The Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy of Fine Arts: Translated from the German with Notes and Prefatory Essay
Georg Hegel · en
4. The third part of our subject, in contradistinction to the two just
described, presupposes the conception of the Ideal, and the general
types of art, inasmuch as it simply consists of their realization in
particular sensuous media. Hence we have no longer to do with the
inner development of artistic beauty in conformity with its general
fundamental principles. What we have to study is how these principles
pass into actual existence, how they distinguish themselves in their
external aspect, and how they give actuality to every element contained
in the idea of beauty, separately and by itself _as a work of art_, and
not merely as a general type. Now, what art transfers into external
existence are the differences[161] proper to the idea of beauty and
immanent therein. Therefore, the general types of art must reveal
themselves in this third part, as before, in the character of the
fundamental principle that determines the arrangement and definition
of the _several arts_; in other words, the species of art contain in
themselves the same essential modifications as those with which we
become acquainted as the general types of art. External objectivity,
however, to which these forms are introduced through the medium of a
sensuous and therefore _particular_ material, affects these types in
the way of making them _separate_ into independent and so particular
forms embodying their realization. For each type finds its definite
character in some one definite external material, and its adequate
actuality in the mode of portrayal which that prescribes. But,
moreover, these types of art, being for all their determinateness, its
_universal_ forms, break the bounds of _particular_ realization by a
determinate form of art, and achieve existence in other arts as well,
although in subordinate fashion. Therefore, the particular arts belong
each of them specifically to _one_ of the general types of art, and
constitute _its adequate_ external actuality; and also they represent,
each of them after its own mode of external plasticity, the totality of
the types of art.[162]