Reflection on Hegel's Aesthetics

            In the Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, in the CAR, G.W.F. Hegel discusses three topics of the fine arts, these being the Spirit of art in culture and ideals, the three main stages of the history of art (symbolic, classical, and romantic), and finally the hierarchical structure of the forms of art. Hegel is quick to separate himself from earlier philosophers by criticizing the term aesthetics, to which he denotes it merely as “the science of sensation”, claiming it to be “unsatisfactory” as well as “superficial”. He makes his intentions clear that he is to scientifically analyze the beauty in art, and thereby is participating in what he calls “Philosophy of Fine Art” (44).

             As soon as he declares his intentions, Hegel begins to limit his discourse, choosing to avoid discussing the limitations and aspects of beauty in the natural world in order to focus on the beauty in art, which he asserts to be “higher than nature”, due to its being “born of the spirit and born again, and the higher the spirit and its productions stand above nature and its phenomena, the higher too is the beauty of art above that of nature” (44). Hegel goes on to make the claim that spirit is the over-arching power that embodies truth beauty, and anything cognizable. The beauty of nature is only a mere reflection of the beautiful, and due to the lack of science to be found of natural beauty, Hegel dismisses it and moves to the division of the beauty of art.

            In dividing the subject, Hegel offers a revised selection of necessary requirements of art in order to “(show) how the particular parts of the subject emerge from the conception of artistic beauty as the presentation of the Absolute” (47). In order to show this, Hegel argues that there must be a harmony between the two elements of the beauty of art’s content and form in order to achieve an independent and “free reconciled harmony”(47). Hegel divides the subject into three demands of art, the first being “the content which is to come into artistic representation should be in itself qualified for such representation”, the second, “derived from the first, requires of the content of art that it be not anything abstract in itself, but concrete, though not concrete in the sense in which the sensuous in concrete when it is contrasted with everything spiritual and intellectual”, an the third requirement of individuality so that it may be something completely concrete and particular. It is with these requirements of art that the philosopher may dig even deeper into the art form itself. Much like a miner with the proper tools, the philosopher can excavate the Idea from the concepts of art as well as its forms. Yet at the same time, although the philosopher may dig deeper, more qualifications for separating the families of art from the genus.

            Hegel explicates the familial groupings of art so in order to show that there is a natural progression to the history of art itself. For Hegel, art expresses the spirit of a particular culture as well as the human spirit in accordance with the forms and content of art. From the concrete unity of the Idea, Hegel categorizes three relations of the Idea of art to its configuration. The first relation is the symbolic form of art. Hegel considers the symbolic form of art to be the most primitive form of art that came about by those Hegel considers being the most primitive of cultures. Symbolic art for Hegel, is “the mere 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” (50). The lack of the link for portrayal and true presentation gives reason to why ancient and primitive works of art are so simplified in comparison to the artworks of Ancient Greece and even of the Romantic era.

            For each of the stages of art, Hegel recognizes that each art is defined by the relationships between the content and the concept. Symbolic art has too powerful of a concept that is improperly represented by inadequate content. As a direct result, the form is distorted in order to make room, or elevate itself, for the sake of the power of the Idea. The second form, the classical, is rid of the “double defect of the symbolic form” for the classical stage of artwork is the “free and adequate embodiment of the Idea in the shape peculiarly appropriate to the Idea itself in its essential nature” (51). Hegel exemplifies the classical stage with the classical Greek sculpture, in which, according to Hegel, is the perfect and idealized human form meeting with the ideal without any sense of distortion. The spirit of the sculpture is determined as determined and as a particular rather than absolute and eternal. It is this defect that the romantic stage corrects, for rather than express a shallow notion, the romantic art stress a depth of the “inwardness of self-consciousness” in order to realize the spiritual freedom of spirit itself. The Idea is recognized as being greater than that of the image, and the Idea is recognized more adequately than any other form found before it.

            From the establishment of the three stages of art, Hegel moves onto arranging particular arts hierarchically with having the most physical of arts, architecture, being the lowest, while having the most spiritual of the arts, poetry, be the highest. Rather than get into the hierarchy and its structure, I am curious to inquire about what a Hegelian might say about contemporary art in the twenty-first century. Unfortunately I am not aware of many modern artists, but I have noticed that street art is now a prominent aspect of both urban culture as well as the culture in art. Would Hegel make the claim that this is a return of a symbolic stage filled in with an ambiguous spirit? The first thing that comes to mind is the “Obey” posters, or even the art of Banksy. Both incorporate stencils and mimic propaganda, but is spirit of the artwork overcoming the simplicity of the form? Or are the Ideas of each artist overhang on the weakness of the form, thereby becoming more spiritual?

Hegel's Aesthetics

Kant’s ‘purposiveness without purpose’ as a condition of beauty seems to favor the beautiful in the natural world. Hegel, on the other hand, is in decided opposition to the inherent superiority of natural beauty. He explicitly states that, “the beauty of art is higher than nature” (44). Interestingly,  Hegel abandons natural beauty for the same reason Kant praises it, its purposiveness without purpose. Nature is beautiful, but its beauty does not intend to communicate anything, and often goes unseen and un appreciated: “The variegated richly coloured plumage of birds shines even when unseen, their song dies away unheard, the torchthistle, which blooms only for one night withers in the wilds of the southern forests without having been admired…” (48). Where Kant extols nature’s beauty as the ultimate beauty because its seeming purposelessness reflects our morality; the purposiveness without purpose in the natural world parallels the lawfulness without laws that defines our morality. Hegel also recognizes the pointlessness of natural beauty, but he condemns nature to a lower plane for the same reason Kant lauds it.

While Kant sees purposiveness without a purpose as an essential quality for beauty, Hegel that, in the beautiful, “spirituality and freedom are always present” (44). Art, in Hegel’s view, consists of two parts: content and form. The “content of art is the Idea, while its form is the configuration of sensuous material” (47).  Hegel’s opinion of art necessitates an ‘Idea’. Unlike Kant, he believes art should possess a concept prior to its creation. The concept is the content of art and should serve to communicate something of importance. The content that Hegel believes art requires is what sets it above natural beauty. For, “the beauty of nature appears only as a reflection of the beauty that belongs to the spirit,” meaning that the beauty apparent in nature is only a reflection of the spirit within ourselves, and does not have any message our purpose in itself (45). (Interestingly, Kant would agree with all of the above, but dispute the meaning of these conclusions.) Art however, must contain a will to communicate with viewers; “art is not so naively self-centered [as nature]; it is essentially a question, an address to the responsive breast, a call to the mind and the spirit” (48).

Fine art requires the perfect combination of content and form; “only in the highest art are Idea and presentation truly in conformity with one another” (49). For art to possess true beauty content and form need to be in perfect harmony with each other, but more than that, taken alone each most be concrete. Otherwise, the work of art will lack concreteness and the form will fail to adequately communicate the Idea or the Idea will be too weak and become overshadowed by the form. The concrete nature of an Idea is where we find “essentiality or universality” (47). It is this essentiality, an Idea embodied, that elevates art above nature.

Kant asserted that beauty has no claim to the universal, but we still experience the beautiful as if it was necessary and universal. Kant must deny the universality of beauty in his claim that beauty does not possess purpose.  Hegel, on the other hand necessitates purpose in the highest forms of beauty, thus enabling art function with universality.

Hegel is insistent on his point that the melding of content and form should result in “a free reconciled totality” (47). The potency of both Idea and formal expression should be exactly equal for art to accurately convey its message. With this rule before us, Hegel sets out to describe the three forms of art. The first he calls symbolic. Symbolic art is, as it sounds, representative of something. But symbolic art functions as more of a sign than as art. Symbolic art is defective in that its “Idea is still more or less indeterminate and unshapable, while the natural objects are thoroughly determinate in their shape” (51). The ideas contained within symbolic art are far too powerful for the simplistic representation they employ. The definite nature of the representation is at odds with the transcendent nature of the Idea. This incompatibility between content and form is the failing of symbolic art.

The second form of art Hegel describes is the classical.  Classical art is incredibly powerful in its form and the workmanship of classical sculpture is awe inspiring. Although classical sculpture is flawless in representation, the idea embodied in these sculptures lacks the strength of the workmanship. Just as in nature, the beauty we find in classical art is a reflection of our spirit, not an Idea contained within the artwork. Thus, this art form is not a blend of content and form, but a “correspondence of the two,” for the Idea of the work is not self-contained, but lies within the viewer (52). (For this reason, classical art would likely appeal to Kant’s explanation of aesthetics.) Thus, classical art fails to fulfill Hegel’s terms; it is merely “the pinnacle of what illustration by art could achieve” (52).

The third and final art form Hegel addresses is the romantic. This art form Hegel touts as the most successful. It attains “free concrete spirituality” (53). God was often a subject of romantic art. While the concept of God cannot be adequately illustrated, it is a universal concept. The universality of the Idea and the inexpressible nature of its content is embodied in its representation. The very form of romantic painting acknowledges that the Idea being portrayed is impossible to capture. It is in this acknowledgment that romantic art becomes truly successful. As Hegel puts it, “Because of higher perfection, it is not susceptible of an adequate union with the external” (53). This means that the Idea is self-contained. The form of the representation points back to the ineffability of the work’s concept. This self-containment of universality makes romantic art the most beautiful of all art forms. 

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.  

Textual Reflection on Hegel

Hegel’s paper Extracts From Aesthetics: Lecture on Fine Art covers three main topics. The first part examines the idea of beauty and the ideal, the second looks at particular forms of art, and the third discusses five major art forms. Hegel starts by discussing the word aesthetics. He says that the word means “the science of sensation, of feeling” (44) but this is superficial. Hegel says that a more appropriate term is the philosophy of fine art. Hegel talks about the beauty of art being higher than nature because “the beauty of art is beauty born of the spirit and born again, and the higher the spirit and its productions stand above nature and its phenomena, the higher too is the beauty of art above that of nature” (44). This is because an object in nature isn’t “free and self-conscious in itself; and if we treat it in its necessary condition with other things, then we are not treating it by itself, and therefore not as beautiful” (44). The spirit is the only way to comprehend everything in itself and therefore the beauty of nature is merely a reflection of the beauty of the spirit. The spirit must undergo an awareness of consciousness in order to reach “the true Concept of its absolute essence” (48). This idea of reality and the concept of the idea form the ideal. Forms of art are relations of meaning and shape rooted in the Idea. From this idea, we get the particular determinations beauty breaks down into. The changing relation between the content of art and its mode of presentation is responsible for the three forms. The first form is symbolic. In the symbolic form, the content is conceived abstractly and therefore can’t manifest adequately and “remains struggling and striving after it” (50). The idea is imposed on natural objects and is meant to be interpreted as if the Idea is present. Symbolic beauty cannot be considered genuine beauty because it does not fully understand nature and the divine spirit. The shapes are deficient because of the underlying conceptions of spirit. Also, in the symbolic form, the symbolic shape is imperfect because “the Idea is presented to consciousness only” (51). The classical art form is “the free and adequate embodiment of the Idea in the shape peculiarly appropriate to the Idea itself in its essential nature” (51) and has the ability to be completely harmonious. So, the classical art form is the sensuous expression of the freedom of spirit. True beauty can be found in the classical form. The romantic form mainly differs from the classical form because it’s content goes beyond the content can go in the classical form and the way it can be expressed. Romantic art finds its highest expression beyond art. Hegel then moves onto the individual arts. The first is architecture and it gives matter an inorganic nature. Architecture “levels a place for the god, forms his external environment, and builds for him his temple as the place for the inner composure of the spirit and its direction in its absolute objects” (54-55). The limit architecture has is retaining the spiritual over its external forms. The second, sculpture, is a form of classical art. While architecture can’t fully capture the spiritual inner life, sculpture “makes itself at home in the sensuous shape and its external material” (55). It is within sculpture that the spiritual makes an appearance in self-sufficiency. Painting differs from architecture and sculpture in a moral way because it frees the art “from the complete sensuous spatiality of material things by being restricted to the dimensions of a plane surface” (56). Painting allows us to see what a free sprit looks like, not what it embodies because of its medium of expression. This unique medium allows the possibility of nature in particular scenes and phenomena to be displayed. Romantic form is actualized through music. Music gives direct expression to free subjectivity. Music has an “antithesis to feeling and inwardness” (57) and is important to romantic art because it helps transition between painting and poetry. Poetry is the most spiritual presentation of romantic art. Hegel considers poetry the most perfect because it gives us the most concrete expression of spiritual freedom. Poetry is not tied down and is free in itself and because of this it is the “highest stage” (57). Hegel’s paper is about his claim that art is a presentation of beauty and beauty is a matter of both content and form. Beauty is about the spiritual freedom and life. Depending on the different periods, beauty takes a different form but this does not mean that the purpose of the art changes. “Architecture is the crystallization, sculpture the organic configuration, of matter in its sensuous and spatial totality; paining is the coloured surface and line; while, in music, space as such passes over into the inherently filled point of time; until, finally, in poetry the external material is altogether degraded as worthless” (57). Each of these individual arts can be found within the forms. It is poetry alone that “is adequate to all forms of the beautiful and extends over all of them” (58) because of imagination which is pertinent for beautiful productions. These realizations of particular arts in individual ways are due to the concept of art and the universal forms of the idea of beauty.

Textual Reflection on Hume

David Hume’s Of the Standard of Taste discusses the relativity of taste. He concludes this from the assumption that the good or beauty of a work of art is identical to the human response it provokes. Hume goes about this by focusing more on the subject than the object the subject is viewing. He offers the idea that there are two sources for varying tastes: sentiment and critical facility. Hume states “the sentiments of men often differ with regard to beauty and deformity of all kinds, even while their general discourse is the same” (1). This leads to the idea that it is more common to have differences among men in generals compared to particulars and less in reality than in appearance. One of the reasons people’s opinions differ is because of the nature of language. Different people ascribe different meanings to words. However, “the word virtue, with its equivalent in every tongue, implies praise; as that of vice does blame” (1). He goes onto show that there is “no steady rule of right” (2) and “every action is blamed or praised, so far only as it is beneficial or hurtful to the true believers” (2) but there needs to be a rule from which we can judge what is right and wrong and what is good and bad. Therefore, it “is natural for us to seek a Standard of Taste” (1) because it is through this that people can reconcile sentiments. Hume is careful to differentiate judgment from sentiment. While “all sentiment is right; because sentiment has a reference to nothing beyond itself, and is always real” (2), judgments are not always rights because they are “determinations of the understanding” (2) and they refer to something beyond themselves so they cannot be conformable to the standard. As sentiment is presented, it is possible for multiple sentiments about one singular object to be right because sentiments don’t represent “what is really in the object” (2). This fits in well with Hume’s method of focusing more on the subject. Linked to the sentiments is beauty. Beauty exists in the mind and is not a quality of the object. If a person thinks something is beautiful, it is not because the thing itself possesses beauty but the mind perceives beauty. This is also an attempt to explain why different people think different things are beautiful and to different degrees. Also, this supports the claim that “every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others” (2). He next goes onto talk about the role that experiences play in the rules of composition. If people can only judge things against one’s own experience then it is logical that people’s ideas of beauty would vary. Hume outlines some requirements for the foundation to judge. He says “a perfect serenity of mind, a recollection of thought, a due attention to the object; if any of these circumstances be wanting, our experiment will be fallacious, and we shall be unable to judge of the catholic and universal beauty. The relation, which nature has places between the form and the sentiment will at least be more obscure; and it will require greater accuracy to trace and discern it” (3). A person needs to be able to draw from experiences in order to recognize beauty. Critics need to be able to distinguish properties that come together and evaluate how they work together to produce the finished product. Obstructions detract from the sentiments and when they “are removed, the beauties…immediately display their energy and while the world endures, they maintain their authority over the minds of men” (4). With no hindrances, critics will be left to their refined senses and ability to engage in experiences from which they can base their future determinations off of. Another important point Hume makes is his acknowledgement that “the perfection of the man, and the perfection of the sense or feeling, are found to be united” (5). A taste for beauty, according to Hume, is “the source of all the finest and most innocent enjoyments, of which human nature is susceptible” (5). The standard of taste is so important because the most efficient way to ascertain this type of enjoyment is by appealing to “models and principles, which have been established by the uniform consent and experience of nations and ages” (5). In order for a work of art (object) to fully have the opportunity to produce an effect on a person’s mind, the viewer (subject) must have “a certain point of view, and not be fully relished by persons, whose situation, real or imaginary, is not comfortable to that which is required by the performance” (6). As strong as Hume advocates for his theory, he concedes that “a certain degree of diversity in judgment is unavoidable” (8) and it would be unrealistic to seek a standard that does not posses some bias. Interestingly, Hume provides a type of guide for men to be better judges of taste but he never clearly explicates what that good taste is. Perhaps this is due to the variety in taste he mentions. In summary, Hume provides a method for judging based on experiences and heavily focuses on the viewer (subject) as opposed to the object.

Phaedrus 246a-256d; Symposium 201c-212a (Sample reflection paper)

“Of the nature of the soul, though her true form be ever a theme of large and more than mortal discourse, let me speak briefly, and in a figure.” (57) Socrates begins this section of the palinode (his retraction of his earlier speech denigrating eros) with a not-so-subtle hint concerning one of the main points of his speech: images, and particularly beautiful images, have a unique power to make comprehensible ideas that would otherwise remain unavailable to us. Whatever else it might be, the image is also a medium or a vehicle that transports the viewer beyond what is immediately given in experience, and Socrates seems to place this function of the image ahead of its power to serve as a copy or representation of some independent reality. “a pair of winged horses and a charioteer” (57) The image that Socrates uses to describe the soul is, as he explains, a “composite,” which is meant to account for the fact that governing one’s own soul is no simple or easy matter. Because one horse is of noble breeding, and the other ignoble, the soul is always (potentially) in conflict with itself; it is drawn in different directions, driven by incompatible motives. The task of bringing order to the soul, then, will entail not only finding a common purpose to unite its various parts, but also choosing the goal that is most appropriate as the end of its movement. Several questions present themselves simultaneously with the introduction of this image of the soul: What is meant by the ascent of the soul, and why are the true objects of knowledge only to be found in “the heaven which is above the heavens”? What makes one horse bad and the other good? What decides which of these will win out, and gain control of the soul’s movement? Given that the very same divine beings toward which the perfect soul aspires are also what “nourishes” the soul’s wings and makes this ascent possible, how does the soul which dwells beneath the heavens ever begin to make this ascent? It is especially with respect to this last question that we begin to see how Socrates’s image of the soul connects back to the question about beauty, and the erotic desire that it inspires. Though the embodied soul does not, by virtue of the distractions of the sensible world, have immediate access to the region above the heavens, where the “colorless, formless, intangible essence[s]” reside, these latter do penetrate into the realm of the sensible. The chief advantage of beauty is that it, among all of the divine beings, shows through in the sensible world most perfectly, or with the least loss of its perfection: “This is the privilege of beauty, that being the loveliest she is also the most palpable to sight.” (61) At this point in Socrates’s speech, we might reasonably wonder why beauty is not simply an unqualified good. Through it, the divine reaches into the mortal world, and serves as a reminder of the true nature of our soul, by making us feel the lack in ourselves so long as we do not have contact with the intangible essences that lie behind appearances. What complicates matters is the fact that there are two widely disparate responses to the appearance of beauty, which correspond to the two winged horses that the composite soul comprises. “Now when the charioteer beholds the vision of love, and has his whole soul warmed through sense, and is full of the prickings and ticklings of desire, the obedient steed, then as always under the government of shame, refrains from leaping on the beloved; but the other, heedless of the pricks and of the blows of the whip, plunges and runs away, giving all manner of trouble to his companion and the charioteer.” (64) What makes this response to beauty ignoble and shameful, is that it mistakes the true object of the desire that it feels. What we love when we love beauty is not the beautiful thing, but the beauty that appears in and through it; it is the idea of beauty, and its intimate connection to the good, that the soul truly desires: “Then love…may be described generally as the love of the everlasting possession of the good.” (Symposium, 72) The question of the connection between the beautiful and the good is one of the most important elements of Plato’s account of the effect of beauty on the soul, and without this connection Plato seems to have little ground for explaining why we desire to possess what we find beautiful. True, beauty is indeed one of the intangible “forms” or “ideas” of which Socrates speaks, and this could account for its powerful influence on the soul. And yet, when we interrogate the notion of an intangible idea of beauty, and ask what is left of our notion of beauty when its sensible element is stripped away, we are left with something like a notion of form, order, or perfection that closely resembles the Platonic conception of the good. See the top section of p. 71 (204e) for Diotima’s argument connecting beauty and the good. As crucial as this link between the beautiful and the good is for Plato, however, it also becomes the source of a great difficulty surrounding the status of the artist. Though we may see the need to trace a link between what is beautiful and the good, we can easily recognize that these two ideas cannot be conflated, and that any attempt to do so is an invitation to serious moral confusion. It is precisely with this concern in mind that Socrates begins his interrogation of the poets—makers of beautiful images—in the discussion of the ideal city in the Republic. It is important to keep this background established by the Phaedrus and the Symposium in mind as we consider Socrates’s arguments for the censorship of poetry (and the other arts).

Wols, Composition 1947: