The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts: Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory Essay
Georg Hegel · en
([Greek: g]) Now, after architecture has erected the temple, and
the hand of sculpture has supplied it with the statue of the God,
then, in the third place, this god present to sense is confronted in
the spacious halls of his house by the _community_. The community
is the spiritual reflection into itself of such sensuous existence,
and is the animating subjectivity and inner life which brings about
the result that the determining principle for the content of art, as
well as for the medium which represents it in outward form, comes to
be particularization [dispersion into various shapes, attributes,
incidents, etc.], individualization, and the subjectivity which they
require.[167] The solid unity which the God has in sculpture breaks up
into the multitudinous inner lives of individuals, whose unity is not
sensuous, but purely ideal.[168]
It is only in this stage that God Himself comes to be really and
truly spirit--the spirit in His (God's) community; for He here
begins to be a to-and-fro, an alternation between His unity within
himself and his realization in the individual's knowledge and in
its separate being, as also in the common nature and union of the
multitude. In the community, God is released from the abstractness
of unexpanded self-identity, as well as from the simple absorption
in a bodily medium, by which sculpture represents Him. And He is
thus exalted into spiritual existence and into knowledge, into the
reflected[169] appearance which essentially displays itself as inward
and as subjectivity. Therefore the higher content is now the spiritual
nature, and that in its absolute shape. But the dispersion of which
we have spoken reveals this at the same time as particular spiritual
being, and as individual character. Now, what manifests itself in
this phase as the main thing is not the serene quiescence of the God
in Himself, but appearance as such, being which is _for_ another,
self-manifestation. And hence, in the phase we have reached, all the
most manifold subjectivity in its living movement and operation--as
human passion, action, and incident, and, in general, the wide realm
of human feeling, will, and its negation,--is for its own sake the
object of artistic representation. In conformity with this content, the
sensuous element of art has at once to show itself as made particular
in itself and as adapted to subjective inwardness. Media that fulfil
this requirement we have in colour, in musical sound, and finally in
sound as the mere indication of inward perceptions and ideas; and as
modes of realizing the import in question by help of these media we
obtain painting, music, and poetry. In this region the sensuous medium
displays itself as subdivided in its own being and universally set down
as ideal.[170] Thus it has the highest degree of conformity with the
content of art, which, as such, is spiritual, and the connection of
intelligible import and sensuous medium develops into closer intimacy