The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's AesthetikHegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Philosophy
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich
Aesthetics
Such an extension of symbolism over every province of mythology and art
is by no means that which we have in view in our present consideration
of the symbolical form of art. It is not any part of our labours to
ascertain to what extent a symbolical or allegorical significance, in
this enlarged use of the term, is applicable to the forms of art. On
the contrary we shall restrict ourselves entirely to the question how
far symbolism itself is entitled to rank as a form of art; and the
question is raised in order that we may finally determine the precise
relation which subsists between artistic significance and artistic
form in so far as such a relation is symbolical and stands in contrast
to other modes of artistic presentation, in particular those of the
classical and romantic art-forms. We must consequently endeavour before
everything else expressly to limit the field of our review to that
portion where we find the symbolical is independently portrayed in its
essential character and is open to our consideration as such, rather
than attempt to make a symbolical interpretation co-extensive with
the entire domain of art. And it is consistently with such a purpose
that we have already subdivided the Ideal of art under its respective
symbolical, classical, and romantic forms.
In the signification we give to the expression the symbolical
disappears at the point where we find that a free subjectivity rather
than purely abstract conceptions determines the content of the artistic
product. In this case the conscious subject is his own self-assured
significance, his own self-manifestation. All that he feels, conceives,
does, and perfects, his qualities, his actions, and his character,
all this he actually is himself; the entire gamut of his spiritual
and sensuous manifestation has no further significance than that of
declaring his subjective unity, which, in this process of expansion
and development of its own wealth, brings before the eyes of all the
man himself as master over the entire field of objective reality
thus presented to him, the world in which he discovers his existence.
Significance and sensuous presentment, inward and outward reality,
fact and picture, are here no longer separate from each other, assert
themselves here no longer as merely cognate, the characteristic
distinction of the symbolic relation, but rather as a totality, in
which the manifestation possesses no other reality, the reality no
other manifestation either outside of or alongside with itself. That
which declares itself and that which is declared is here posited[17] in
its concrete unity. In this sense the gods of Greece, in so far, that
is to say, as the art of Greece was able to represent them as free,
self-subsistent, and unique types of personality, are to be accepted
from no symbolical point of view, but as self-sufficient in their own
persons. The actions of Zeus, for example, of Apollo or Athene are
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