sublimity.

(2) Classical. Art at this stage is the free and adequate

embodiment of the Idea in the shape which is uniquely

appropriate to it. This discussion is impossible to understand

until we learn that Hegel was referring to Greek sculptures of their

anthropomorphic gods as the main form of classical art. Where


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God is conceived as practically human, it is very possible for art to

give a satisfactory representation of divine truth. The Idea must,

after all, become manifest. What could be more natural than forthe IdeaGodto take on human form? Art reaches a great

triumph when it realizes that such a great unity between what it is

trying to represent and what it actually produces. Not just any

representation of a natural object would serve this purpose. Only

the human form is so appropriate for Geist. Since God is Geist,

his manifestation as human gives to art its primary task and

triumph. In Greek sculpture we see eternal repose, essential self-

stability. Greek art implies a community.

(3) Romantic. When art proposes to present spirit in a

concrete, sensible form, and the Idea of spirit matures, it has

more than it can do adequately. In Christianity, unlike Greek

religion, the unity of man and God becomes explicit. (Christ is

asserted to be that unity.) Now art is aimed towards the

individuals inner life (or the ideal world within) (or feeling)the

triumph of the inner over the external. (If the external is

completely devalued, art is in trouble.) Like symbolic art,

romantic art does not give great weight to individual objects of

sensation. In modern (Renaissance through the early 19th

century) romantic painting, the visible is made to represent all the

diversity of the heartemotion, idea, and purpose. In music the

inwardness, the subjectivity, is deeper; the music there is

principle, order, and harmony, as well as emotion. In poetry the

sensory element is in the highest degree integrated with the

meanings of mind. (Musical sounds are only the bodies of

significances.) All the arts make use of the poetic imagination.

The beautiful is the universal Spirit. The ideal is that


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universal embodied. The Idea is the unity of the concept and its

realization.

Questions and foci for discussion.

Introduction.

Beauty of nature as subordinate to beauty of the arts (pp. 2,

29d (nature as the work of Godbut God does not stop working

through creation when humans come on the scene); 35d ).

Fine art brings to our minds and expresses the

Divine, the deepest interests of humankind, and the

most comprehensive truths of the spirit (7 [557]; cf. 49;

55).

Art is no longer our highest interest (9), on account of the

modern primacy of reason (10), so that art now elicits a

philosophical response (11).

The person: the spirit and soul shining through (20).

Beauty, summary definition (20.2): inner content shines in

outer.

Concept of fine art taken as a starting point (22).

Art comprehensible neither simply in terms of rule-

following nor the inspiration of genius (26-27).

Hegel puts music down (28).


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The for itself clearly explained 31.

Should we think in terms of a feeling or sense of

beauty? (33d) No, because the appeal to immediacyobscures the need for education regarding the depths of

reason and spirit.

Desire clearly explained (cf. Kants teaching that the

beautiful appeals at a higher level than the pleasant). (36)

Arts function of reconciling sense and intellect (38-39).

Modern culture produces and demands resolution of this tension

(54), and philosophy shows the nullity of the separated poles (55).

Biographical observation: talent shows itself early, with an

early and easily acquired technical facility, delighting and

specializing in the chosen art form (41).

Objections to mimesis as a theory of art (42-45).

Relativism/chaos of indiscriminate welcome of everything

into the category of fine art (46).

Art cannot be a mere means to moral training or character

education, but it does uplift to a post-emotional center of life since

one (1) relates contemplatively to the work and (2) engages in

reflection on meanings (49-53).

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING NOTES ARE NOT PART OF

THE ASSIGNMENT FOR PHILOSOPHY 31060,

AESTHETICS.

Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art

G.W.F. Hegel tr. T. M. Knox vol.1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)


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After the Intro.

Chapter I. Concept of the Beautiful as Such. 1. The Idea. The

Idea is the concept together with its actualization. It just wontdo, after Kants treatment of the agreeable and the

pleasant, not to get beyond thefeeling of the beautiful in

an aesthetic which notes levels (that the sense of spirit

of sight, and the understanding too, is rejoiced, that

feeling is excited, and that a delight has been aroused.

The whole thing revolves round this awakening of joy

(107).

2. The Idea in Existence.

3. The Idea of the Beautiful. The Idea is the true, and

when it is realized in existence, it is also beautiful. Understanding

cant comprehend beauty on account of its tendency to separate

what is integrated in the Idea (111). The infinity and freedom of

the Idea must appear even in a restricted content, so that the

Concept corresponds with itself in its actualization, as sustained

by subjectivity, unity, soul, individuality (112). If we comport

ourselves as mere subjects before external sensory

objects as independently real, we err (cf.

Phenomenology chapter 1), only to switch roles,

annihilating the things in our projects. Both sides here

are finite, and this kind of freedom is false freedom (112-

13). Considering things as beautiful overcomes this limited

opposition (113). The practical motives withdraw, and, beyond

anyoughtone allows the object to stand in its independence as

perfectly realized Concept and end (114). The reality of the

Concept appears as just a complete creation, the parts of which

are nevertheless revealed as ideally ensouled and unified. For the


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harmony of the Concept with its appearance is a perfect

interpenetration. Consequently the external form and shape does

not remain separate from the external material, nor is it stampedon it mechanically for some other purposes . . . and yet the

aspects, parts, and members must each have a freedom for

themselves with respect to each other. The necessity of each ones

belonging should be hidden behind an appearance of

undersigned contingency lest they remain mere tools for the

manifestation of necessity, ideal unity. This freedom and infinity

of the Concept of beauty marks the beautiful object and its

contemplation (115).

The symbolic form of art: Introduction

Hegels account of the phases of the symbolic form of art

begins with the beginning of art, particularly in the East, as a

prelude to the genuine actuality of the Ideal as the classical form

of art. When the symbol is developed [to its height] it has . . .

the character of sublimity, because . . . it is only the Idea which is

still measureless, and not [articulated conceptually] that is to be

given shape, and therefore cannot find in concrete appearance any

specific form corresponding completely with this abstraction and

universality. But in this non-correspondence the Idea transcends

its external existence instead of having blossomed or been

perfectly enclosed in it. This flight beyond the determinateness

[definiteness] of appearance constitutes the general character of

the sublime (303).


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In the drama of meaning and expression, the symbol

should not be totally arbitrary, nor should it be totally explicable

in understandable terms. There must be some beyond, somemystery, something sublime that surpasses what can be fully

communicated.

Art, like some other activities ofGeist, begins in

wonder in which things of nature are set free for the first

time from being simply desired or handled in the light of

practical aims. The things of nature become an other

which yet is meant to be for his apprehension and in

which he strives to find himself over again as well as

thoughts and reason. Here the inkling of something

higher and the consciousness of externality and still

unseparated and yet at the same time there is present a

contradiction between natural things and the spirit, a

contradiction in which objects prove themselves to be

just as attractive as repulsive, and the sense of this

contradiction along with the urge to remove it is

precisely what generates wonder. Not the first produce of

this situation consists in the fact that man sets nature and

objectivity in general over against himself on the one

hand as cause, and he reverences it as power; but even

so on the other hand he satisfies his need to make

external to himself the subjective feeling of something

higher, essential, and universal, and to contemplate it as

objective. In this unification there is immediately present the

fact that the single natural objectsand above all the elemental

ones, like the sea, rivers, mountains, starsare not accepted just

as they are in their separation, but, lifted into the realm of our


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ideas, acquire for our ideas the form of universal and absolute

existence. [How much can we see John Muir here?] Now these

ideas in their universality and essential implicit character artconcentrates again into a picture for contemplation by direct

consciousness and sets them out for the spirit in the objective

form of a picture. This is the beginning of art (315-16).

The first stage here, is nature worship (the identification of

the absolute with immediate sensuous natural shape [Gestalt,

structure]), which is not yet art.

In the second stage, the meaning (the absolute, the

universal or sublime) begins to detach itself as transcendent

beyond its embodiments, which are represented in their wild

multiplicity and through distorted forms. This stage witnesses a

battle between meanings and their sensuous representation

through the double struggle to spiritualize the natural and to

make the spiritual perceptible (319).

NOTE THE WARNING AGAINST STRICT LINE-

DRAWING BETWEEN THE VARIOUS TYPES OF ART AND

HISTORICAL PERIODS (320).

In the third stage, the artist brings together (compares)

meanings and expressive forms to fashion (a) fables, parables,

and apologues (in which the moral of the story is explicitly

stated where the separation of shape from meaning . . . is not yet

expressly established . . . ; consequently the presentation of the

single concrete appearance, which is to illumine the universal

meaning, remains the predominant thing (322). At the second

stage . . . the universal meaning comes explicitly into dominion

over the explanatory shape in allegory, metaphor, and simile

(322). Finally, the two sides of the tension fall apart in didactic


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poetry (making the lesson so dominant as to make the

form a mere appendage) and descriptive poetry

(abandoning the project to convey higher meaning). [Thepattern is (a) the phenomenon has not yet come into its own; what

is implicit, however, must become explicit: (b) the phenomenon in

its fullness; and (c) the dissolution of the phenomenon (following

the fault-lines in the structure of the phenomenon itself.]

Fable

Aesops fables, ## 3, 4, 7, 11

Parable

The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field,

which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all

that he has and buys that field.

Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search

of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of greave value, he went and

sold all that he had and bought it. (Matthew 18.44-45)

Proverbs.

A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up

anger. (15.1)

A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance. (15.13) A

cheerful heart is a good medicine. (17.1)

Better is a little with the reverence of the Lord than great

treasure and trouble along with it. Better is a dinner of vegetables

where love is than a fatted ox and hatred along with it. (15.16-17)

Apologue


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A moral tale which is genuinely a tale with morality

inherent in it. (cf. Kafka, Bucket Rider.

Allegory : complex, with each significant item having a definite

referent in another domain of meaning.

Metaphor X is Y

Simile X is like Y

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