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
A. In the first phase or type this relation is so conceived, that
substance, here the All and the One delivered from every form of
particularity, is immanent in the determinate phenomena as the
animating principle which brings them into being and is their life;
and moreover, it is affirmatively and immediately present to the
vision in this immanence, and is comprehended, and made the object of
representation by the individual who surrenders himself to its presence
through the adoring self-absorption in this indwelling essence of the
entire world of contingent and material things. In this point of view
we have the art of the Pantheism which possesses the Sublime as its
inherent principle, an art such as we find it in its elementary stage
in India, then elaborated in all its splendour in Mohammedanism and
its artistic mysticism, and finally with still profounder significance
reappearing in certain manifestations of Christian mysticism.
B. The _negative_ relation on the other hand of true Sublimity we must
look for in _Hebraic_ poetry. In this poetry of the Glorious, which
is only concerned to celebrate and exalt the unimaginable Lord of
the heavens and the earth that it may employ His entire creation as
the passing instrument of His Power, as the messengers of His Glory,
as the delight and ornament of His Greatness, this service of His
Creation, be it never so magnificent[32], is deliberately posited as
negative, and this for the reason that it is unable to discover any
adequate or positively sufficient expression for the Power and Dominion
of the Highest, and is only able to attain a genuine satisfaction by
means of the subjection of the creature, which in the feeling and
admission of its unworthiness is alone able with adequacy to express
its insignificance[33].
THIRD CHAPTER
Through this independent self-assertion of significance, made
thus transparent to consciousness in its isolated simplicity,
the _severation_ of the same from the imaged appearance, whose
incommensurability over against it has already been accepted, is now
essentially complete; and albeit, along with the fact of this conscious
separation, both form and import may still persist in the relation
of an intimate affinity, a necessity which is implied in the fact
of their being symbolical art, yet this relation no longer attaches
to either import or form, but is placed now in a _third_ mode of
conception, which according to its own point of view, carries relations
of similarity with both these sides[34], and in reliance on these
relations makes visible and declares the independently transparent
significance by means of the cognate and particular image.