Art. Hegel Dict. M. Inwood

8/13/2019 Art. Hegel Dict. M. Inwood

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Art, Beauty and Aesthetics( Die) Kunst ('art, skill, craft', from können, 'can, to be able') originally had, like theGreek techne *, no special connection with beauty ( Schönheit ) or with what came to beknown in the eighteenth century as the 'fine arts' ( die schönen Künste) in contrast to ( )the se!en medie!al liberal arts (including astronomy, mathematics and philosophy), and

(") a craft, skill or profession# ( Kunst , unlike 'art', has no special association with painting#) $he concept of fine art, co!ering architecture, sculpture, music, painting and poetry, goes back to %lato# But art and beauty were treated separately by %lato (beautyin, e#g#, the Symposiumand art in, e#g# the Republic) and by Aristotle (in his Poetics)#&or %lato and Aristotle, art, when it was not simply a craft, in!ol!ed primarily theimitation of nature and of human affairs# $he eoplatonists, especially %lotinus, firstcompared the artist to the world creator (especially the di!ine demiurge of %lato'sTimaeus, who embodies the +A in matter)# $hus the artist imitates not the productsof nature, but nature's producti!e acti!ity- in works of art he reali.es the idea in

perceptible material# n the se!enteenth and eighteenth centuries art was still widelyregarded as imitation, but this !iew was re/ected by Goethe, 0egel and especially

chelling, who placed the creati!ity of the artist on a par with that of nature#%lotinus brought together the concepts of art and of beauty ( Enneads, 1# !iii, )# 2n0egel's !iew, works of art are essentially schön, 'beautiful'# n earlier writers, e#g# Burkeand Kant (especially in Observations on the Feelin o! the "eauti!ul and the Sublime,

345), the sublime ( das Erhabene) is an aesthetic category co ordinate with the beautiful ( das Schöne)# ($he sublime first appears in a work of the first century Aattributed to 6onginus, perihypsous, On the Sublime#) But 0egel's a!ersion to theintellectually intractable and especially to bad & $7 means that sublimity plays asubdued role in #$ and is more or less confined to the aesthetically unsatisfactory

preclassical symbolic art, in which &289 and :2 $+ $ are not in harmony# But schön is a wider term than 'beautiful', occurring in such conte;ts as 'a !ine piece of work'and 'making a ood /ob of something'# Schönheitfor 0egel accommodates significantdissonances and e!en ugliness#$he term 'aesthetics' (from the Greek aisthesis *, aisthanesthai, 'perception', 'to

percei!e', and thus literally the 'study of perception') was first used for the 'study ofsensory beauty' (including the beauty of nature, as well as of art) by a follower of6eibni., A# G# Baumgarten, especially in his $esthetica ( 3<=>)# n%PRKant ob/ectedto this usage and to Baumgarten's hope of 'bringing the critical assessment of the

beautiful under principles of reason, and raising its rules to : + :+' (A" , B?<f# 0eretains the word in its original sense, for the study of the conditions of perception# Butin %&he uses it in Baumgarten's sense, while still insisting that 'there is no science of

the beautiful, but only a criti@ue, nor beautiful science, but only beautiful art' ( 55)# n #$ , 0egel critici.es the term 'sthetik for its stress on the + 287 and &++6 G, but retains it in the title of his lectures# (0e re/ects another proposed term, Kallistik('thestudy of beauty' from the Greek kalos, kallos, 'beautiful', 'beauty'), since it co!ers beautyin general, and is not restricted to the beauty of art#)

n 0egel's Germany, aesthetics was dominated by Kant's %&(0e argued (in oppositionto utilitarian, hedonistic and intellectualist accounts) that the beautiful gi!es rise to a'distinterested' pleasure, stemming from the free play of our imagination it is 'nonconceptual' it has 'the form of %C8%2 1+ + without the representation of theend' and it is the 'ob/ect of a uni!ersal pleasure'# t arises from the faculty ofDC G9+ $ ( )rteilskra!t ) in association with feeling# Ee import our idea of beauty

into a world that is not intrinsically beautiful, and we regard beauty as a symbol of the928A6 good#



After Kant, aesthetics mo!ed to the centre of German philosophy# n the first place,chiller argued, especially in $E (a work much admired by 0egel), that beauty is

ob/ecti!e and that the contemplation of it will repair the A6 + A$ 2 that afflictsmodern man, the fissures between man and nature, man and man, and reason and desire#

econd, &ichte's doctrine that the phenomenal world is produced solely by the (&8++,

and yet +:+ A87) acti!ity of the *, suggested a parallel with the creati!e acti!ityof the artist# chelling, in particular, de!eloped this parallel and argued, in ST* , that the'key stone' of philosophy is the philosophy of art- art mediates mind and nature, sinceartistic acti!ity combines the free, purposeful creati!ity of mind with the necessary,unconscious creati!ity of nature# $he German idealists' account of art thus differed fromKant's in se!eral interrelated respects-( ) Beauty is ob/ecti!e it is the re!elation of % 8 $, the +A, and the di!ine in theworld of appearance#(") Ehile Kant was interested only in the sub/ecti!e /udgment of taste, they were moreinterested in the artist andhis products#(?) Kant was as ready to see beauty in nature as in art, but his successors de!alued the

beauty of nature# &or chelling, A$C8+, like 9 , is imbued with spirit and the +A6, but it is inferior

in beauty to art, whichunites mind and nature# &or 0egel, spirit e!ol!es out of nature, which is inferior in

beauty to the products of spirit,and is only seen as beautiful in the light of such products#(5) Kant was indifferent to the 0 $287 of art (and of taste), but the idealists ga!e acentral place to history#

n part 0egel's account of art brings to fruition a programme that he shared withchelling and &ichte# n PS , 1 #B, art is considered under the heading, not of ' % 8 $',

but of '8+6 G 2 '- the 'religion of art' (Greece) appears between 'natural religion'(%ersia, ndia and +gypt) and 're!ealed religion' (:hristianity)# But in Enc( , art forms,together with religion and %0 62 2%07, a part of 'AB 26C$+ spirit', the spirit, thatis, which presupposes the indi!idual psychology of CBD+:$ 1+ spirit and the socialinstitutions of ob+ective spirit, but transcends them both# Art, like religion and

philosophy, has a rational, cogniti!e !alue- it progressi!ely re!eals the nature of theworld, of man and the relationship between them (the absolute) in a sensuous form orthe form of $C $ 2 ( $nschauun ), while religion does so in the form of figurati!e8+%8+ + $A$ 2 ( ,orstellun ), and philosophy in the form of $02CG0$ or the:2 :+%$# n #$ 0egel combines a systematic account of art with an account of its

unfolding o!er history# Art is di!ided, first, into three main styles symbolic, classicaland romantic and, second, into genres architecture, sculpture and painting, music and poetry# 0istorically, art falls into three main periods- the ancient 2rient (especially+gypt), Greek and 8oman anti@uity, and :hristian modernity# ($hese di!isions, andtheir more detailed subdi!isions, are intended to be conceptually, rather thanempirically, grounded, and to depend ultimately on the conceptual system presented inthe 6ogic# But 0egel supports them with a wealth of empirical material#) A genre of art,while it occurs in all periods, is dominant in one period and is associated with a

particular style- architecture, e#g#, is the symbolic art form and was dominant in +gyptlater architecture is transposed into the classical or the romantic style, but is not thedominant genre of those periods, does not, that is, gi!e to the absolute the highest

artistic e;pression of which it is capable in those periods#



0egel li!ed in an age of great artists, some of whom (e#g# Goethe and 0Flderlin) werehis friends# But he denies to art the supreme position that chelling (and many of hisother contemporaries) ga!e to it# &irst, art in general e;presses the absolute lessade@uately than do religion and philosophy, since intuition is a medium inferior toconception and thought# (%hilosophy, for e;ample, can comprehend art, but art cannot

comprehend philosophy#)econd, in modern times art cannot e;press our !iew of the absolute as ade@uately as it

e;pressed the !iews of earlier times# Greek art e;pressed the Greek world !iew withsupreme aptness and elegance more so perhaps than did Greek philosophy829A $ : art can barely e;press such conceptions as the $rinity in so far as it doesso, it transcends the realm of art and forgoes the harmony and beauty of classical art#

chelling agreed that Greek art had not as yet been surpassed or e!en e@ualled inmodern times, but he e;pected this to happen in the future, after the creation of amodern mythology comparable to that of 0omer# But 0egel belie!ed that art could nolonger capture the comple;ity of our world !iew, and had no future as a primary !ehiclefor the e;pression of the absolute#0egel's doctrine of the end of art is connected with his !iew of modern society# Both0egel and chelling held that art, though the immediate product of indi!iduals of talentor genius, is in a wider sense the product of the culti!ated society or people ( ,olk ) towhich they belong# ( t is because art does not depend only on the nati!e talent of theartist that art has a history#) chelling belie!ed that society or the state can and should

be a work of art# 0egel, by contrast, while he agreed that Greek society had theharmony and cohesion characteristic of art, did not belie!e, in his maturity, that thisaesthetic ideal can be restored in modern society# 9odern men are too reflecti!e andself aware, and too dispersed in the comple; economic life of : 1 6 2: +$7, toconstitute an aesthetically coherent whole# Great works of art cannot arise in suchunaesthetic surroundings#

Art. Hegel Dict. M. Inwood

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