Philosophy of Fine Art

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Philosophy of Fine Art

• G.W.F. Hegel

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Hegel Philosophy of Fine Art

• Art, for Hegel, is the sensuous presentation of
  the Absolute itself, and hence the subject
  matter of Aesthetics is the conception of
  artistic beauty as the presentation of the
  Absolute.
• Notice the notion of the Absolute. For Hegel,
  the Absolute is Spirit or Reason, both in itself
  and as it realizes itself in history. It plays
  the same role for him that the Forms and the
  Divine play for Plato, and that God plays in
  Christian theology. But the Absolute is not a
  creator distinct from the creation.

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Hegel Philosophy of Fine Art

• Remember the stages of Hegels philosophy, his
  dialectic. They are always a version of
  Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis. You can start by
  thinking of this as a negotiation One party
  stakes out a position, the other party stakes out
  an opposite position a mediator suggests a third
  position that gives them both what they want in a
  new way. Hegel thinks that history itself has
  this structure. So the overall structure of
  history is
• Spirit in itself/Spirit for itself/Spirit in and
  for itself. That is, pure Spirit or Reason puts
  its opposite (matter) out there as something it
  can contemplate. The process of mediation is the
  process in which these opposites produce a new
  synthesis of Spirit in itself and Spirit for
  itself.

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Hegel Philosophy of fine art

• Here is a political example that make this a
  little clearer
• Thesis anarchy no rule, everyone on his or her
  own (Hobbes state of nature)
• Anthithesis monarchy one person in charge,
  everyone else must obey.
• Synthesis democracy the joint rule of all,
  everyone makes the rules, everyone must keep them.

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Hegel Philosophy of fine art

• Hegels three main stages of art work the same
  way
• Thesis Symbolic art. At this stage, the Idea
  (the Absolute) seeks expression in a material
  form. But the material form is not adequate to
  the ideal content. It is commonly exaggerated or
  distorted in an attempt to embody this content.
  Examples abound in ancient Egyptian art,
  traditional Indian art, African masks and dolls,
  etc.
• Antithesis Classical art. At this stage, the
  material is remade to match the perfection of the
  ideal. But this happens at the cost of a clear
  connection between the idealized form and the
  forms we encounter in ordinary experience.

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Hegel Philosophy of fine art

• Synthesis Romantic art. (Hegel, of course, lived
  in the Romantic period, so its natural for him
  to see this as a culmination.)
• In Romantic art, the idealization of the form is
  adjusted to reflect inwardness, the real
  embodiment of spirit in the conscious, reflective
  human form. Hence delight, suffering, compassion,
  anticipation of the future, and other such states
  of consciousness are represented just as they are
  expressed through human bodies, by facial
  expressions and gestures.

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Hegel Philosophy of fine art

• Does art come to an end? Hegel thinks it must,
  not in the sense that no-one would make it
  anymore, but in the sense that Spirit must go
  beyond the material embodiment of the Absolute.
  Cf. p. 146
• The final expression of the Absolute, of Spirit
  in and for itself, is philosophy. Among the arts,
  the most spiritual is poetry, because it has
  the least to do with matter and the most to do
  with mind.