Reading guide for Fri 3/20: Hegel, Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art, sels. from intro. (HK 424, 428-33, 437-40)
 

The key new element in Hegel is the significance of history. Watch for this, but watch also for his relation to others you have read, especially Schiller and Schelling. Hegel’s system is presupposed and not explained in the selection in your anthology, so you should first read the editors’ introduction (HK 378-380) to get a sense of the context of his discussion of art and for an explanation of some of his terms.

The developing self-realization that the editors speak of there often takes the form of the resolution of contradictions or incompatibilities by moving to some kind of higher level. So the sort of resolution of contradiction that Schelling finds in a work of art is something that, for Hegel, structures the whole of reality.

The bulk of what we will discuss in Hegel consists of his account of three types or stages of art and a corresponding tripartite classification of the arts. Because of the correspondence of these two series, we will look at them in parallel following the first two steps of each in one class and the third in the next.

• The first short selection (HK 424 first two paragraphs) is the closest Hegel comes here to a general characterization of art. You can understand the “truth” he says art reveals to be the “Idea” spoken of in the editors’ introduction (something you will find him referring to also as the “Absolute”). The specific antithesis or contradiction he refers to here is between, on the one hand, the free action according to laws of reason that Kant saw as being at the heart of morality and, on the other, action that is compelled by natural impulses. This contradiction is an aspect of the “infinite” contradiction Schelling speaks of but, for Hegel, its resolution represents not a problem or task but instead something that is already accomplished and indeed accomplishes itself. However, this resolution preserves the reality of the conflict rather disclosing it as merely apparent (as Kant does with his antinomies).

• The whole of the selection in your anthology comes from the general introduction to a course of lectures on the philosophy of art (compiled after his death from his manuscripts and student notes). On HK 428, he outlines the three parts of his lectures. The rest of the selection in your anthology concludes his general introduction and constitutes an overview of the contents of each part.

• The first part of Hegel’s lectures concern the concept of the “Ideal” that he introduces on HK 428-30; this amounts to his account of beauty. You’ve seen beauty and the ideal associated in the neo-Platonists but Hegel was probably influenced more by Winkelmann (1717-1768), who was the first real historian of art and whose understanding of classical Greek art employed a concept of the ideal. (Kant, too, was probably thinking of Winkelmann when he addressed the concept of the ideal in connection with beauty, and what he said may help suggest what Hegel has in mind. Kant’s discussion, in §17 of the Critique of Judgment, does not appear in your anthology; you can find a couple selections at the end of this guide and the rest of the discussion in the full text from Kant on the Blackboard course site.)

• The rest of your first assignment concerns the types of art Hegel calls “symbolic” and “classical” (HK 430-4 up to (c)) and the arts of architecture and sculpture (HK 437-40 through the first full paragraph). Don’t worry if his idea of symbolic art is not immediately clear when you read the section devoted to it; Hegel has more to say about it when he turns to classical art and more still when he speaks of architecture and sculpture since he sees architecture as an art especially appropriate for the symbolic type or period.

When Hegel discusses the various sorts of self-realization or unfolding of the Idea (and he did this for many topics besides art), his accounts are often semi-historical. That is particularly true here since his interest is in a philosophical understanding of the history of art as well as of its nature. Hegel’s types of art are not simply historical periods; they are also kinds of art and, in principle, examples might be found in various periods. For example, although Hegel associates symbolic art especially with the cultures and periods he mentions in what you are reading, he also discusses metaphor and other figures of speech in the part of his lectures devoted to symbolic art. Nevertheless, he uses the terms “symbolic” and “classical” in a much narrower and more historically bound way than they would often be used now in discussing art.

The question I’ll suggest you think about for discussion is whether Hegel is right in regarding “classical” as a higher sort of art than the “symbolic.”

Kant on ideal beauty. (from Kant, Critique of Judgment, § 17 “Of the Ideal of Beauty,” Bernard, tr.) Note that the qualification “vague” Kant uses in the following selection is not intended to be negative; he elsewhere uses the term “free beauty” for this sort of beauty, and that is for him the purest sort of beauty. Hence, for him, unlike Hegel, ideal beauty is not the most central form. His remarks at the end of this selection seem close to things he says about aesthetic ideas but he never seems to have made the connection explicitly.

First, it is well to remark that the beauty for which an ideal is to be sought cannot be vague beauty, but is fixed by a concept of objective purposiveness; and thus it cannot appertain to the object of a quite pure judgment of taste, but to that of a judgment of taste which is in part intellectual. That is, in whatever grounds of judgment an ideal is to be found, an idea of reason in accordance with definite concepts must lie at its basis, which determines a priori the purpose on which the internal possibility of the object rests. An ideal of beautiful flowers, of a beautiful piece of furniture, of a beautiful view, is inconceivable. But neither can an ideal be represented of a beauty dependent on definite purposes, e.g. of a beautiful dwelling house, a beautiful tree, a beautiful garden, etc.; presumably because their purpose is not sufficiently determined and fixed by the concept, and thus the purposiveness is nearly as free as in the case of vague beauty. The only being which has the purpose of its existence in itself is man, who can determine his purposes by reason; or, where he must receive them from external perception, yet can compare them with essential and universal

purposes and can judge this their accordance aesthetically. This man is, then, alone of all objects in the world, susceptible of an ideal of beauty, as it is only humanity in his person, as an intelligence, that is susceptible of the ideal of perfection.

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We must yet distinguish the normal idea of the beautiful from the ideal, which latter, on grounds already alleged, we can only expect in the human figure. In this the ideal consists in the expression of the moral, without which the object would not please universally and thus positively (not merely negatively in an accurate presentation). The visible expression of moral ideas that rule men inwardly can indeed only be gotten from experience; but to make its connection with all which our reason unites with the morally good in the idea of the highest purposiveness—goodness of heart, purity, strength, peace, etc.—visible as it were in bodily manifestation (as the effect of that which is internal) requires a union of pure ideas of reason with great imaginative power even in him who wishes to judge of it, still more in him who wishes to present it.