The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
There are seven of them with an eighth superposed for
the nightly abode of the god. This number of seven in all probability
symbolizes the seven planets and spheres of heaven.
We find also in Media cities built in accordance with such a symbolism.
There is, for example, Ecbatana with its seven encircling walls, of
which Herodotus[38] states that in part by virtue of the height of
the elevation on the slope of which the city was built, and in part
intentionally and by artificial means, they were higher one than the
other, and their battlements were coloured differently. White was
on the first, black on the second, purple on the third, blue on the
fourth, red on the fifth; the sixth, however, was coated with silver,
and the seventh with gold, and within this last stood the royal
stronghold and its treasure. "Ecbatana," remarks Creuzer, in his work
on Symbolism, when referring to this type of building[39], "that Median
city, and its royal stronghold in the centre, with its seven circles of
walls and its battlements of seven different colours, represents the
spheres of heaven which enclose the stronghold of the sun."
2. ARCHITECTURAL WORKS INTERMEDIATE BETWEEN THE ARTS OF BUILDING AND
SCULPTURE
The first point we have to consider in the further development of
our subject consists in this, that architecture accepts for its
content significances that are more _concrete_, and aims at their
more symbolical presentation in accordance with _forms_ that are
similarly _more concrete_, which, however, whether we take the case of
their insulation[40], or collective accretion in gigantic buildings,
they do not make use of in the way sculpture makes use of them, but
architectonically in their own independent province. In the case of
this present type we have to direct our attention to more specific
facts, although all that we advance can put in no pretension to
completeness, or an _a priori_ development for the reason that art in
so far as it proceeds in its products to embrace the full range of the
actual, that is the historical ways of comprehending the world and its
religious conceptions, is lost in aspects of a contingent character.
The fundamental definition of the type is simply this, that we have
a confused blend of sculpture and architecture, albeit the art of
building is that which permeates all and predominates.