TERM PAPER: CRITICAL TRANSACTIONS: ARISTOTLE TO
ELIOT
The Norton Anthology of Theory and Criticism
HEGEL: LECTURES ON FINE ART
Submitted to
DR. SHALINI
ASSISTANT PROFESSOR,
CENTRAL UNIVERSITY OF KERALA
Submitted by
MANJU P
LCL051511
GEORGE WILHEM FRIEDRICH HEGEL
George Wilhem Friedrich Hegel was born in
Stuttgart on August 27, 1770. Hegel is regarded as
one of the successful systematic thinkers in the history of Western philosophy.
He was a German philosopher of the late Enlightenment. Enlightenment was a
movement in Europe from about 1650 until 1800 that advocated the use of reason
and individualism instead of the tradition and established doctrine. The
Enlightenment brought about many humanitarian reforms. It was otherwise known
as the Age of Reason.
Hegel was the son of a minor court
official in the government of the Duke of Wurttemberg.
He studied theology at the University of Tubingen where he became friends with
the poet Friedrich Holderlin and philosopher Friedrich Schelling. After
graduation he worked as a private tutor until he began teaching at the
University of Jena in 1801, the year in which he published his first book. In
1807 he published Phenomenology of Spirit
one of the great philosophical masterpieces of all time. This work provides
what can be called a “biography of Spirit” i.e. an account of the development
of consciousness and self consciousness in the context of some central
epistemological, anthropological and cultural themes of human history. After that
year then, he was forced to leave Jena because of a sexual scandal and did not
teach till 1816. He became famous and influential with his lectures at the
University of Berlin which he delivered until his death. Hegel lectured on various topics in philosophy, especially on history,
art, religion, and the history of philosophy.
And many of these series were published by him or from the notes taken down by
his students, as Lectures on Fine Art.
Hegel is usually associated with
‘dialectic’ i.e. a method of argument for resolving disagreement, the word was
popularized by Plato in the Socratic Dialogues. The dialectic is known as the
motor of Hegelian system, the system which places individual elements in relation
to one another and is in a constant motion. Hegel claimed that his own system of philosophy represented a
historical completion of all previous philosophical thought.
The point of dialectical reasoning
before Hegel, was to clear away misconceptions and arrive at the principles
i.e. the basic, fundamental truths on which a philosopher bases a philosophical
system. But Hegel used dialectic for a different purpose. In fact to understand
what dialectic meant to Hegel, we should first understand that he was an
idealist in the tradition of his predecessor Immanuel Kant. Kant and Hegel are
considered as the Aristotle and Plato of modern Continental Philosophy, two
influential figures from whom everything else seems to flow. Like Kant, Hegel
believed that we do not perceive the world or anything directly and all what we
have access to is ideas of the world, i.e. images, perceptions, concepts etc.
For Kant and Hegel the only reality is a virtual reality.
Hegel’s idealism differs from that of
Kant’s in two ways:
First Hegel believed that the ideas we
have of the world are social, i.e. the ideas we posses individually are utterly
shaped by the ideas that other people also posses. ‘Spirit’ or ‘Geist’ is the
term Hegel has given for the collective consciousness of a society which shapes
the ideas and consciousness of each individual.
Secondly he sees this spirit as evolving
according to the same pattern in which ideas might evolve in an argument i.e.
the dialectic.
Hegel’s philosophy of art proper, forms part of his philosophy rather
than phenomenology of spirit. The Phenomenology can be interpreted
as an introduction to Hegel's philosophical system.
The first selection deals with the most
famous instance of dialectical confrontation in Hegel i.e. the Master Slave
dialectic. The conflict between master and slave or lord and bondsman is the
one in which the historical themes of dominance and obedience, dependence and
independence are philosophically introduced.
The second selection consists of extract
from the introduction to Lectures on Fine Art- Hegel’s contribution to
philosophical aesthetics, the field that seeks to define the aims of artists
and effects of art on audiences. Aesthetics dates from 1750s but Hegel echoes
Plato on Art. According to Hegel the
fundamental goal of Humanity is to come to full consciousness of the Idea and ‘Philosophy’
is the golden road to reach that goal.
In the first part of the selection Hegel
reviews previous conceptions of steering a middle path between the accounts
that emphasize rules and those that rely on pure inspiration. In the second
part of the selection Hegel presents the movement to the full self
consciousness as occurring in stages – the Symbolic form of art, Classical form
and the Romantic form of art. These three forms of arts form a dialectical
triad.
FROM
THE LECTURES ON FINE ART
·
Considering work of Art
as a Product of Human Activity it can be known and expounded, learnt and
pursued by others also. One can imitate another’s work if he is aware of the
rules of artistic production, and it would only be a matter of pleasure to
follow the procedure in the same manner and produce the work of art. It is in
this way the rule providing theories with their prescriptions calculated for
practical application have arisen.
Hegel says, “What can
be carried out on such directions can only be something formally regular and
mechanical. For mechanical alone is of so external a kind that only a purely
empty exercise of will and dexterity is required.”If rules are to satisfy here, then their prescriptions
should have been drawn up at the same time with such precision that they could
be observed just as they are expressed, without any further spiritual activity
of the artist's.
Hegel completely
rejects the view as it does not take into account what he considers the
spiritual nature of the work of art. According to Hegel what is spiritual in
art cannot be taught through formal rules i.e. as spiritual activity it is
bound to work from its own resources and bring before the mind’s eye a quite
other and richer content.
·
Next Hegel suggests an
opposite scenario i.e. the work of art is “a work of an entirely specially
gifted spirit” which “is supposed to give free play simply and only to its own
particular gift.” From this point of view the work of art has been claimed as a
product of “talent” and “genius”.
The false
aspect of this view is that in artistic production, all consciousness of the
artist's own activity is regarded as not merely superfluous but even
deleterious. And as per that the production by talent and genius appears as
only a state and, in particular, a state of inspiration.
Even if the talent and
genius of the artist has in it a natural element, yet this element essentially
requires development by thought, reflection on the mode of its productivity,
and practice and skill in producing, for the work of art has a purely technical
side which extends into handicraft. And skill in technique is not helped by any
inspiration, but by reflection, industry and practice. So this also Hegel finds
limited in its applicability.
·
Next concerning the
idea of the work of art as a product of human activity refers to the placing of
the work of art in relation to the external phenomena of nature. According to
the ordinary way of looking at things human art product is ranked below the
product of nature, for the work of art is considered to have no life and
movement in itself.
The aspect of external
existence is not what makes a work of art into a product of fine art. A work of
art is such only because, originating from the spirit, it belongs to the
territory of the spirit, that has received baptism of the spiritual and sets
forth only what has been formed in harmony with the spirit. Therefore the work of art stands higher than
any natural product which has not undergone this journey through spirit. Hegel
believes that everything spiritual in nature is better than any product of
nature and besides, no natural being is able to present the divine ideal like
the art does.
It is
basically regarded that nature and its products are a work of God, created by
his goodness and wisdom, while the art product is a purely human work, made by
human hands according to human insight.
In this contrast between natural production as a divine creation and human
activity as something finite there lies a misunderstanding that God does not
work in and through men at all, but restricts the sphere of his activity to
nature alone. This false view must be completely rejected if we are to
penetrate to the true nature of art.
And we can clearly
understand that here Hegel asserts the superiority of human made artistic objects
to God made natural ones by appealing to their spiritual purpose i.e. Spirit
dwells in nature as well as in humans, but only humans are conscious of
reaching an awareness of Spirit.
·
Next he deals with the
question ‘what is man’s need to produce work of art?’ On one hand this
production may be considered as a play of chance and fancies which might just
as well be left alone and pursued; for it might be held that there are other
better means of achieving what art aims at and that man has still higher and
more important interests than art has the ability to satisfy. On the other
hand, art seems to proceed from a higher impulse and to satisfy higher needs-
at times the highest and absolute needs since it is bound up with the most
universal views of life and the religious interests of whole epochs and peoples.
The
universal and absolute need from which art springs has its origin in the fact
that man is a thinking consciousness.
This consciousness of himself man acquires in a two-fold way:
First, theoretically,
in so far as inwardly he must bring himself into his own consciousness, along
with whatever moves, stirs, and presses in the human breast; and in general he
must see himself, represent himself to himself, fix before himself what
thinking finds as his essence, and recognize himself alone alike in what is summoned
out of himself and in what is accepted from without.
Secondly, man brings
himself before himself by practical activity,
since he has the impulse, in whatever is directly given to him, in what is
present to him externally, to produce himself and therein equally to recognize
himself.
The universal need for art, is
man’s rational need to lift the inner and outer world into his spiritual
consciousness as an object in which he recognizes again his own self. The need
for this spiritual freedom he satisfies on one hand, within by making what is
within him explicit to himself, but correspondingly by giving outward reality
to this explicit self , and thus in this duplication of himself by bringing
what is in him into sight and knowledge for himself and others. This is the
free rationality of man in which all acting and knowing as well as, art too,
have their basis and necessary origin.
DEVELOPMENT
OF THE IDEAL INTO THE PARTICULAR FORMS OF THE BEAUTY OF ART
Hegel's philosophical record of art
and beauty has three parts: Ideal beauty
as such, or beauty proper, the different forms that beauty takes in history and
the different arts in which beauty is encountered.
(a) Symbolic
Form of Art
First, art begins when idea, still in its
indeterminacy and obscurity or in bad and untrue determinacy is made the
content of artistic shapes. The first form of art i.e. the symbolic form of art
is therefore rather a simple search for portrayal than a capacity for true
presentation , the idea has not found the form even in itself and therefore
remains struggling and striving after it.
On one hand there are perceived natural objects are that are primarily left as they are, yet
at the same time the substantial Idea is imposed on them as their meaning so
that they now acquire a vocation to express it and so are to be interpreted as
if the Idea itself were present in them. On the other hand , the abstractness
of this relation brings home to consciousness even so the foreignness of the
Idea to natural phenomena, and the Idea, which has no other reality to express
it, launches out in all these shapes, seeks itself in them in their unrest and
extravagance, but yet does not find them adequate to itself.
In it the abstract Idea has its shape outside itself
in the natural sensuous material from which the process of shaping starts and
with which, in its appearance, this process is linked. In
this form of art, the concept of idea remains entirely detached from the object
which is taken in its natural form to symbolic the idea i.e. it fails to attach
a spiritual significance to more defects.
There occurs a distance between the natural and spiritual. This distance or gap
between the natural and spiritual is what Hegel calls “sublime” a striking
revision of a category invoked in antiquity by Longinus. In the light of this
sublimity the natural phenomena and human forms and event are accepted but are
recognized at the same time as incompatible with their meaning which is raised
far above all mundane content.
These constitute the character of early pantheism of
east which on one hand ascribes meaning to even worthless objects and on the
other hand violently coerces the phenomena to express its view of the world.
(b) Classical Form of Art
The second form of art is the classical form of art.
It put outs the double defects of symbolic form of art. The symbolic art is
imperfect as in it the idea is presented to consciousness only as indeterminate
or determined abstractly. For this reason the correspondence of meaning and
shape is defective and remaining purely abstract.
The classical art-form
is the first to afford the production and vision of the completed Ideal and to
present it as actualized in fact.With
the classical form, the idea is able to come into free and complete harmony.
The classical phase is also called Greek phase. Here
we can see that God is practically human or manifestation of God in human beings
i.e. it is the form of idea found in representation of human body.
Hegel finds this form of art inadequate in its
necessity of finding the spiritual form in a concrete human form. And Hegel
considers that by doing so classical art is trying to overcome the gap between
idea and reality. According to Hegel, Spirit is far to vast to be
contained within a particular human form
and by placing the expression of it within a human, classical art limits the
spirit to those manifestations of it that are particularly human. And thus the
classical art fails as it determines spirit as particular and human thus
obscuring its absolute and eternal essence.
(c) Romantic
Form of Art
The third form of Art is the Romantic form of art.
It dissociates the idea from the sensous form as in symbolic art, even as it
presents the sensous form like in classical art. It becomes possible because man
becomes aware of the relationship between physical form and the world of
spirit.
The romantic form of art cancels the completed unification
of the Idea and its reality, and reverts, even if in a higher way, to that
difference and opposition of the two sides which in symbolic art remained
unconquered. The romantic form of art cancels the undivided unity of classical
art because it has won a content which goes beyond and above the classical form
of art and its mode of expression.
It is a form of art that is more advanced than the
other two forms of art i.e. here we can see men speaking to men than God
speaking to men. It is progressive. It represents something new. There is
spiritual beauty and nostalgia is developed for the lost unity. It proposes a
poetry that is not mimetic. It is subjective and individualistic.
What started out in symbolic art as a mere
recognition of spirit in natural world became an embodiment of spirit in human
form for classical art. Finally with the self-conscious recognition of the
essential divide between form and spirit, Romantic art achieves a synthesis.
Romantic art is essentially meta-artistic, continually pointing to the
impossibility of a perfect expression of the spirit in physical form. And according to Hegel, Romantic art is the
self transcendence of art but within its own sphere and form of art itself.
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v
Houlgate, Stephen
(ed.). Hegel and the Arts. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University
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v Houlgate, Stephen. Hegel's Aesthetics. The Stanford Encyclopedia of
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v David. Hegel:
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