The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 1 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
We may say, then, that the aesthetic contemplation of the beautiful is
a liberal education, a portrayal of the object in its free and infinite
being, with no detracting consideration of its use or employment
for finite wants and purposes. Further, the _object_ as a _thing of
beauty_ is neither under force or compulsion at our hands, nor is it
in conflict with and overcome by other things outside it. It is of the
essence of beauty that the notion, end and soul thereof, no less than
its existent form, and variety generally, manifest themselves out of
their own intrinsic wealth rather than through the energy of something
outside them. The reason of this lies in the fact, already insisted
upon, that their truth consists solely in the unity and harmony of
their notion with their objective existence. And inasmuch as the notion
is itself concrete totality, its objective reality also appears as
a manifestation of the same, homogeneous in all its parts, which,
as thus imbedded in the notion, appear to fall into such ideal unity
and animation. For this harmony of the notion and its envisagement is
nothing less than perfected suffusion[200]. Accordingly the exterior
form and shape is manifested, not as such by its separation from other
material, or as an impression mechanically related to aims which
are foreign to it, but as the form of reality wherein the notion
accommodates itself out of its own stuff and substance. Finally,
however much the particular aspects, parts or articulations of the
beautiful object are presented in the ideal unity of the notion and
its unified envisagement, that harmony must be so rendered visible to
sense, that in relation to one another they preserve the semblance of
self-subsistent freedom; in other words they must not only possess the
ideal unity of the _notion as such_, but must reflect back the side
of a reality which is substantially objective also. Both aspects, in
short, must be present in beautiful objects; for these are, on the
one hand, the _necessity_ posited through the notion and discovered
in the harmonious conclusion of these particular aspects, and on the
other, the envisagement of their freedom as essentially one with the
whole, and _not merely_ that of the _unity_ which exists between the
parts. Necessity in its full definition means the just relation of
the two aspects, which coalesce so completely that to posit one is to
posit the other. Such a necessity must unquestionably be present in
beautiful objects. It is not, however, under the mode of necessity that
it appears; rather it should conceal itself beneath the semblance of
unintentional accident. Otherwise the particular parts of such a real
presence lose the position they should occupy according to their own
real existence, and only appear in the service of their ideal unity, to
which they therefore remain in abstract subordination.