The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

word occurs.

176. Unendliche Negativität.

177. This is the "Ought" of practical feeling. As such just as in the case of the analytical sciences, what it lacks is objective determination (see "Phil. of Mind," trans. of W. Wallace, p. 94).

178. In seiner Gemeinde. We should rather expect in seiner Gebiete.

179. The reference here appears to be to the three attitudes of thought to the objective world which may be generally indicated as that of ordinary consciousness, that of empiricism and that of speculative Philosophy. In the paragraph which follows, however, Hegel mainly refers to the logical process of dialectic and the Idea of Nature (die natürliche Idee.) The latter may, however, refer to both the previous divisions, i.e., the commonsense point of view and the scientific.

180. The spheres of art and social life are first perceived as merely independent circles of activity.

181. That is to say, nations have not only found in Art the best means of expressing their religious consciousness, but, even where religion has been raised to a higher power, have found in it the most adequate form in which to express the ideality of their general spiritual life.

182. Welche sick durch alles hindurchzieht, i.e., which permeates all experience.

183. In this metaphysical passage Hegel appears to be contrasting his own philosophical standpoint, absolute idealism, with that of critical or empirical philosophy, those at least who conceive reality either as a thing-in-itself, or the materia supplied to sense-perception from a world outside the human consciousness. The entire content of the Real is, on the contrary, all included under the form of self-conscious thought.

184. He means, I think, province of the universal, rather than "universal expansion of horizon."

185. The words of Hegel are "innerhalb derselben im endlichen Geiste die Erinnerung des Wesens aller Dinge." He no doubt has in his mind the derivation of the word Erinnerung. It is the inwardization or idealization of such substance.

186. Anschauung, that is to say, it is the object of man's receptive senses.

187. The punctuation is clearly wrong. It is also very possible that derselben is a misprint for dieselbe. But in any case there should be comma rather than semicolon.

      Subdivision of Subject

       Table of Contents

      IDEA OF THE BEAUTY OF ART, OTHERWISE, FINE ART

      To arrive at the Idea of Fine Art in all its concreteness it will be necessary for us to consider it under three phases.

      1. The first is concerned with the notion of the beautiful generally.

      2. The second is that of natural beauty, the defects of which will demonstrate the necessity of the Ideal as Fine Art.

      3. In the third of these aspects the subject of our investigation will be the Ideal in its positive realization, in other words as the artistic display of this Ideal in particular works of art.

      Chapter I

       The Notion of the Beautiful in Its General Significance

       Table of Contents

      We have defined beauty to be the Idea of the beautiful.

      1. The Idea. By this definition is implied that we have to conceive the beautiful as Idea, and, moreover, as Idea in a determinate shape, as Ideal. Idea, as thus posited, is just this, the conceptive notion, the realization of the same, and the unity of both. The notion, as such, is not yet the Idea, although the terms notion and idea are often loosely interchanged. Idea is the notion only as presented in, and brought into coalescence with, its objective reality. This unity, however, is by no means to be regarded as the mere neutralization of notion and reality, so that the individual character and quality of either is absorbed; as, for example, where we find that in a chemical compound salt-potash and acid tend to neutralize each other in so far as they have weakened their opposition. In this unity, on the contrary, the notion is retained as the commanding factor. It is already implicitly, in virtue of its own nature, this very identity. Out of its own wealth it evolves the reality as part of itself, by means of a process which, being no other than that of development, surrenders nothing of its own nature, but brings into more concrete actuality the riches of the notion, and for this reason continues in unity with itself and its objective realization. Such a unity of the notional concept and its realization is the Idea defined in abstract terms. The word idea is, of course, frequently used by authors of works dealing with the theory of art. It must, however, be admitted that many connoisseurs of high standing are particularly severe upon its employment. The latest and most interesting example of this polemical attitude is to be found in Herr von Rumohr's "Italian investigations." This work is based on the practical interest that the arts excite, and is wholly unconcerned with that which for brevity we may call the Idea. The truth is that this writer, who appears to have no knowledge of the development of philosophy in modern times, freely confuses the expression as above defined with the undetermined conceptions of the phantasy, or the abstract and characterless Ideal of well-known art theories or schools of art, ideas which present a lean contrast to the clearly defined and richly caparisoned objects of Nature in their truth, and which this writer opposes to the idea and empty Ideal, which the artist himself evolves from his own consciousness. We have, of course, no more right to suppose that creative work can be the result of such poverty, than we can with justice assume that a thinker can think with conceptions wholly indeterminate, and persist in his thought with a content destitute of all defined relation. Such an objection, however, does not apply in any respect to the Idea in the sense we use the expression. This Idea is through and through concrete; a whole which consists of relations and is simply beautiful from being in direct union with the objective form adequate to its expression.

      Herr von Rumohr has placed on record in this very book (Book I, pp. 145-46) the following assertion, that "beauty in the most comprehensive meaning of the term, and as it is understood by intelligent people of our day, includes every quality of an object, which may either stir the sense of sight with satisfaction, or through that sense attune the soul and delight the mind."

These qualities are then further subdivided into three classes as follows: "First, there is all that is perceptible through the eye; secondly, that which is apprehended by means of the peculiar, presumably innate sense of mankind for spatial relations; and thirdly, all that in the first instance works upon the understanding, and only indirectly through cognition on the emotions." This third and most important determination rests apparently on forms "which quite independently of all pleasure to the sense and the beauty of extended shape arouse in us a specific delight which is ethical