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Hegel's Aesthetics
Hegel’s Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Introduction
(from the Glen Gray edition)

I. We will study fine art. The beauty of art is higher than the
beauty of nature, as spirit (a term with no necessarily religious
connotations: Geist means “mind” and “culture,” too) is higher
than nature. Man, finite spirit—where spirit becomes conscious of
itself—is the artist. He is natural . . . and more.
There are two arguments (opposed to Hegel) claiming that
art cannot be discussed philosophically; art is incapable of
rigorous and disciplined treatment.
(1) The first objection to philosophical aesthetics to which
Hegel replies is that art is simply supposed to be charming. It
“belongs to the relaxation and recreation of spiritual life” (25).
Therefore, so serious treatment of art is inappropriate and
pedantic. Art might even seem to be a luxury which might soften
one’s character unless it were justified by its moral content—but
adding a moral message to art does not constitute a philosophical
approach. Art seems to deal with mere sense appearances, not
with concepts.
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 (2) The second objection to philosophical aesthetics to
which Hegel replies is that art tries to be free and diverse and by
its very intention beyond the grasp of concepts. Therefore a
philosophical reflection on art is impossible.
Hegel replies to these arguments that he intends to deal
only with that art whose purpose is not merely to charm, but to be
“one mode and form through which the divine, the profoundest
interests of mankind, and spiritual truths of the widest range, are
brought home to consciousness and expressed” (29). We usually
set up a split between the Infinite beyond and the poor present,
the finite here and now. Art heals this split.
If you believe that the objects of the senses are the real
truth, then you will find art to be mere deception; but in fact such
objects only have meaning insofar as they are animated by a
spiritual significance. Otherwise they are mere dust. If the things
of the senses get their value through their
mental/spiritual/cultural significance, then a philosopher has
something to contribute to appreciating art.
Mind is competent to appreciate its own products. Art is a
product of mind; therefore, philosophy, which is mind’s reflection
upon its own activities, is competent to study art. Indeed, mind
can better appreciate art than it can understand nature.
In the times of the ancient Greeks, people found in their
sculpture the very presentations of their gods. Nowadays, art
makes us think more, turns us within. This is yet another reason
why philosophy can appropriately discuss art.
The creative process may look disorderly, but principles of
mind are at work nonetheless; and it is the task of philosophy to
bring them to light. What mind has made, mind can interpret.
II. There are many ways to approach the study of art
(1) We can approach art empirically—by experience and
observation.
a. We can study the facts about art history, gain knowledge about
the conditions under which the work was produced. We can form
generalizations. We can formulate rules. These rules then will be
especially insisted upon when artistic inspiration is lacking.
General rules, say, about making poetry, are fine, but they do not
show the would-be poet how to make the concrete decisions
necessary in writing a poem.
b. We can go about formulating theories of beauty. We can
criticize the theories of others and advance new definitions. In
this process some excellent ideas have been published, but it is
necessary always to remain in contact with the works themselves.
The better theories make us more aware of the content or theme
or meaning of the work and of the manner in which it is presented
—the essence and the detail. Every word or tone or brush stroke
should help delineate the inner truth of the work.
c. As we come to appreciate genius and become more
philosophically advanced, we learn that we must go beyond the
conventional rules and come to appreciate a wider range of
works.
A good basis in scholarship will always be valuable to the
theorist and to the connoisseur.
(2) We can approach art by starting with the beautiful—not
as an abstract generalization from many art works but as a living
spiritual value.
(3) Philosophy must integrate both the living spiritual
universal value of beauty with the variety of particular works in
history.

III. What is fine art? [literally “beautiful art.”]

Where do we get our concept of fine art? Let us start from
common, ordinary ideas (each to be discussed in detail). (1) A
work of art is no product of nature. It is brought into being
through the agency of man. (2) It is created essentially for man,
and, what is more, it is to a greater or less degree produced in a
sensory medium and addressed to man’s senses. (3) Art contains
an end or purpose bound up with it.
(1) Some object that people have thought that art is a
production of an external object that can be learned like any craft.
But art is not following rules. “It is bound as spiritual activity to
work by drawing on its own resources, and to bring before the
mind’s eye a quite other and richer content and ampler individual
creations than any abstract formulas can dictate.” (52)
Today the opposite extreme is popular. No longer is the
rule-directed method in vogue, but we see art as the product of a
genius giving vent to his impulse. But this view forgets the role of
craftsmanship.
What human need stimulates artistic production? “The
universal need for expression in art lies, therefore, in man’s
rational impulse to exalt the inner and outer world into a spiritual
consciousness for himself, as an object in which he recognizes his
own self.” Art, in other words, takes materials from the outer
world and inspiration from the inner world and brings them
together into a unity in which man can see himself. “I made it” is
the satisfaction that art brings to every maker. Self-expression
further implies that the artist somehow puts himself outside of
himself, and so can recognize himself in his product. For Hegel
this is especially important, since nature and man are not
ultimately different, not ultimately divided, separate, unresolved.
For me to recognize my essential nature outside myself in art
prepares the way for me to recognize my essential nature in the
world as a whole.
(2) When we observe that the art work is set in a sensory
medium (e.g., colors or tones) and is thus limited, we usually
mean that the work ought to elicit feeling . . . noble feelings, base
feelings, extreme feelings, any feelings at all, so long as it evokes
feelings. But this notion of art as evoking feeling is just as empty
and formalistic in its way as any of the old rules about how to
make art. No specific content is implied. Furthermore, free rein
is given to personal whim.
The work is addressed not only to the senses but to the
mind. It is not like a natural object to which we might relate in
the mode of desire. (A proper aesthetic response to a painting of a
mountain stream is not to be thirsty for the water represented in
the painting.) “Thus, the interest of art distinguishes itself from
the practical interest of desire by the fact that it permits its object
to subsist freely and in independence, while desire utilizes it in its
own service by its destruction. On the other hand, artistic
contemplation differs from theoretical consideration by the
scientific intelligence, in cherishing interest for the object as an
individual existence, and not setting to work to transmute it into
its universal thought and concept” (66). Experience of art is
unlike science, because science, theoretical speculation, is
uninterested in the individuality of its object. It studies water, not
this glass as opposed to that one. Experience of art is unlike
ordinary sense experience, because our customary encounter with
things shows our desires to dominate and consume, while in
aesthetic experience we enjoy just beholding the work and are
even indifferent to whether it really exists or not.
(3) What is the end, goal, or purpose of art? Some people
have believed that the purpose of art was imitation—copying
nature. Hegel says that mere imitation is superfluous. The artist
is never as good as nature herself. Such art draws all our
attention to the cleverness of the artist in making such a lifelike
representation. This becomes boring and trivial, like ridiculous
parlor tricks. The theory of imitation cannot account for
architecture, and this theory is once again empty of content,
indifferent to the beautiful and the ugly.
If someone says, “Everything is the content of art,” once
again an empty statement has been made. For Hegel, the
statement is not only empty but false. The concept of art has
normative implications, and not just anything will count.
The quest for unity and purpose has led reflective thinkers
to the view that art is supposed to mitigate the passions, tame the
savage beast in man by representing an objectification of such
passion so as to induce recognition and reflection. If I create a
drama about cruelty, I may enable my audience to recognize on
stage the actions they secretly desire to do; they may then improve
themselves by reflecting upon the characters and actions in the
play. This type of art is edification; it becomes moralistic very
quickly.
Art does instruct—but not by presenting an abstract
doctrine that could be stated independently of the work. The
work must never be the mere shell, the cover for the presentation
of a thesis. Stories that could be adequately summed up on a brief
“moral” are not real art.
In the modern period it is customary for people to assume a
complete opposition between moral law and the sensuous
impulses of man’s nature. In modern culture man “live in two
contradictory worlds at once; so that even consciousness wanders
back and forward in this contradiction, and . . . is unable to satisfy
itself. For on the one side, we see man a prisoner in common
reality and earthly temporality, oppressed by want and poverty,
hard driven by nature, entangled in matter, in sensuous aims and
their enjoyments. On the other side, he exalts himself to eternal
ideas, to a realm of laws and attributions, strips the world of its
living and flourishing reality and dissolves it into abstractions . . .
.” (85). Neither side alone possesses the truth. Philosophy must
bring the material and the ideal together and must show their
specific concrete harmony.

IV. Kant achieved the insight that art unifies the split between
nature and man, between (sensory) object and (conscious)
subject, between (sensuous) impulse and (rational) form. Kant
posits (asserts the existence of) a subjective sense of beauty that
all men possess. Hegel wants to show that our subjective sense of
beauty is objectively valid.
Kant distinguished aesthetic perception from ordinary
sense perception with its attendant practical desires. Kant
believed that our sense of beauty is an intuition, not a concept; for
Hegel, there is a concept, but we are usually not conscious of it
when we experience something as beautiful.
 For Kant and Hegel the aesthetic object has its purpose
within itself. Its purpose is to be a beautiful totality. If we say
that its purpose lies outside itself, it would have an external end.
But if art is to reflect the divine, it, as appearance, must have the
quality of self-containedness that the divine whole has.
Once art is seen as having its purpose within itself, art
transcends the customary conceptual oppositions of modern
understanding. To think in terms of cause versus effect, or
content versus form, of means versus ends, of universal versus
particular, of feeling versus thought, of nature versus freedom is
to think in terms of obsolete dualities. The point is not to do away
with concept in appreciating art, but to do away with naïve
oppositions between concepts. The Infinite and the finite have
much more to do with each other than customary understanding
can recognize.

V. The content of art must be capable of being

represented. I cannot have an art-work about the relation of
implication that holds between some two mathematical
theorems. T.S. Eliot criticized Shakespeare for attempting to deal
in Hamlet with something that could not be presented on the
stage. Whether or not this particular criticism is justified, it does
illustrate what Hegel has in mind.
“The work of art . . . is essentially a question, an address to
the responsive heart, an appeal to affections and to minds” (105).
Here is Hegel’s criterion for excellence in art: “Inasmuch as
the task of art is to represent the Idea to direct perception in
sensuous shape, and not in the form of thought or of pure
spirituality as such, and seeing that this work of representation
has its value and dignity in the correspondence and the unity of
the two sides, i.e., of the Idea and its plastic embodiment, it
follows that the level and excellence of art in attaining a
realization adequate to its Idea must depend upon the grade of
inwardness and unity with which Idea and shape display
themselves as fused into one” (106).
There are three types of art, corresponding to three
historical periods, three ways of conceiving of God, and three
ways of thinking and feeling.
(1) Symbolic. The God concept, the Idea, is here vague,
poorly defined, or indefinite, indeterminate, lacking definite
characteristics. The Idea conceived in this way has no implication
for individuals. Art strains to find a way of expressing this infinite
Indefinite at all. Perhaps the Idea is attached arbitrarily to some
natural object as its (symbolic) significance. Seeking in nature for
the expression of the abstractly conceived Idea, the artist chooses
the distorted, the indefinite, the huge, the contrasting, and the
glorious—but these forms are still determinate, still definite, and
cannot unite with the Idea as abstract. The Idea becomes
negative, sublime—with respect to which all earthly form is
inadequate. Eastern pantheism is the religious expression of this
stage of the Idea: everything and nothing represents the Absolute.
The emotions expressed here are yearning, fermentation, mystery,
and sublimity.
(2) Classical. Art at this stage is the free and adequate
embodiment of the Idea in the shape which is uniquely
appropriate to it. This discussion is impossible to understand
until we learn that Hegel was referring to Greek sculptures of their
anthropomorphic gods as the main form of classical art. Where
God is conceived as practically human, it is very possible for art to
give a satisfactory representation of divine truth. The Idea must,
after all, become manifest. What could be more natural than for
the Idea—God—to take on human form? Art reaches a great
triumph when it realizes that such a great unity between what it is
trying to represent and what it actually produces. Not just any
representation of a natural object would serve this purpose. Only
the human form is so appropriate for Geist. Since God is Geist,
his manifestation as human gives to art its primary task and
triumph. In Greek sculpture we see eternal repose, essential self-
stability. Greek art implies a community.
(3) Romantic. When art proposes to present spirit in a
concrete, sensible form, and the Idea of spirit matures, it has
more than it can do adequately. In Christianity, unlike Greek
religion, the unity of man and God becomes explicit. (Christ is
asserted to be that unity.) Now art is aimed towards the
individual’s inner life (or the ideal world within) (or feeling)—the
triumph of the inner over the external. (If the external is
completely devalued, art is in trouble.) Like symbolic art,
romantic art does not give great weight to individual objects of
sensation. In modern (Renaissance through the early 19th
century) romantic painting, the visible is made to represent all the
diversity of the heart—emotion, idea, and purpose. In music the
inwardness, the subjectivity, is deeper; the music there is
principle, order, and harmony, as well as emotion. In poetry the
sensory element is in the highest degree integrated with the
meanings of mind. (Musical sounds are only the bodies of
significances.) All the arts make use of the poetic imagination.
The beautiful is the universal Spirit. The ideal is that
universal embodied. The Idea is the unity of the concept and its
realization.

Questions and foci for discussion.

Introduction.
Beauty of nature as subordinate to beauty of the arts (pp. 2,
29d (nature as the work of God—but God does not stop working
through creation when humans come on the scene); 35d ).
Fine art brings to our minds and expresses the
Divine, the deepest interests of humankind, and the
most comprehensive truths of the spirit (7 [557]; cf. 49;
55).
Art is no longer our highest interest (9), on account of the
modern primacy of reason (10), so that art now elicits a
philosophical response (11).
The person: the spirit and soul shining through (20).
Beauty, summary definition (20.2): inner content shines in
outer.
Concept of fine art taken as a starting point (22).
Art comprehensible neither simply in terms of rule-
following nor the inspiration of genius (26-27).
Hegel puts music down (28).
 The “for itself” clearly explained 31.
Should we think in terms of a feeling or sense of
beauty? (33d) No, because the appeal to immediacy
obscures the need for education regarding the depths of
reason and spirit.
Desire clearly explained (cf. Kant’s teaching that the
beautiful appeals at a higher level than the pleasant). (36)
Art’s function of reconciling sense and intellect (38-39).
Modern culture produces and demands resolution of this tension
(54), and philosophy shows the nullity of the separated poles (55).
Biographical observation: talent shows itself early, with an
early and easily acquired technical facility, delighting and
specializing in the chosen art form (41).
Objections to mimesis as a theory of art (42-45).
Relativism/chaos of indiscriminate welcome of everything
into the category of fine art (46).
Art cannot be a mere means to moral training or character
education, but it does uplift to a post-emotional center of life since
one (1) relates contemplatively to the work and (2) engages in
reflection on meanings (49-53).

NOTE: THE FOLLOWING NOTES ARE NOT PART OF

THE ASSIGNMENT FOR PHILOSOPHY 31060,
AESTHETICS.

Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art

G.W.F. Hegel tr. T. M. Knox vol.1 (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975)
After the Intro.
Chapter I. Concept of the Beautiful as Such. 1. The Idea. The
Idea is the concept together with its actualization. It just won’t
do, after Kant’s treatment of the agreeable and the
pleasant, not to get beyond the feeling of the beautiful in
an aesthetic which notes levels (“that the sense of spirit
of sight, and the understanding too, is rejoiced, that
feeling is excited, and that a delight has been aroused.
The whole thing revolves round this awakening of joy”
(107).
2. The Idea in Existence.
3. The Idea of the Beautiful. The Idea is the true, and
when it is realized in existence, it is also beautiful. Understanding
can’t comprehend beauty on account of its tendency to separate
what is integrated in the Idea (111). The infinity and freedom of
the Idea must appear even in a restricted content, so that the
Concept corresponds with itself in its actualization, as sustained
by “subjectivity, unity, soul, individuality” (112). If we comport
ourselves as mere subjects before external sensory
objects as independently real, we err (cf.
Phenomenology chapter 1), only to switch roles,
annihilating the things in our projects. Both sides here
are finite, and this kind of freedom is false freedom (112-
13). Considering things as beautiful overcomes this limited
opposition (113). The practical motives withdraw, and, beyond
any ought one allows the object to stand in its independence as
“perfectly realized Concept and end” (114). The reality of the
Concept “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
interpenetration. 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 . . .” and yet the
aspects, parts, and members must each have a freedom for
themselves with respect to each other. The necessity of each one’s
belonging should be “hidden behind an appearance of
undersigned contingency” lest they remain mere tools for the
manifestation of necessity, ideal unity. This freedom and infinity
of the Concept of beauty marks the beautiful object and its
contemplation” (115).

The symbolic form of art: Introduction

Hegel’s account of the phases of the symbolic form of art
begins with “the beginning of art,” particularly in “the East,” as a
prelude to “the genuine actuality of the Ideal as the classical form
of art.” “When the symbol is developed [to its height] it has . . .
the character of sublimity, because . . . it is only the Idea which is
still measureless, and not [articulated conceptually] that is to be
given shape, and therefore cannot find in concrete appearance any
specific form corresponding completely with this abstraction and
universality. But in this non-correspondence the Idea transcends
its external existence instead of having blossomed or been
perfectly enclosed in it. This flight beyond the determinateness
[definiteness] of appearance constitutes the general character of
the sublime” (303).
 In the drama of meaning and expression, the symbol
should not be totally arbitrary, nor should it be totally explicable
in understandable terms. There must be some beyond, some
mystery, something sublime that surpasses what can be fully
communicated.
Art, like some other activities of Geist, begins in
wonder in which things of nature are set free for the first
time from being simply desired or handled in the light of
practical aims. The things of nature become an “‘other’
which yet is meant to be for his apprehension and in
which he strives to find himself over again as well as
thoughts and reason. Here the inkling of something
higher and the consciousness of externality and still
unseparated and yet at the same time there is present a
contradiction between natural things and the spirit, a
contradiction in which objects prove themselves to be
just as attractive as repulsive, and the sense of this
contradiction along with the urge to remove it is
precisely what generates wonder.” “Not the first produce of
this situation consists in the fact that man sets nature and
objectivity in general over against himself on the one
hand as cause, and he reverences it as power; but even
so on the other hand he satisfies his need to make
external to himself the subjective feeling of something
higher, essential, and universal, and to contemplate it as
objective. In this unification there is immediately present the
fact that the single natural objects—and above all the elemental
ones, like the sea, rivers, mountains, stars—are not accepted just
as they are in their separation, but, lifted into the realm of our
ideas, acquire for our ideas the form of universal and absolute
existence.” [How much can we see John Muir here?] “Now these
ideas in their universality and essential implicit character art
concentrates again into a picture for contemplation by direct
consciousness and sets them out for the spirit in the objective
form of a picture. This is the beginning of art” (315-16).
The first stage here, is nature worship (the identification of
the absolute with immediate sensuous natural shape [Gestalt,
structure]), which is not yet art.
In the second stage, the meaning (the absolute, the
universal or sublime) begins to detach itself as transcendent
beyond its embodiments, which are represented in their wild
multiplicity and through distorted forms. This stage witnesses a
“battle between meanings and their sensuous representation”
through the “double struggle to spiritualize the natural and to
make the spiritual perceptible” (319).
NOTE THE WARNING AGAINST STRICT LINE-
DRAWING BETWEEN THE VARIOUS TYPES OF ART AND
HISTORICAL PERIODS (320).
In the third stage, the artist brings together (“compares”)
meanings and expressive forms to fashion (a) fables, parables,
and “apologues” (in which the moral of the story is explicitly
stated where “the separation of shape from meaning . . . is not yet
expressly established . . . ; consequently the presentation of the
single concrete appearance, which is to illumine the universal
meaning, remains the predominant thing” (322). “At the second
stage . . . the universal meaning comes explicitly into dominion
over the explanatory shape” in allegory, metaphor, and simile”
(322). Finally, the two sides of the tension fall apart in didactic
poetry (making the lesson so dominant as to make the
form a mere appendage) and descriptive poetry
(abandoning the project to convey higher meaning). [The
pattern is (a) the phenomenon has not yet come into its own; what
is implicit, however, must become explicit: (b) the phenomenon in
its fullness; and (c) the dissolution of the phenomenon (following
the fault-lines in the structure of the phenomenon itself.]

Fable
Aesop’s fables, ## 3, 4, 7, 11

Parable
“The kingdom of heaven is like treasure hidden in a field,
which someone found and hid; then in his joy he goes and sells all
that he has and buys that field.”
“Again, the kingdom of heaven is like a merchant in search
of fine pearls; on finding one pearl of greave value, he went and
sold all that he had and bought it.” (Matthew 18.44-45)

Proverbs.
A soft answer turns away wrath, but a harsh word stirs up
anger. (15.1)
A glad heart makes a cheerful countenance. (15.13) A
cheerful heart is a good medicine. (17.1)
Better is a little with the reverence of the Lord than great
treasure and trouble along with it. Better is a dinner of vegetables
where love is than a fatted ox and hatred along with it. (15.16-17)

Apologue
 A moral tale which is genuinely a tale with morality
inherent in it. (cf. Kafka, “Bucket Rider.”

Allegory : complex, with each significant item having a definite

referent in another domain of meaning.

Metaphor X is Y

Simile X is like Y

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