The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik — Georg Hegel — John Shaqi
The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 4 (of 4): Hegel's Aesthetik
Georg Hegel · en
And, from a further point of view in this drama, it is the right
of subjectivity, as above defined, absolutely unqualified, which is
retained as the dominating content; and for this reason personal love,
honour, and the rest make such an exclusive appeal as ends of human
action that, while in one direction other relations cannot fail to
appear as the purely external background on which these interests
of our modern life are set in motion, in another such relations on
their own account actively conflict with the requirements of the more
individual state of emotion. Of more profound significance still is
wrong and crime, even assuming that a particular character does not
deliberately and to start with place himself in either, yet does not
avoid in order to attain his original purpose.
And, furthermore, in contrast to this particularization and individual
standpoint, the ends proposed may likewise either in one direction
expand to cover the universality and all-inclusive embrace of the
content, or they are in another apprehended and carried into execution
as themselves intrinsically substantive. In the first respect, I will
merely recall to memory that typically philosophical tragedy, the
"Faust" of Goethe, in which, on the one hand, a spirit of disillusion
in the pursuit of science, and, on the other, the vital resources of a
worldly life and earthly enjoyment--in a word, the attempted mediation
in the tragic manner of an individual's wisdom and strife with the
Absolute in its essential significance and phenomenal manifestation,
offers a breadth of content such as no other dramatic poet has hitherto
ventured to include in one and the same composition. The "Carl Moor"
of Schiller is something of the same fashion. He rebels against the
entire order of civic society and the collective condition of the
world and the humanity of his time, and fortifies himself as such
against the same. Wallenstein in the same way conceives a great and
far-reaching purpose, the unity and peace of Germany, an object he
fails to carry into effect by the means which, in virtue of the fact
that they are wielded together in an artificial manner, and one that
lacks essential coherence, break in pieces and come to nought precisely
in the direction where he is most anxious of their success; and he
fails in the same way by reason of his opposition to the imperial
authority, upon which he himself and his enterprise are inevitably
shattered. Such objects of a world-wide policy, such as a Carl Moor or
a Wallenstein pursue, are as a rule not accomplished at the hands of
a single individual by the simple means that other men are induced to
obey and co-operate; they are carried into effect by the commanding
personality, partly acting in conjunction with the wills of many
others, and in part in opposition to, or at least on lines of which
they have no knowledge. As an illustration of a conception of objects
viewed in their essential significance, I will merely instance certain