The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
It is a further consequence that if we regard the entire sphere of
this type as the union of the two stages which preceded it on the
ground that it not merely comprehends within itself the _separation_
of significance from external reality, which is the fundamental
_causa rationis_ of the Sublime, but also includes the _reference_ of
a concrete phenomenon to a universal import cognate with it, as we
have seen was asserted in the real type of symbolism, such a union
is notwithstanding in no way a higher type of art; it is, in truth,
despite its very clearness, a superficial way of apprehending things,
limited in its content and formally more or less prosaic, which falls
away into the consciousness of commonsense as fully remote from the
secretly fermenting depth of genuine symbolism as it is from the height
of the Sublime.
So far as the _classification_ of our present subject-matter is
concerned we may observe, first, that in this act of comparative
differentiation, which presupposes the significance independently,
and affirms either a sensuous or imaginary form in a relation of
opposition to it, there is the aspect held constantly throughout
that the significance is here accepted as of most importance, and
the form is solely the embodiment of the same and external to it;
but along with this the further difference makes its appearance,
namely, that it is sometimes the one aspect of this opposition which
is first pre-eminently emphasized, and made the significant point of
departure, while at other times it is the other. And owing to this
fact we have either the embodiment presented us as an independently
external, immediate fact or phenomenon of Nature, which is then
related by comparison to a significance of a more general bearing, or
the significance is independently come by in another way, and only
afterwards a mode of embodying it is selected from some external
source, it matters not what.
Relatively to the above distinctions we may classify our material under
the two first fundamental and a third and other supplementary divisions
as follows: