The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
To escape from such a condition the romantic type of art once more
cancels that inseparable unity of the classical type, by securing
a content which passes beyond the classical stage and its mode
of expression. This content, if we may recall familiar ideas--is
coincident with what Christianity affirms to be true of God as Spirit,
in contrast to the Greek faith in gods which forms the essential and
most fitting content of classical art. In Greek art the concrete ideal
substance is potentially, but not as fully realized, the unity of the
human and divine nature; a unity which for the very reason that it
is purely _immediate_ and not wholly explicit, is manifested without
defect under an immediate and _sensuous_ mode. The Greek god is the
object of naïve intuition and sensuous imagination. His shape is
therefore the bodily form of man. The sphere of his power and his being
is individual and individually limited; and in his opposition to the
individual person[147] is an essence and a power with whom the inward
life of soul[148] is merely potentially in unity, but does not itself
possess this unity as inward subjective knowledge. The higher stage
is the _knowledge_ of this _implied_ unity, which in its latency the
classical art-type receives as its content and is able to perfectly
represent in bodily shape. This elevation of mere potentiality into
self-conscious knowledge constitutes an enormous difference. It is
nothing less than the infinite difference which, for example, separates
man generally from the animal creation. Man is animal; but even in
his animal functions he is not restricted within the potential sphere
as the animal is, but becomes conscious of them, learns to understand
them, and raises them--as, for instance, the process of digestion--into
self-conscious science. By this means man dissolves the boundaries of
his merely potential immediacy; in virtue of the very fact that he
knows himself to be animal he ceases to be merely animal, and as mind
is endowed with self-knowledge.