Hegel: Spirit and Beauty

Hegel begins by stating in the preface that "Philosophy of Fine Art"(rather than "Aesthetics") is a more accurate expression and less "superficial" when describing beauty in art. Beauty of art, according to Hegel, is higher than nature. He explains this rather bold claim by stating something interesting, that beauty of art is “born of the spirit and born again” (44). Something considered formally contains freedom and spirituality. For example, the sun cannot be beautiful because it can not be treated by itself, without its “necessary connections with other things.” Only things that exist independent of others (retaining the “spirit”) may be treated as beautiful. Hegel says that what makes a spirit beautiful is that it “generates” and comprehends” itself (45). Therefore, the spirit is what makes up beauty’s substance. Hegel says that no one has yet attempted to classify natural objects because we find difficulty in defining them, due to our inability to find a “criterion” for natural beauty.

Hegel first presents the concept of the beauty of art, concluding that “the content of art is the idea” and its form is “the configuration of sensuous material” (47). In order for art to harmonize and unify these two sides, Hegel says that there are three demands. The first is that the content “has to be qualified for such representation; the second is that the content has to be concrete, that is, “genuine in spirit and nature;” and the third is that the form and shape must be “something individual, in itself completely concrete and single.” When there is such a unity, a work of art is “a call to the mind and spirit,” i.e. a work that does not simply decay and whither away as other vegetation in nature does. Idea and shape fused into one give us a Concept of spirit. With this in mind, Hegel breaks down the forms of artistic configuration into three parts: the universal, the particular, and the final. These parts, in helping to explain how the idea exists in relation to reality, are what make the Ideal. The correspondence of the truly concrete Idea and its true configuration are Ideal.

Artistic beauty is also broken down into particular configurations. The first is the symbolic form of art, which gives an abstract idea its “shape outside itself” (50). But the symbolic shape is not yet perfect. The second form of art is called the classical, which helps to eradicate the double effect of the symbolic and bring the idea into “free and complete harmony” (51). The classical form formulates the idea in fact. On the subject of the human body, Hegel says that the body counts as “the existence and natural shape of the spirit” (51). The third form, the romantic, art takes the spirit in a sensuously concrete form. In the third part of the subject Hegel explains the conception of beauty as it manifests itself in being a “work of art” (53). There forms a “spiritless objectivity,” whereby the external takes shape as having a spiritual end and content in another object beside itself. On the other hand, Hegel says, is the “inward” and “subjective existence of the Deity” (54). As this form of truth exists in the heart and spirit, it is part of the individual’s “inner life.” This “inner articulation” Hegel establishes as three arts. The first is painting, the second music, and the third poetry. These three arts are mastered by the romantic art form in substantive “modes of expression” (58).  Painting, which “uses a material through its content,” has the qualities of color and visibility. Sound releases the Ideal “from the entanglement in matter,” so music “proceeds to still deeper subjectivity and peculiarization.” Music acts as the center for the romantic arts as it provides a transition between the “abstract spatial sensuousness of painting” and the “abstract spirituality of poetry” (57).

Imagination is very important to poetry because the audible and the visible are “indications of spirit.” Therefore, a simple letter can be an illustration of spirit.

In his paper Hegel that the concept of beauty is dependent on the spirit. The arts, particularly the fine arts, are representative of things that have spirit, and thus may be beautiful. The superficiality of “Aesthetics” arises when these arts are said to have aroused feelings of pleasure or fear. Hegel prefers the “Philosophy of Art” expression, for it helps to explain not what pleases, but what has a spirit and is beautiful.