Silenus with the Infant Bacchus (The Munich Faun commended by H egel. S eep . 202)

Reproduced by courtesy of Staatliche Antikensammlungcn und Glyptothek, :Munchen

AESTHETICS LECTURES ON FINE ART

BY

G. W. F. HEGEL

Translated by T. M. Knox

VOLUM E I

CLARENDONPRESS • OXFORD

HURON COLLEGE LIBRARY

xiv TRANSLATOR'S PREFACE

uses it to mean 'given reality', in the sense of 'reality' mentioned above. It is sometimes in a way analogous to the English use of 'cashed' when, e.g., plain sense has to be given to what a metaphor is supposed to convey.

sinnlich-'sensuous' represents Hegel's meaning, but it is un-natural English in many contexts, and therefore 'perceptible' has been used occasionally. 'Sensuous' is opposed to 'intellectual'. A sensuous man, in Hegel's meaning, is simply a man who uses his five senses, or who 'perceives' rather than 'thinks'.

Absolut-in English 'Absolute', with a capital when it is a noun. 'Absolute', 'absolute Idea', 'absolute meaning', 'absolute Concept', all appear in these lectures, and they are best regarded, at least in most contexts, as synonyms for God.

Gei.st means both 'mind' and spirit'. I have kept 'spirit' almost everywhere, except where the context cries out for 'mind', and where that cannot be misleading. 'Spirit' has the religious over-tones to which Hegel attached importance in his use of this word. For him the 'mind' of man is the spirit which is the 'candle of the Lord'.

I am deeply grateful both to the Librarian and Staff of the St. Andrews University Library for answering many queries, and to the Leverhulme Trustees for awarding me an Emeritus Fellow-ship in 1972 to enable me to complete my work for publication.

T.M.KNOX

Grieff, January I97 3

CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE

Silenus with the Infant Bacchus

INTRODUCTION frontispiece

1. Prefatory Remarks 2. Limitation and Defence of Aesthetics 3. Refutation of Objections 4. Scientific Ways of Treating Beauty and Art 5. Concept of the Beauty of Art 6. Common Ideas of Art

(i) The Work of Art as a Product of Human Activity (ii) The Work of Art, as being for Apprehension by Man's

Senses, is drawn from the Sensuous Sphere (iii) The Aim of Art

7. Historical Deduction of the True Concept of Art (i) The Kantian Philosophy

(ii) Schiller, Winckelmann, Schelling (iii) Irony

8. Division of the Subject (i) The Idea of the Beauty of Art or the Ideal

(ii) Development of the Ideal into the Particular Forms of the Beauty of Art

(iii) The System of the Individual Arts

PART I. THE IDEA OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY OR THE IDEAL '

INTRODUCTION. Position of Art in Relation to the Finite World and to Religion and Philosophy

Division of the Subject

Chapter I. CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH 1. The Idea 2. The Idea in Existence 3. The Idea of the Beautiful

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II I

Chapter I

CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH

1. The Idea

We called the beautiful the Idea of the beautiful. This means that the beautiful itself must be grasped as Idea, in particular as Idea in a determinate form, i.e. as Ideal. Now the Idea as such is nothing but the Concept, the real existence of the Concept, and the unity of the two. For the Concept as such is not yet the Idea, although 'Concept' and 'Idea' are often used without being But it is only when it is present in its real existence and placed m unity therewith that the Concept is the Idea. Yet this unity ou.ght not to be represented, as might be supposed, as a mere neutraliza-tion of Concept and Reality, as if both lost their peculiar and special qualities, in the way in caustic acid interact to form a salt, and, combmmg, neutralize their con-trasting properties. 1 On the contrary, in .this unity the predominant. For, in accordance with its own nature'. it is this identity implicitly already, and therefore generates reality out of itself as its own; therefore, since this reality is its own self-develop-ment, it sacrifices nothing of itself in it, but therein simply realizes itself, the Concept, and therefore remains one with itself in its objectivity. This unity of Concept and Reality is the abstract definition of the Idea.

However often use is made of the word 'Idea' in theories of art, still vice versa extremely excellent connoisseurs of art have shown themselves particularly hostile to this expression. The latest and most interesting example of this is the polemic of [Karl F.] von Rumohr in his Italienische Forschungen. 2 It starts from the practical interest in art and never touches at all on what we call the Idea. For von Rumohr, unacquainted with what recent philosophy calls 'Idea', confuses the Idea with an indeterminate idea and the

' This translation I owe to Dr. David Traill. • Italian Studies (3 vols., Berlin and Stettin, 1827-3 I). Since Hegel did not

lecture on Aesthetics after 1828 he may have used only the first volume. Below he quotes no other. Rumohr lived from 1785 to 1843.

107 abstract characterless ideal of familiar theories and schools of art-an ideal the very opposite of natural forms, completely delineated and determinate in their truth; and he contrasts these forms to their advantage, with the Idea and the abstract ideal which

1the

artist is supposed to construct for himself out of his own resources. To produce works of art according to these abstractions is of course wrong-and just as unsatisfactory as when a thinker thinks in

ideas and in his thinking does not get beyond a purely vague subject-matter. But from such a reproof what we mean by the word is in every free, for the Idea is completely

1.n itself, a totality of characteristics, and beautiful only as 1mmed1ately one with the objectivity adequate to itself.

According to what he says in his book (i, pp. 145-6) von Rumohr fou1!-d beauty, as understood in the most general way and,

if you like, m terms of the modern intellect, comprises all those of things which stir the sense of sight satisfyingly or

through it attune the soul and rejoice the spirit'. These properties are further to be divided into three kinds 'of which the first works ?nly on mere seeing, second only on man's own presupposedly innate sense for spatial relationships, and the third in the first place on the understanding and then, and then only, through knowledge, on feeling'. This third most important point is sup-posed (p. 144) to depend on forms 'which quite independently of what pleases the senses and of the beauty of proportion, awaken a certa.in ethical and spiritual pleasure, which proceeds partly from the enjoyment derived from the ideas' (but query: the ethical and spiritual ideas) 'thus aroused, and partly also precisely from the pleasure which the mere activity of an unmistakable knowing unfailingly brings with it'.

CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH

These the poi?ts which this s.erious connoisseur lays down for his part m relation to the beautiful. For a certain level of culture they may suffice, but for philosophy they cannot possibly be satisfying. For in essentials his treatment of the matter amounts simply to this, that the sense or spirit of sight, and the understand-ing too, is rejoiced, that feeling is excited, and that a delight has

aroused. The whole thing revolves round this awakening of joy. But Kant1 has already made an end of this reduction of

1 The Critique of Judgment is never far from Hegel's mind throughout this ""'.hole Many his. topics come from Kant. It would be superfluous to

.precise referei;ices tn view of the excellent indexes in the translation of the Critique of Aesthetic Judgment by J. C. Meredith {Oxford, 1911).

8243715 E

108 I. THE IDEA OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY

beauty's effect to feeling, to the agreeable, and the pleasant, by going far beyond the feeling of the beautiful.

If we turn back from this polemic to the Idea that was left unimpugned thereby, we find in the Idea, as we saw, the concrete unity of Concept and objectivity.

(a) Now, as regards the nature of the Concept as such, it is not in itself an abstract unity at all over against the differences of reality; as Concept it is already the unity of specific differences and therefore a concrete totality. So, for example, ideas like man, blue, etc., are prima facie not to be called 'concepts', but abstractly universal ideas, which only become the Concept when it is clear in them that they comprise different aspects in a unity, since this inherently determinate unity constitutes the Concept: for example, the idea 'blue' as a colour has the unity, the specific unity, of light and dark for its Concept,1 and the idea 'man' comprises the opposi-tions of sense and reason, body and spirit; though man is not just put together out of these two sides as constituent parts indifferent to one another; in accordance with his Concept he contains them in a concrete and mediated unity.

But the Concept is so much the absolute unity of its specifica-tions that these do not remain independent and they cannot be realized by separating themselves from one another so as to become independent individuals, or otherwise they would abandon their unity. In this way the Concept contains all its specifications in the form of this its ideal unity and universality, which constitutes its subjectivity in distinction from real and objective existence. So, for example, gold has a specific weight, a determinate colour, a particular relation to acids of various kinds. These are different specifications, and yet they are all together in one. For each tiniest little particle of gold contains them in inseparable unity. In our minds they stand apart from one another, but in themselves, by their own nature, they are there in unseparated unity. The same identity and lack of independence belongs to the differences which the true Concept has in itself. A closer example is afforded by our own ideas, by the self-conscious ego as such. For what we call 'soul' and, more precisely, ego is the Concept itself in its free existence. The ego contains a mass of the most different ideas and thoughts, it is a world of ideas; yet this infinitely varied content, by being in the ego, remains entirely immaterial and without body and, as it

' Another allusion to Goethe's theory of colours.

CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH 109

were, compressed in this ideal unity, as the pure, perfectly trans-parent shining of the ego into itself. This is the way in which the Concept contains its different determinations in an ideal unity.

The more precise determinations which belong to the Concept in virtue of its own nature are the universal, the particular, and the individual. Each of these determinations, taken by itself, is a purely one-sided abstraction. But they are not present in the Concept in this one-sidedness, because it is their ideal unity. Consequently the Concept is the universal, which on the one hand negates itself by its own activity into particularization and determinacy, but on the other hand once again cancels this particularity which is the negative of the universal. For the universal does not meet in the particular with something absolutely other; the particulars are only particular aspects of the universal itself, and therefore the universal restores in the particular its unity with itself as universal. In this returning into itself the Concept is infinite negativity; not a nega-tion of something other than itself, but self-determination in which it remains purely and simply a self-relating affirmative unity. Thus it is true individuality as universality closing only with itself in its particularizations. As the supreme example of this nature of the Concept, we can reckon what was briefly touched upon above [in the Introduction to this Part] as the essence of spirit.

Owing to this infinity in itself the Concept is already implicitly a totality. For in the being of its other it is still a unity with itself and therefore is the freedom for which all negation is only self-determination and not an alien restriction imposed by something else. But by being this totality the Concept already contains every-thing that reality as such brings into appearance and that the Idea brings back into a mediated unity. Those who suppose that they have in the Idea something totally other than the Concept, some-thing particular in contrast with it, do not know the nature of either the Idea or the Concept. But at the same time the Concept is distinguished from the Idea by being particularization only in abstracto, since determinacy, as it exists in the Concept, re-mains caught in the unity and ideal universality which is the Concept's element.

But, that being so, the Concept remains one-sided and it is afflicted with the defect that, although itself implicitly totality, it allows only to the side of unity and universality the right of free development. But because this one-sidedness is incommensurate

110 I. THE IDEA OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY

with the Concept's own essence, the Concept cancels it in accord-ance with its own Concept. It negates itself as this ideal unity and universality and now releases to real independent objectivity what this unity shut in within itself as ideal subjectivity. By its own activity the Concept posits itself as objectivity.

(b) Objectivity, taken by itself, is therefore nothing but the reality of the Concept, but the Concept in the form of independent particularization and the real distinguishing of all the factors of which the Concept as subjective was the ideal unity.

But, since it is only the Concept which has to give itself existence and reality in objectivity, objectivity will have to bring the Concept to actuality in objectivity itself. Yet the Concept is the mediated ideal unity of its particular factors. Therefore, although the dif-ference of the particulars is real, their ideal conceptually adequate unity must all the same be restored within them; they are particu-larized in reality but their unity, mediated into ideality, must also exist in them. This is the power of the Concept which does not abandon or lose its universality in the dispersed objective world, but reveals this its unity precisely throµgh and in reality. For it is its own Concept to preserve in its opposite this unity with itself. Only so is the Concept the actual and true totality.

(c) This totality is the Idea, i.e. it is not only the ideal unity and subjectivity of the Concept, but likewise its objectivity-the objectivity which does not stand over against the Concept. as something merely opposed to it but, on the contrary, the objec-tivity in which the Concept relates itself to itself. On both sides, subjective and objective, of the Concept, the Idea is a whole, but at the same time it is the eternally completing and completed correspondence and mediated unity of these totalities. Only so is the Idea truth and all truth.

2. The Idea in Existence Everything existent, therefore, has truth only in so far as it is an existence of the Idea. For the Idea is alone the genuinely actual. Appearance, in other words, is not true simply because it has an inner or outer existence, or because it is reality as. such, but only because this reality corresponds with the Concept. Only in that event has existence actuality and truth. And truth not at all in the subjective sense that there is an accordance between some existent and my ideas, but in the objective meaning that the ego or an

CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH III

external object, an action, an event, a situation in its reality is itself a realization of the Concept. If this identity is not established, then the existent is only an appearance in which, not the total Concept, but only one abstract side of it is objectified; and that side, if it establishes itself in itself independently against the totality and unity, may fade away into opposition to the true Concept. Thus it is only the reality which is adequate to the Concept which is a true reality, true indeed because in it the Idea itself brings itself into existence.

3. The Idea of the Beautiful Now we said that beauty is Idea, so beauty and truth are in one way the same. Beauty, namely, must be true in itself. But, looked at more closely, the true is nevertheless distinct from the beautiful. That is to say, what is true is the Idea, the Idea as it is in accordance with its inherent character and universal principle, and as it is grasped as such in thought. In that case what is there for thinking is not the Idea's sensuous and external existence, but only the universal Idea in this existence. But the Idea should realize itself externally and win a specific and present existence as the objec-tivity of nature and spirit. The true as such exists also. Now when truth in this its external existence is present to consciousness im-mediately, and when the Concept remains immediately in unity with its external appearance, the Idea is not only true but beautiful.

eherefore the beautiful is characterized as the pure appearance of

he Idea to sense. For the sensuous and the objective as such reserve in beauty no independence in themselves; they have to

sacrifice the immediacy of their being, since this being is only the existence and objectivity of the Concept; and it is posited as a reality which presents the Concept as in unity with its objectivity and thus also presents the Idea itself in this objective existent which has worth only as a pure appearance of the Concept.

(a) For this reason, after all, it is impossible for the Under-standing to comprehend beauty, because, instead of penetrating to this unity, the Understanding clings fast to the differences exclu-sively in their independent separation, by regarding reality as something quite different from ideality, the sensuous as quite different from the Concept, the objective as quite different from the subjective, and thinks that such oppositions cannot be [recon-ciled and] unified. Thus the Understanding steadily remains in

112 I. THE IDEA OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY

the field of the finite, the one-sided, and the untrue. The beautiful, on the other hand, is in itself infinite and free. For even if there can be a question too of a particular content, and therefore, once more, of a restricted one, still this content must appear in its existence as a totality infinite in itself and as freedom, because the beautiful throughout is the Concept. And the Concept does not set itself against its objectivity by opposing to it a one-sided finitude and abstraction; on the contrary, it closes together with what confronts it and on the strength of this unity and perfection is infinite in itself. In the same way, the Concept ensouls the real existence which embodies it, and therefore is free and at home with itself in this objectivity. For the Concept does not allow external existence in the sphere of beauty to follow its own laws independently; on the contrary, it settles out of itself its phenomenal articulation and shape, and this, as the correspondence of the Concept with itself in its outward existence, is precisely what constitutes the essence of beauty. But the bond and the power which keeps this correspon-dence in being is subjectivity, unity, soul, individuality.

(b) Therefore if we consider beauty in to .the subject!ve spirit, it is not present either to the unfree mtelhgence which persists in its finitude or to the finitude of the will. .

As finite intelligences, we sense inner and outer objects, we observe them, we become aware of them through our senses, we have them brought before our contemplation and ideas, and, indeed, before the abstractions of our thinking understanding which confers on them the abstract form of universality. The finitude and unfreedom of this attitude lies in presupposing things to be independent. Therefore we direct our attention to things, we let them alone, we make our ideas, etc., a prisoner to belief in things, since we are convinced that objects are rightly understo?d only when our relation to them is passive, and when we restrict our whole activity to the formality of noticing them and putting a negative restraint on our imaginations, and prejudices. With this one-sided freed?m. of objects ts immediately posited the unfreedom of subjective comprehens10n. For in the case of this latter the content is given, and instead of sub-jective self-determination enters the n_iere ac.ceptance adoption of what is there, objectively present just as it 1s. Truth m that case is to be gained only by the subjugation of subjectivity.

The same thing is true, though in an opposite way, with finite

CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH IIJ

willing. Here interests, aims, and intentions lie in the subject who wills to assert them in face of the being and properties of things. For he can only carry out his decisions by annihilating objects, or at least altering them, moulding them, forming them, cancelling their qualities, or making them work upon one another, e.g. water on fire, fire on iron, iron on wood, and so on. Thus now it is things which are deprived of their independence, since the subject brings them into his service and treats and handles them as useful, i.e. as objects with their essential nature and end not in themselves but in the subject, so that what constitutes their proper essence is their relation (i.e. their service) to the aims of the subject. Subject and object have exchanged their roles. The objects have become unfree, the subjects free.

But, as a matter of fact, in both these relations, both sides are finite and one-sided, and their freedom is a purely supposititious freedom.

In the field of theory the subject is finite and unfree because the independence of things is presupposed; the same is true in the field of practice, owing to the one-sidedness, struggle, and inner contradiction between aims and the impulses and passions aroused from outside, and owing also to the never wholly eliminated re-sistance of the objects. For the separation and opposition of the two sides, object and subject, is the presupposition in this matter and is regarded as its true essence.

The same finitude and unfreedom affects the object in both theoretical and practical matters. In the theoretical sphere, the object's independence, although presupposed, is only an apparent freedom. For objectivity as such just is, without any awareness of its Concept as subjective unity and universality within itself. Its Concept is outside it. Therefore, every object, its Concept being outside it, exists as mere particularity which with its many-sidedness is turned outwards and in its infinitely varied relations appears at the mercy of origination and alteration by others, sub-ject to their power, and to destruction by them. In practical matters this dependence is expressly posited as such, and the resistance of things to the will remains relative, not possessing in itself the power of ultimate independence.

(c) But the consideration and the existence of objects as beautiful is the unification of both points of view, since it cancels the one-sidedness of both in respect of the subject and its object alike, and therefore their finitude and unfreedom.

114 I. THE IDEA OF ARTISTIC BEAUTY

For, in its theoretical relation, the object now is not just taken as being mert:ly an existent individual thing which therefore has its subjective Concept outside its objectivity, and in its particular reality scatters and disperses into external relations in many ways in the most varied directions; on the contrary, the beautiful thing in its existence makes its own Concept appear as realized and displays in itself subjective unity and life. Thereby the object has bent its outward tendency back into itself, has suppressed dependence on something else, and, under our consideration, has exchanged its unfree finitude for free infinity.

But the self in relation to the object likewise ceases to be the abstraction of both noticing, sensuously perceiving, and observing, and also of dissolving individual perceptions and observations into abstract thoughts. In this [beautiful] object the self becomes concrete in itself since it makes explicit the unity of Concept and reality, the unification, in their concreteness, of the aspects hitherto separated, and therefore abstract, in the self and its object.

In the matter of practice, as we have seen at greater length already [in the Introduction, 6(ii)], desire likewise withdraws when the beautiful is under consideration, and the subject cancels his aims in relation to the object and treats it as independent, an end in itself. Therefore there is dissolved the purely finite standing of the object in which it served purposes external to it as a useful means of fulfilling them, and either, unfree, armed itself against their fulfilment or else was compelled to accept the alien purpose as its own. At the same time the unfree situation of the active agent has disappeared because his consciousness is no longer differentiated into subjective intentions, etc., and their sphere and the means to their achievement; his relation to the fulfilment of his subjective intentions is no longer the finite one of the mere 'ought'; he has gone beyond it and what now confronts him is the perfectly realized Concept and end.

Thus the contemplation of beauty is of a liberal kind; it leaves objects alone as being inherently free and infinite; there is no wish to possess them or take advantage of them as useful for ful-filling finite needs and intentions. So the object, as beautiful, appears neither as forced and compelled by us, nor fought and overcome by other external things.

For, in virtue of the essence of beauty, what must appear in the beautiful object is the Concept with its soul and end, as well as

CONCEPT OF THE BEAUTIFUL AS SUCH 115

its external determinacy, many-sidedness, and, in general, its reality created by itself and not by something else, since, as we saw just now, the object has truth only as the immanent unity and correspondence of the specific existent and its genume essence and Concept. Now further, since the Concept itself is the concrete, its reality too appears as just a complete creation, the parts of which are nevertheless revealed as ideally ensouled and unified. For the harmony of the Concept with its appearance is a perfect inter-penetration. Consequently the external form and shape does not remain separate from the external material, nor is it stamped on it mechanically for some other purposes; it appears as the form immanent in the reality and corresponding with the nature of that reality, the form giving itself an outward shape.

But, finally, however much the particular aspects, parts, and members of the beautiful object harmonize with one another to form an ideal unity and make this unity appear, nevertheless this harmony must only be so visible in them that they still preserve an appearance of independent freedom over against one another; i.e. they must not, as in the Concept as such, have a purely ideal unity, they must also present the aspect of independent reality. In the beautiful object there must be both (i) necessity, established by the Concept, in the coherence of its particular aspects, and (ii) the appearance of their freedom, freedom for themselves and not merely for the unity of the parts on view. Necessity as such is the relation of aspects so essentially interlinked with one another that if one is there, the other is immediately there also. Such necessity should not be missing in beautiful objects, but it must not emerge in the form of necessity itself; on the contrary, it must be hidden behind an appearance of undesigned contingency. For otherwise the particular real parts lose their standing as existing on the strength of their own reality too, and they appear only in the service of their ideal unity, to which they remain abstractly subordinate.

Owing to this freedom and infinity, which are inherent in the Concept of beauty, as well as in the beautiful object and its sub-jective contemplation, the sphere of the beautiful is withdrawn from the relativity of finite affairs and raised into the absolute realm of the Idea and its truth.