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
This opens to our view a practically immeasurable expanse of relations
and modes under which the process of the external and relative world
is determined. For in the first place we are confronted at once
with the bare facts of external Nature such as particular locality,
situation, whether habitable or not, temporal condition, the nature of
the prevailing climate, whether in our earth's northern or southern
hemispheres, and in fact in whatever direction we advance we have a
fresh picture before us. Moreover, external Nature is made use of by
man to satisfy his own needs and purposes; and all the ways under
which he converts her to that use, that is to say the adroitness with
which he discovers and then equips himself with tools and a home to
live in, with weapons, with seats to recline upon, carriages to ride
in, nay, all that the art of cooking may bring with it for his food,
the entire apparatus of his luxury no less than his comfort, all this
and much more fall within the limits of our inquiry. Add to this the
further and yet more important consideration that every man lives
within a comprehensive and equally real world of spiritual relations,
which itself, too, presents to his view all the different modes under
which command and submission is maintained, that is to say the family,
blood-relationship, property, country and town life, the _cultus_ of
religion, the organization of defence and offence, civic and political
associations, private society, in short every conceivable form under
which ethical customs and usages are organized in the institutions and
permanent activities which contribute to the actual environment of
human existence.