The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's AesthetikHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Aesthetics
Assuming, then, that the art of architecture has executed its temple,
and the hand of sculpture has placed therein the image of the god, we
have in the _third_ place to assume the _community_ of the faithful
as confronting the god thus presented to vision in the wide chambers
of his dwelling-place. Now this community is the spiritual reflection
into its own world of that sensuous presence, the subjective and inward
animating life of soul, in its union with which, both for the artistic
content and the external material which manifests it, the determining
principle may be identified with particularization in varied shapes
and qualities, individualization and the life of soul[158] which they
imply. The downright and solid fact of unity the god possesses in
sculpture breaks up into the multiplicity of a world of particular
souls[159], whose union is no longer sensuous but wholly ideal.
Here for the first time God Himself is revealed as veritably
Spirit--viz., the Spirit revealed in His community. Here at last He
is seen apprehended as this moving to-and-fro, as this alternation
between His own essential unity and His realization in the knowledge
of individual persons and that separation which it involves, as also
in the universal spiritual, being[160] and union of the many. In such
a community God is disengaged from the abstraction of His unfolded
self-seclusion and self-identity, no less than from the immediate
absorption in bodily shape, in which He is presented by sculpture. He
is, in a word, lifted into the actual sphere of spiritual existence
and knowledge, into the reflected appearance, whose manifestation
is essentially inward and the life of heart and soul. Thereby the
higher content is now the nature of Spirit, and that in its ultimate
or absolute shape. But at the same time the separation to which
we have alluded displays this as _particular_ spiritual being, a
specific emotional life. Moreover, for the reason that the main
thing here is not the untroubled repose of the God in himself[161],
but his manifestation simply, the Being which is _for another_,
self-revealment in fact, it follows that, on the plane we have now
reached, all the varied content of human subjectivity in its vital
movement and activity, whether viewed as passion, action, or event,
or more generally the wide realm of human feeling, volition and its
discontinuance, become one and all for their own sake objects of
artistic representation.
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