The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts: Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory EssayHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts: Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory Essay
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Aesthetics; Art -- Philosophy
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 notion.
[Greek: gg] It follows, then, from the above, that though the sensuous
must be present in a work of art, yet it must only appear as surface
and _semblance_ of the sensuous. For, in the sensuous aspect of a work
of art, the mind seeks neither the concrete framework of matter, that
empirically thorough completeness and development of the organism
which desire demands, nor the universal and merely ideal thought.
What it requires is sensuous presence, which, while not ceasing to be
sensuous, is to be liberated from the apparatus of its merely material
nature. And thus the sensuous in works of art is exalted to the rank
of a mere _semblance_ in comparison with the immediate existence of
things in nature, and the work of art occupies the mean between what is
immediately sensuous and ideal thought. This semblance of the sensuous
presents itself to the mind externally as the shape, the visible look,
and the sonorous vibration of things--supposing that the mind leaves
the objects uninterfered with (physically), but yet does not descend
into their inner essence (by abstract thought), for if it did so, it
would entirely destroy their external existence as separate individuals
_for it_. For this reason the sensuous aspect of art only refers to the
two _theoretical_ senses of _sight_ and _hearing_, while smell, taste,
and feeling remain excluded from being sources of artistic enjoyment.
For smell, taste, and feeling have to do with matter as such, and with
its immediate sensuous qualities; smell with material volatilization
in air, taste with the material dissolution of substance,[64] and
feeling with warmth, coldness, smoothness, etc. On this account these
senses cannot have to do with the objects of art, which are destined to
maintain themselves in their actual independent existence, and admit
of no purely sensuous relation. The pleasant for these latter senses
is not the beautiful in art. Thus art on its sensuous side purposely
produces no more than a shadow-world of shapes, sounds, and imaginable
ideas;[65] and it is absolutely out of the question to maintain that it
is owing to simple powerlessness and to the limitations on his actions
that man, when evoking worlds of art into existence, fails to present
more than the mere surface of the sensuous, than mere _schemata_.[66]
In art, these sensuous shapes and sounds present themselves, not simply
for their own sake and for that of their immediate structure,[67] but
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