The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts

ject is the wide realm of the beautiful, and, more particularly

he light of the feelings which they were supposed to evoke-feelings of pleasure, admiration, fear, pity, etc. The name was so inappropriate, or, strictly speaking, so superficial, that for this reason it was attempted to form other names, e.g. "Kallistic." But this name, again, is unsatisfactory, for the science to be designated does not treat of beauty in general, but merel

objects can justly have the attribute of beauty ascribed to them, or how far, speaking generally, natural beauty ought to be recognized as existing besides artistic beauty. We may, however, begin at once by asserting that artistic beauty stands higher than nature. For the beauty of art is the beauty that is born-born again, that is-of the mind;[13] and by as much as the mind and its products are higher than nature and its appearances, by so much the beauty of art is higher than the beauty of nature. Indeed, if we look at it formally-i.e. only considering in what way it exists, not what there is in it,-even a silly fancy such a

tates the difference between them as purely quantitative, and, therefore, purely external. But the mind and its artistic beauty, in being "higher" as compared with nature, have a distinction which is not simply relative. Mind, and mind only, is capable of truth, and comprehends in itself all that is, so that whatever is beautif

pt to make a science, a systematic account of these beauties. The aspect of Utility, indeed, has been accentuated, and a science, e.g. of natural things useful against diseases a materia medica, has been compiled, consisting in a description of minerals, chemical products, plants, and animal

ubject proper, are meant to remove any idea that the limitation of our science is owing merely to choice and to caprice. But this is not the place to dem

selves to the beauty of art, this first step bring

art appears as a superfluity, even if the softening of the mental temper which preoccupation with beauty has power to produce, does not turn out a detrimental, because effeminating influence. In this aspect of the matter, the fine arts being granted to be a luxury, it has been thought necessary in various ways to take up their defence with reference to their relation towards practical necessities, and more especially towards morality and piety; and, as it is impossible to demonstrate their harmlessness, at least to make it credible that the mental luxury in question afforded a larger sum of advantages than of disadvantages. With this view very serious aims have been ascribed to art, and it has been recommended in various ways as a mediator between reason and sensuousness, between inclination and duty, as the reconciler of these elements in the obstinate conflict and repulsion which their collision generates. But the opinion may be maintained that, assuming such aims of art, more serious though they are, nothing is gained for reason and duty by the attempt at mediation, because these principles, as essentially incapable of intermixture, can be parties to no such compromise, but demand in their manifestation the same purity which they have in t

sement, and even if it pursues more serious aims is in contradiction with their nature, but is at best the mere servant alike of amusement and of

eauty of art is precisely the freedom of its productive and plastic energy. In the origination, as in the contemplation, of its creations we appear to escape wholly from the fetters of rule and regularity. In the forms of art we seek for repose and animation in place of the austerity of the reign of law and the sombre self-concentration of thought; we would exchange the shadowland of the idea for cheerful vigorous reality. And lastly, the source of artistic creations is the free activity of fancy, which in her

, and supplies out of the real world what is lacking to the notion, it follows, we may think, that a purely intellectual treatment of art destroys this very means of supplementation, annihilates it, and reduces the idea once more to its simplicity devoid of reality, and to its shadowy abstractness. And further, it is objected that science, as a matter of content, occupies itself with what is necessary. Now, if ?sthetic puts aside the beauty of nature, we not only gain nothing in respect of

wing itself fitted for scientific study, seems rather in its own right to resist the

part they contain facts which have a certain truth; in part, too, the argumentation[18] based upon these facts appears plausible at first sight. Thus, e.g., there is the fact that the forms of beauty are as manifold as the phenomenon of beauty is omnipresent; and from this, if we choose, we may

hiness of art to be scientifically considered, it is no doubt the case that art can be employed as a fleeting pastime, to serve the ends of pleasure and entertainment, to decorate our surroundings, to impart pleasantness to the external c

ient understanding, submits to be used for finite purposes, and as an accidental means, and in that case is not self-determined, but determined by alien objects and relations; but, on the other hand,

of revealing to consciousness and bringing to utterance the Divine Nature,[20] the deepest interests of humanity, and the most comprehensive truths of the mind. It is in works of art that nations h

is a supra-sensuous world, which is thus, to begin with, erected as a beyond over against immediate consciousness and present sensation; the power which thus rescues itself from the here, that consists in the actuality and finiteness of sense, is the freedom of thought in cognition. But the mind is able

of phenomena and its immediate contact with us as matter, and in like manner by the standard of our own world of feeling, that is, the inner world of sense. These are the two worlds to which, in the life of daily experience, in our own phenomenal[22] life, we are accustomed to attribute the value and the title of actuality, reality, and truth, in contrast to art, which we set down as lacking such reality and truth. Now, this whole sphere of the empirical inner and outer world is just what is not the world of genuine reality, but is to be entitled a mere appearance more strictly than is true of art, and a crueller deception. Genuine reality is only to be found beyond the immediacy of feeling and of external objects. Nothing is genuinely real but that which is actual in its own right,[23] that which is the substance of nature and of mind, fixing

istence, but only the intellectual presentation of it, for the element of its portrayals, and its content remains burdened with the whole mass of contingent matter formed by common reality with its occurrences, complic

e show or semblance of immediate sensuous existence or of historical narrative, the artistic semblance has the advantage that in itself it points beyond itself, and refers us away from itself to something spiritual which it is meant to bring before the mind's eye. Whereas immediate appearance do

to sense as to be adequately embraced and expressed by that medium. Of such a kind is the Christian conception of truth; and more especially the spirit of our modern world, or, to come closer, of our religion and our intellectual culture, reveals itself as beyond the stage at which art is the highest mode assumed by man's consciousness of the absolute. The peculiar mode to which artistic production and works of art belong no longer satisfies our supreme need. We are above the level at which works of art can be venerated as divine, and actually worshipped; the impression which they make is of a more considerate kind, and the feelings which they stir within us require a higher test and a further confi

to them, so that general forms, laws, duties, rights, maxims are what have validity as grounds of determination and are the chief regulative force. But what is required for artistic interest as for artistic production is, speaking generally, a living creation, in which the universal is not present as law and maxim, but acts as if one with the mood and the feelings, just as, in the imagination, the universal and rational is contained only as brought into unity with a concrete sensuous phenomenon. Therefore, our present in its universal condition is not favourable to art. As regards the artist himself, it is

aroused in us by works of art is over and above our immediate enjoyment, and together with it, our judgment; inasmuch as we subject the content and the means of representation of the work of art and the suitability or unsuitability of the two to our intellectual consideration. Therefore, the sci

ng, I regard the pursuit of philosophy as utterly incapable of existing apart from a scientific procedure. Philosophy has to consider its object in its necessity, not, indeed, in its subjective necessity or external arrangement, classification, etc., but it has to unfold and demonstrate the object out of the necessity of its own inner nature. Until this evolution[24] is brought to pass the scientific element is lacking to the treatment. In as far, however, as the objective necessity of an object lies essentially in i

appear in a form which is expressly contrasted with abstract thought, and which the latter is forced to destroy in exerting the activity which is its nature. This idea coheres with the opinion that reality as such, the life of nature and of mind, is disfigured and slain by comprehension; that, so far from being brought close to us by the thought which comprehends, it is by i

external unintelligent nature; in works of art, mind has to do but with its own. And even if artistic works are not abstract thought and notion, but are an evolution of the notion out of itself, an alienation from itself towards the sensuous, still the power of the thinking spirit (mind) lies herein, not merely to grasp itself only in its peculiar form of the self-conscious spirit (mind), but just as much to recognize itself in its alienation in the shape of feeling and the sensuous, in its other form, by transmuting the metamorphosed thought back into definite thoughts, and so restoring it to itself. And in this preoccupation with the other of itself the thinking spirit is not to be held untrue to itself as if forgetting or surrendering itself therein, nor is it so weak as to lack strength to comprehend what is different from itself, but it comprehends both its

ine art cannot rove in the wildness of unfettered fancy, for these spiritual interests determine definite bases[28] for its content, how manifold and inexhaustible soever its forms and shapes may be. The same holds true for the forms themselves. They,

our bearings according to the needs of thought in the

e ourselves, and have seen that neither is fine art unworthy of a philosophical consideration, no