The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
(_γ_) To remove the defects above adverted to two things are clearly
essential; the objective fact and the explanation of it which is
offered to mind must not be suffered to fall into absolute _severation_
as was the case in the type last considered, nor must the union when
effected, an equally important point, assume a character _identical_
with either the symbolical, sublime or purely comparative types. A yet
more genuine form of presentment must be sought for under a condition
in which we find that the fact in question supplies an elucidation
of its ideal content by means of its external mode of appearance,
and actually in this mode, a condition under which that which is of
spirit unfolds itself completely in the form of its reality, and the
corporeal and external presence is simply the adequate explication of
the spiritual and ideal. In order, however, to follow up this problem
to its complete _fulfilment_ we must bid farewell to the symbolic types
of art. For the essential character of symbolism consisted precisely in
this that the union of the animating principle of the significance with
its spatial embodiment always _stopped short_ of such completeness.
[Footnote 76: In other words everything created being posited as
unsubstantial apart from the One necessitated the conclusion that
all the Goodness, etc., there divulged was referable to that Supreme
Source.]
[Footnote 77: _Bewussten_, that is a symbolism conscious of its typical
character. I have above used the expression "premeditated," but
"conscious" is perhaps sufficient.]
[Footnote 78: I understand _auf solche Weise,_ "under such a mode as
expressed either by Symbolism or the Sublime."]
[Footnote 79: It is prosaic because it has no absolute root in reality.]
[Footnote 80: Lit., "As consciousness lays hold of the same in the
clear light of ordinary reason" (_seiner verständigen Klarheit._)]
[Footnote 81: _Theoretische_, that is personal, contemplative rather
than practical.]
[Footnote 82: Lit., "and his freedom secludes itself with a prophetic
instinct (_ahndend_) in itself."]
[Footnote 83: _Wie die Faust auf das Auge passt._ A proverbial
expression unknown to me. We should rather say "a beam in our eyes."]
[Footnote 84: As contrasted, that is, with the fable.]
[Footnote 85: An Indian dancing girl.]
[Footnote 86: Hegel uses the term in the plural, _Die Verwandlungen_,
possibly with reference to Ovid's Metamorphoses.]
[Footnote 87: _Standpunkt, i.e._, the form viewed relatively to the
general type.]
[Footnote 88: _Beseelung._]
[Footnote 89: Plastic must be taken here in the very loose and pregnant
sense of any art that deals with external material.]
[Footnote 90: _Ein grammatisches Subject._ Hegel presumably means that
it is merely subject under the mode of literary expression without
possessing the true determination of personality.]