The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 2 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
1. This essentially free totality which remains constant to itself
throughout each successive self-determination in something other than
itself, this ideal principle, which in its objectivity is self-related
is the essentially true, free, and self-subsistent, which in its
determinate existence unfolds nothing other than itself. In the realm
of art, however, this form is not present in its form of infinitude,
is not, that is, the _thinking_ of itself, as the essential, absolute,
which is made an object for itself in the form of ideal universality,
and makes itself, wholly explicit, but is still in immediate natural
and sensuous existence. In so far, however, as significance is
self-substantive, it must in art borrow its form from its own resources
and inherently possess the principle of its externality. It must
consequently, it is true, repair to Nature, but as predominant over
that which is external, which, in so far as it is itself an aspect of
the totality of this ideal realm, no longer exists as purely natural
objectivity, but being without its own self-subsistence, simply serves
as the expression of Spirit. In this interpenetration consequently the
natural form and externality, which is modified by Spirit contains out
and out on its part, as immediately given, its significance in itself,
and no longer points to this as to something separate and different
from the corporeal appearance. And this is that identification of
the spiritual and natural which is appropriate to the notion of
Spirit, which, that is, does not merely proceed no further than the
neutralization of the two opposed aspects, but raises that which is
spiritual into the higher totality, in which it is able to preserve
itself in its own Other, to bring the natural within its own ideal
range and to express itself in and relatively to the natural. It is on
this type of unity that the notion of classical art is based.