The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts: Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory Essay — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts: Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory Essay
Georg Hegel · en
only in the human self-consciousness_. The thought is hard from its
very simplicity, and we struggle, as always, to avoid grasping it. We
imagine spirits as made of a sort of thin matter, and so as existing
just like bodies, although we call them disembodied. And then we think
of this disembodied form as an alternative to human form, and suppose
spirit to have somehow a purer existence apart from human body. This
error really springs from imagining the two as existences of the same
kind, and so conflicting, and from not realizing the notion of spirit
as mind or self-consciousness, which is the only way of conceiving its
actual presence in our world.
Mind uses sensuous existence as its symbol; perhaps even needs it. The
poet who has hit Hegel's thought so nearly,[11] fails here:--
"This weight of body and limb,
Are they not sign and symbol of thy division from Him?"
Here we leave the track of the higher Pantheism for that of vulgar
mysticism. Spiritual being is conceived as somehow incompatible with
bodily shape, either because incapable of any concrete embodiment, or
because it has a quasi-material shape of its own. Now, this is just the
reverse of the Hegelian idea. According to Hegel, it is only in the
human form that intelligence can for us find its full expression. The
notion of a spiritual body other than and incompatible with the natural
body does not arise. Spirit exists in the medium of consciousness, not
in a peculiar kind of matter. The spiritualization of the natural body
is not to be looked for in an astral or angel body, but in the gait
and gesture, the significance and dignity, that make the body of the
civilized man the outward image of his soul, and distinguish him from
the savage as from the animal. The human soul becomes actual itself,
and visible to others, only by moulding the body into its symbol
and instrument. It ought to have been an axiom of physiology, Hegel
says, that the series of animated forms must necessarily lead up to
that of man. For this is the only sensuous form in which mind could
attain adequate manifestation. Thus anthropomorphism in fine art is
no accident, nor an unworthy portrayal of divinity. If the Deity is
to be symbolized to sense, it must be in the image of man. The symbol
is not indeed the reality, as the sensuous image is not conscious
thought; but this is a defect inherent in artistic presentation, and
not attributable to anthropomorphism in particular.