Philosophy of Fine Art
G.W.F. Hegel
Hegel – Philosophy of Fine Art
Hegelian
Idealism:
·
Sought to give an account of the
universe and our place in it.
·
The universe is orderly and rational
(Logos).
·
By using our highest faculties (reason
and intuition) we can know our place in the scheme of things.
Kant argued for limitations on our
ability to know metaphysical or “Absolute Truth.”
(We cannot know
"things-in-themselves;" our knowledge is limited to the phenomenal
world of human experience.)
For Kant, the human intellect must
conceptualize the world with mind’s inherent categories which means knowledge
of the world is always mediated. (Think
of the near logical absurdity of conceiving of the world un-conceptualized.)
Though human knowledge is limited to
the world-experienced (phenomenal world), we yearn to know the noumenal world, reality-as-it-is in and of itself such as
the answers to metaphysical questions such as God, freedom, and
immortality. However, for Kant we can
have no theoretical knowledge of these though we continue (must continue) to
act on these ideals.
Hegel
·
was deeply influenced by Kant.
·
attempted to go beyond the limitations established by Kant on
Rational Thought.
·
sought to demonstrate a connection between epistemology and metaphysics.
·
accepted Kant's idea-that the mind
imposes ideas on experience, but drew a different conclusion,
Claims that whatever exists is (must
be) knowable.
Kant,
Hegel claims, was mistaken when he said the noumenal
world (the world of things as they are in themselves) exists, but that we
cannot know it. What makes nature and the noumenal
world knowable is that its essence is Spirit
(which also is translated as Mind). Spirit,
said Hegel, is the Absolute (God) -the total reality.
Hegel
became particularly interested in what reason could do to unpack the Mystery of the Trinity and related
Christian Mysteries (That Jesus is Man and That Jesus is God and That God is
NOT the same as Man).
Claims that Absolute Spirit (or Mind) is a
rational and dynamic process.
“The is real is
rational, and what is rational is real.”
He
viewed absolute knowledge as a mode of spiritual life having its roots in
experience.
Reality
According to Kant, we c can think about
the noumenal world (reality un-categorized), but never
know it means. In that sense, we cannot
have knowledge about "ultimate reality."
Hegel
wanted to show a different the connection between epistemology and metaphysics.
He argued that if we know there is an unknowable world,
then it is not unknowable; it is
"known." Hence all of reality is rational (yields to rational
investigation). In this sense it is
impossible to even conceive of an unknowable reality. All an object IS, is
only all that can be known about it.
Further, all reality IS, is only all that can be known about it.
Hence
all
of reality is rational (yields to rational investigation). In this sense it is impossible to even
conceive of an unknowable reality. All
an object IS, is only all that can be known about it.
Further, all reality IS, is only all that can be known about it.
This
led Hegel to his most famous statement- "What is real is rational, and
what is rational is real."
Unlike Plato, who made a distinction
between the world as it appears to us and reality,
Hegel argued that appearance is reality.
For him, everything is consciousness
and thus everything is in relation to everything else. His view is similar to
the Monist views of Parmenides and Spinoza.
But while they claimed that the One is a single substance with
attributes, Hegel claims that Absolute Spirit is an intricate process
in which all objects are related. The Absolute Spirit is the world.
Hegel’s
notion of “the Absolute.”
For Hegel, the Absolute is Spirit (Guiste) or Reason, both in itself and as it realizes itself in history.
It plays the same role for him that the Forms and the Divine play for Plato, and that God plays in Christian theology.
But the Absolute is not a creator distinct from the creation. Spirit: the totality of nature culture and history
The Absolute is (absolutely) everything that cab be which is identical with everything that can be thought.
Claims that Absolute Spirit (or Mind) is a rational and
dynamic process.
“The is real is
rational, and what is rational is real.”
He viewed absolute knowledge as a mode of spiritual life having its roots in experience.
History and The Absolute
Further the Absolute must not be thought of a static divinity, but dynamic divinity in process.
The process of that divinity (history) develops or “unfolds” in a dialectical pattern:
The three stages of which are Hegel’s version of: Thesis/Antithesis/Synthesis.
It has been suggested that we think of this process as resembling a negotiation:
One party stakes out a position.
The other party stakes out an opposite position .
A mediator suggests a third position that gives them both what they wanted in a new way, so that their original positions are both denied and fulfilled.
Hegel thinks that history itself has this structure.
The overall structure of history is:
Spirit in itself
Spirit for itself
Spirit in and for itself.
That is, pure Spirit or Reason
Sprit self-alienated/ projected as its opposite (matter) out there as something it can contemplate.
Spirit reclaimed to itself as known matter.
Me
Me as my refection in a mirror (me as a self-alienated projection)
Me as my awareness of my reflection.
Just like God, in order to know myself I must turn my “self” into an object and then an object of my consciousness.
“We believe in one Lord, Jesus Christ,
the only Son of God,
eternally begotten of the Father,
God from God, Light from Light,
true God from true God,
begotten, not made,
one in Being with the Father.
Through him all things were made.
The Nicene Creed (Curiously, NOT the Apostles Creed)
The process of mediation is the process in which these opposites produce a new synthesis of Spirit in itself and Spirit for itself.
Here is a political example that make this historical dialectical process a little clearer:
Thesis: anarchy – no rule, everyone on his or her own (Hobbes’ “state of nature”)
Anthithesis: monarchy – one person in charge, everyone else must obey.
Synthesis: democracy – the joint rule of all, everyone makes the rules, everyone must keep them.
When we view objects as separate from
each other, we do not understand the dialectic
process that will lead us to unity in the Absolute Spirit. He did not mean
the Absolute Spirit unifies objects that were once separate. Rather his contention is that the very idea
that the object known is separate from the knower is an illusion created by
consciousness. This illusion is finally
superseded with the advent of his philosophical system.
·
History (of the world- in particular
HUMAN history) is the Absolute Spirit in
process. Absolute Spirit eventually comes to know itself through the human
mind.
·
Absolute Spirit expresses itself
objectively in Nature before it becomes conscious of itself in human beings.
Through our subjective consciousness of objective nature, Spirit “returns to
itself."
·
Absolute Spirit first becomes conscious
of itself in the individual (Hegel called this subjective spirit).
·
When it reaches a higher consciousness
in the family, civil society, and the state, it becomes objective spirit.
The objective spirit appears in interaction between people. (Cultural
Institutions, Social Realities)
·
Hegel called his triadic method the dialectic process of thesis, antithesis, and synthesis.
·
When Hegel said "The rational is
real, and the real is rational, " he was saying
Absolute Spirit expresses itself through nature, humans, and everything in the
world.
The Three Main Parts of Hegel's Philosophy.
1.
In Logic, Hegel examines the process by which we deduce the categories that
describe the Absolute from our experience of the actual.
2.
In Philosophy of Nature, the antithesis to the rational Idea
(thesis), he investigates nature as a rational structure and pattern in all of
reality.
3.
In Philosophy of Mind, he argues that the synthesis is
Absolute Spirit, and that the Absolute Spirit manifests itself in the minds of
individuals, social institutions, civil society, the state, and in art, religion,
and philosophy.
Logic
For Hegel, logic is a universal concept that
forms and precedes the natural world (Logos- the Laws-very much like
Heraclitus).
Absolute
Spirit is the ultimate form, the Ideal, or
what Hegel would call Absolute Idealism.
The dialectical system in his Logic is being, nothing (or nonbeing),
and becoming. Because being and nothing are empty
abstractions, he identified being with nothing. If I reflect on the concept of
being, then I also must introduce the opposite concept-nothing. We cannot
reflect on our existence without realizing what we are not. Hegel claims that this tension is synthesized
in the concept of "becoming."
If something is in the process of becoming (and everything is) then it
is both being and not being
Again
like Heraclitus he claims that reality is always in a state of change,
therefore becoming is the basis of all existence. All action/history results from
this process of becoming, and the mind is part of this process. If there is no
process, then there is nothing or nonbeing.
Hegel's equation is being = nothing (or nonbeing), and
being plus nothing = becoming (existence).
PURE BEING makes the beginning because it is on one hand pure thought,
and on the other immediacy itself, simple and indeterminate; and the first
beginning cannot be mediated by anything, or be further determined....
When
thinking is to begin, we have nothing but thought in its merest indeteminateness: for we cannot determine unless there is
both one and another; and in the beginning there is yet no other. The
indeterminate, as we here have it, is the blank we begin with, not a
featurelessness reached by abstraction, not the elimination of all character,
but the original featurelessness which precedes all definite character and is
the very first of all. And this we call Being. It is
not to be felt, or perceived by sense, or pictured in imagination: it is only
and merely thought, and as such it forms the beginning. Essence also is
indeterminate, but in another sense: it has traversed the process of mediation
and contains implicit the determination it has absorbed....
But
this mere Being, as it is mere abstraction is therefore the absolutely
negative: which, in a similarly immediate aspect is just NOTHING. Nothing, if it be thus immediate and equal to
itself (is also conversely the same as Being is. The
truth of Being and of Nothing is accordingly the unity
of the two: and this unity is BECOMING.
The
proposition that Being and Nothing is the same seems so paradoxical to the
imagination or understanding, that it is perhaps taken for a joke. And indeed
it is one of the hardest things thought expects itself to do: for Being and
Nothing exhibit the fundamental contrast in its immediacy, -that is, without
the one term being invested with any attribute which
would involve its connexion with the other. This
attribute however, as the above paragraph points out, is implicit in them, the
attribute which is just the same in both.
It is as correct however to say that Being and Nothing are altogether
different, as to assert their unity. The one is not what the other is. But since the distinction has not at this
point assumed definite shape (Being and Nothing are still the immediate), it
is, in the way that they have it, something unutterable, which we merely mean.
It
may perhaps be said that nobody can form a notion of the unity of Being and Nought .
. To say that we have no such conception can only mean,
that in none of these images do we recognise the
notion in question, and that we are not aware that they exemplify it. The readiest example of it is Becoming. Every one has a mental
idea of Becoming, and will even allow that it is one idea; he will further allow that, when it is analysed, it involves the attribute of Being, and also what
is the very reverse of Being, VIZ nothing: and that these two attributes lie
undivided in the one idea: so that Becoming is the unity of Being and Nothing.
Thus, Hegel argued that the concept of
being is “empty” (indeterminate, featureless). Therefore, it must be nonbeing
or nothing, the antithesis of being The movement of
the mind from being to nothing produces becoming, which is "the unity of
Being and Nothing," and therefore its synthesis.
The second part of Logic is essence. Here, Hegel gave us pairs of related categories
such as essence and existence, force and expression, cause and effect, action
and reaction. He called these categories
of reflection because they go beneath the surface of our immediate
experience. Essence is not directly present to us, but mediated by what is
directly present. Being is immediate, and essence is mediate.
At the
essence level, we can relate different categories such as cause and effect. The
cause, for example, passes into its opposite-the effect-which we conceive as
something different from the cause. Similarly, the effect is an effect by its
relation to the cause. At the essence stage, we can distinguish between appearance
and reality and ask questions about what is real and what is
appearance. If a thesis is to
have any meaning, said Hegel, it must have an antithesis. We understand pain because we can relate to
its opposite, pleasure. A thesis always
carries its own antithesis (like “Being” and “Nothing” the ultimate
thesis/antithesis pairing. To understand
any idea we must understand at the same time what that idea is not -its
contradiction. As it happens, consciousness of an idea inevitably moves from
accepting something as true (thesis) to rejecting is as false
(antithesis). When we relate the idea to
its opposite we discover a new truth about them that transcends their previous
meanings. Hegel called this discovery notion,
the third part of his Logic.
At the
essence stage, Hegel distinguished between cause and effect. When we see that the effect is identical with
its cause, and different from it, then essence becomes notion. Notion becomes
the synthesis on an even higher plane of subjectivity and objectivity. Hegel called subjectivity a category because we can have a thought about an
object, make a judgment about it, and then reason out logical conclusions.
Within subjectivity lies its opposite-objectivity. Subjectivity contains the idea of
objectivity. If I am a subjective self then there must be an objective
"not-self" within the subjective self. Subjectivity consists of psychological
thought. Objectivity is what I see in anything external to me. The synthesis of the subjective and the
objective is their unity in the Absolute Spirit.
Absolute Spirit
Within the Absolute Spirit, everything
is becoming (changing). The is characterized by the
dialectical process which on of conflict and resolution (thesis, antithesis,
and synthesis). Paradoxically, all is permanent within the Absolute Spirit;
conceived of in totality, it forms an interrelated, logical whole. (Ultimate
Reality/ God)
Absolute Spirit is "the process of
its own becoming, the circle which presupposes its end as its purpose and has
its end as its beginning." Hegel's concept of the Absolute Spirit is
similar to Plato's highest principle, the Form of the Good, except dynamic in
its evolutionary development.
The
Absolute Spirit unfolds in the biological, social, and historical evolution of
the world. With its aspects of freedom and self-consciousness, the Absolute
Spirit develops and expands in its knowledge. Like the river that becomes
broader as it nears the sea, history is the story of the Absolute Spirit
evolving to greater consciousness of itself.
History is a great narrative, each event furthering the progress of its
heroic protagonist (Spirit) towards its final cognitive development- self-awareness.
Hegel's
Absolute Spirit takes three forms: idea, nature, spirit. Each triad contains
its own triadic stages
Philosophy of
Nature
For Hegel, Nature is Absolute Spirit in External Form.
Nature is the world of sense
experience. It is the antithesis of the rational idea (logic), but it is also
united with it. Nature is the Absolute
Spirit in forms, as physical objects, that we experience with our senses.
Through Hegel's dialectic, we have
moved from the rational logical idea (thesis) to nonrational
nature (antithesis) and finally to spirit (synthesis). Because nature must
follow natural laws, the Absolute Spirit cannot fully express itself therefore,
nature is unconscious of its divinity.
This means a dialectic opposition between spirit and nature, between
freedom and necessity.
Philosophy of Spirit
The spirit is a synthesis of rational
idea (Pre-conscious Idea) and nonrational nature. The
consciousness that manifested itself in logic and nature now returns to
itself. It does this through the triadic
dialectic of subjective spirit (thesis),
objective spirit (antithesis), and absolute spirit (synthesis). Hegel
divided these triads into a series of subtriads that
proceed to his social and political philosophy, as well as his ethics, philosophy
of history, art, and religion.
Subjective Spirit (Mind)
The
subjective spirit or mind refers to the inner workings of the human mind.
It has three characteristics.
First, the soul exists in its elementary stage for conscious
activity-the relationship of the mind to the body.
The soul, said
Hegel, is a sensitive, feeling being, as a being, it
can express itself to the world through its body. The hand "as the
absolute tool," the mouth, and weeping and laughing allow humans to
externalize their thoughts and feelings.
In addition, the world affects the internal human body. When our organs react to stimuli in the light
of our own experience, then the mind has evolved beyond the animal level and
reached the stage of consciousness.
Second, the individual
is conscious of personal feelings and desires that are like and unlike the
feelings and desires of others.
Now consciousness can relate, reflect, understand, and
perceive. At this stage of personality, consciousness becomes self-conscious by
encountering another consciousness from which it seeks recognition.
Self-consciousness as desire, finds that it cannot simply destroy another
consciousness as it could a physical objects and satisfy its desires. Thus arises a conflict. Each person can become aware that the
other person is exactly that-another person "They recognize themselves as mutually
recognizing one another." There is simultaneously an antithesis and
mutual need between them, and they also recognize that one solution to this
conflict is to destroy the other as another person so that "each seeks the
death of the other." However, as Hegel pointed out, if the struggle was
the literal destruction of the other as a person, then there would be nothing
left but a corpse incapable of personal recognition or relationship. At this
point, a person "learns that life is as essential to it" as satisfying
personal desires, and backs down from the struggle. The person who backs down from the struggle
prefers life to independence and becomes subject to the other's will.
The
person who does not back down, said Hegel, is the independent consciousness
whose "essential nature is to be for itself." The person who backs
down depends on the person who does not back down. The result of such a relationship
is the lord and the bondsman' (master and slave). The master prefers independence to life
itself and now controls the actions of the dependent slave who has less
will. The master now gets the
recognition originally desired from the slave who must treat him as lord. The
slave gets no recognition at all.
But,
said Hegel, such a one-sided relationship is unstable and the dialectic begins
to work. The master ironically becomes dependent on the know-how and labor of
the bondsman, thus the bondsman becomes other than a slave. The bondsman learns
to master the environment by his labors and realizes a kind of recognition and
satisfaction. This leads to acquiring a mind of his own, yet he still remains a
bondsman subject to an alien will. These extremes of superior and inferior are
so frustrating and miserable that they lead to new stages of
consciousness-stoicism, skepticism, and
the n unhappy consciousness.
In
stoicism, the frustrations, limitations, and misery of lord and bondsman drive
self-consciousness to an indifference of external events. The aim of stoicism
is for people to be free by controlling their attitude, not trying to control
events over which they have no control. In the stage of stoicism, the person
becomes free through rational thinking.
Yet Hegel pointed out that such freedom is empty, exactly because it is
cut off from external reality. The highest values are truth and goodness
consisting in "reasonableness." Unfortunately, because stoicism has
no connection with the world, it becomes alienated from its own ideals.
Emerging
from stoicism is the stage of skepticism. Here a person encounters him- or
herself as "a real negativity." Hegel compared this stage to the
'"squabbling of self-willed children" who go back and forth from one
idea to another in bewilderment and end by contradicting themselves and each
other. A kind of freedom of thought exists at this stage, but it is always
negative because there are no stable ideas and values.
From
skepticism, said Hegel, arises the stage of unhappy consciousness, which has
internalized the struggle for supremacy of master and slave. Because
consciousness wars with itself, "agony is inescapable." Unhappiness
will always be the outcome in the quest for independence so long as the person
assumes a separation between the subject and the external reality. To overcome
this assumption, it is imperative for the individual to evolve from personal
self-consciousness to universal reason.
Third. at maturity, the intelligence organizes ideas, devises
language, and understands and interprets its reflections rationally.
At
this stage, the mind expresses itself through reason, will, and moral choice.
When it unites the first two characteristics, the mind reaches the highest
truth finding an introspective stage of the subjective spirit. This stage is
the Free mind, the unity of theory and practice. Human
freedom consists of controlling desires with reason.
This
will to freedom is no longer an impulse that demands satisfaction, but the
character of the mind's consciousness grown into something non-impulsive. Freedom of the subjective mind is a principle
of mind and heart destined to develop into the objective phase, into legal,
moral, religious and scientific actuality.
Objective Spirit (Mind)
The subjective mind, said Hegel,
naturally seeks the objective mind. The subjective mind looks inward, while the
objective mind acts in the external world through sociology, ethics, and
politics. Through the objective mind, we enter public life where we create
rules, institutions, and organizations.
Like the subjective mind, the objective
mind develops through three stages of moral experience. The first stage Hegel
called abstract rights-legal and
formal rights through laws and contracts. At this stage, we transform nature by
creating property systems, economic organizations, and class distinctions. We
interact with the external environment through possessions such as privately
owned property. This is a condition of self-awareness that establishes the
right of ownership.
The State
Individuals can have freedom and
relevance only in a state. As a living unity of individuals, the state
becomes the true individual. Hegel called it a unity in difference when the
ethical idea is actualized. As such, the state represents universal
self-consciousness. Some individuals are conscious of themselves as parts of
this larger self. Because the state is
mind objectified, it is only then that the individual could have objectivity,
genuine individuality, and an ethical life.
As the most universal form of humanity,
the state is a rational and self-conscious force expressing universal reason.
Just as the husband and wife lose their personal identities in their marriage,
the citizens of a civil society lose their independence in the unity of the
state.
The Constitution Hegel preferred I constitutional monarchy to a democracy, because the monarch representing the
state fulfills the universal will rationally. The ruler puts the purpose of
the Absolute Spirit into action. He does this through the universal will, not
through his own personal will.
International Law Although individuals are subordinate to the state, the state
itself is not subservient to other states. Each state is a living, independent,
and sovereign unity, even when it is at war with another state. No authority is
superior to the authority of individual states; therefore there could be no international
or world authority. If by entering into contracts, states cannot settle their
conflicts, then they must declare war. Hegel saw an ethical element in war that
preserves the health of nations by uprooting their "finite aims."
However, because war is a link between states and not between individuals, the
state has a responsibility to uphold the rights of its citizens.
World History
For Hegel, the history of the world is
the history of nations. Each state has some stage of the Absolute Spirit, because
each state is the Divine Idea (Absolute Spirit) as it exists on earth. The dialectic of the historical process
exists in the conflict between states. Each state expresses a "national
spirit" of its own collective consciousness. And each national spirit
represents a moment in the development of the Absolute Spirit. The conflict
between national spirits also is the dialectic in history
The history of a
single world-historical nation contains:
(a) the development of its principle from its latent embryonic
stage until it blossoms into the self-conscious freedom of ethical life and
presses in upon world history; and
(b) the period of its decline and fall, since it is its decline
and fall that signalizes the emergence in it of a higher principle as the pure
negative of its own. When this happens, mind passes over into the new principle
and so marks out another nation for world-historical significance.
According to Hegel, a nation cannot
choose the time in history in which it will be great. It "is only once
that it can make its hour strike." But during the nation's height, special
historical figures act as instruments of the Absolute Spirit. These heroes lift
nations to new levels of development.
World history has shown the unfolding
of reason through:
(1) the
Oriental
(2) the Greek
(3) the Roman,
and
(4) the
Germanic
In an Oriental despot, only one man was
free-the despot.
In Greece and Rome, only the citizens
were free, not the slaves.
Under the influence of Christianity,
the Germanic peoples developed the highest rational insight-that humans are
free. The highest freedom occurs when we act according to the universal
rational will of the Absolute Spirit (God).
Art, Religion, and Philosophy
Hegel thought the highest expression of
reality was the Absolute Spirit, with subjectivity and objectivity integrated
in the spiritual life. Our knowledge of the Absolute Spirit is actually the
Absolute Spirit knowing itself through the finite spirit of humankind.
Hegel held that our consciousness of
the Absolute Spirit progresses as the mind moves through three stages from art
to religion and then finally to philosophy.
Art is a form of consciousness. It is one of the vehicles Sprit has used in its attempt to achieve “self-consciousness.”
The other two principle vehicles are religion and philosophy/science.
Art, for Hegel, is:
“the sensuous presentation of the Absolute itself,”
Hence the subject matter of Aesthetics is:
“the conception of artistic beauty as the presentation of the Absolute.”
Thus, consciousness of the Absolute is embodied in the work of art.
Together with religion in philosophy (science) the art of the world is the self-expression of the appearances of Spirit. We can chart the evolution of this “coming of age” of consciousness, if you will, as manifested in the history of art, religion and philosophy.
Hegel saw art as a triadic development
(1) symbolic
(2) classical
(3) romantic.
Symbolic
Art
Symbolic Art is vague in its idea and
form of expression. Hegel viewed symbolic art as the art of the Orient, of the
East, which suggests a meaning without adequately expressing it.
Classical
Art
The well-balanced classical art of the Greeks
harmonizes the form and the idea (spirit) in equal proportion.
Romantic
Art
In Romantic art, the idea (spirit)
predominates over form. It is a higher means of expression than either Oriental
or Greek art, because its content is of the inner spiritual world.
Hegel looked to poetry as the
discipline to lift us from the sensuous to the spiritual, from art to religion.
Hegel’s three main stages of art work the same way:
Thesis: Symbolic art. At this stage, the Idea (the Absolute) seeks expression in a material form. But the material form is not adequate to the ideal content. It is commonly exaggerated or distorted in an attempt to embody this content. Examples abound in ancient Egyptian art, traditional Indian art, African masks and dolls, etc.
Antithesis: Classical art. At this stage, the material is remade to match the perfection of the ideal. But this happens at the cost of a clear connection between the idealized form and the forms we encounter in ordinary experience.
Synthesis: Romantic art. (Hegel, of course, lived in the Romantic period, so it’s natural for him to see this as a culmination.)
In Romantic art, the idealization of the form is adjusted to reflect inwardness, the real embodiment of spirit in the conscious, reflective human form. Hence delight, suffering, compassion, anticipation of the future, and other such states of consciousness are represented just as they are expressed through human bodies, by facial expressions and gestures.
The fine arts are arts that produce beauty.
Beauty, is the “adequation of form to an
idea.” Beauty is
spirit in sensuous form. We see beauty in plants and animals, but we also can
create forms of beauty that are superior to nature The spiritual beauty of art
is obvious in music and poetry, forms that not only imitate nature, but also,
as Aristotle claims, express moral values and purify the emotions.
Art is "the self-unfolding idea of beauty." However, the history of the world will require an "evolution of countless ages" for the developing spirit of beauty to reach the highest realization of the ideal beauty.
A fine art embodies ideas in forms adequate to them.
Symbolic Art: spirit partly informs matter.
“Sensuous representation of an idea.”
Classical Art: spirit and matter are perfectly fused.
“Identity between form and content.”
Hegel: Byzantine art mixed the symbolic with the classical
Romantic Art: spirit dominates its material embodiment.
Among the arts, the most “spiritual” is poetry, because it has the least to do with matter and the most to do with mind.
These then comprise the 5 “Fine Arts”
Architecture
Sculpture
Music
Painting
Poetry (literature)
These art media (and only these art media) are the artistic means that humankind has turned to again and again to express their most important idea and values.
Imperfect arts – tapestry- cannot sustain the weight placed on them by confused and sentimental people –though for a time they may assume serious cultural significance. Note tapestry as best is a sort of degenerate form a painting, and there is not image (idea) one can express via tapestry that one cannot better)
Does art come to an end?
After the advent of Romantic Art, Hegel claims that Spirit assumes autonomous forms and art is superseded. Society no longer uses art as a vehicle to express its most advanced forms of rational expression or communication.
Hegel thinks art must now “end,” not in the sense that no-one will make “art” anymore, but in the sense that Spirit must go beyond the material embodiments of the Absolute.
The final expression of the Absolute, of Spirit in and for itself, is thought itself/ philosophy.
Religion
The Oriental Concept of God drew upon
natural objects and animals.
The Greeks looked on their gods as
having human bodily forms. They made their gods in their own image as objects
of "naive intuition and sensuous imagination." The god's shapes were "the bodily shape
of man.
However, the mature Christian
intelligence recognizes that God is spirit.
Religion developed through a
three-stage unfolding of the Absolute Spirit:
(1) religions
of nature
(2) religions
of spiritual individuality, and
(3) absolute
religion
Religions of Nature
Religions of nature are Oriental
religions in which humans use worship to control nature through magic. This
level includes those who see the deity as boundless power, but not yet as
spirit. Hegel traced these forms of religion to the higher religions that would
lead to spiritual individuality. Included in this hierarchy are the
Zoroastrian religion of Good combating Evil, the Egyptian religion of world
mystery (Osiris dies only to live again), and the Syrian religion of the
Phoenix rising from its ashes.
Religions of Spiritual Individuality
The three religions that represent
religions of spiritual individuality are those that provide the cultural
background of Christianity: (1) the Jewish religion of sublimity, (2) the Greek
religion of beauty, and (3) the Roman religion of utility.
Absolute Religion
For Hegel, the absolute religion-the
highest religion of the Absolute Spirit-is Christianity. He considered it the
religion of the freely self-conscious Absolute Spirit. Christianity has the
absolute truth for its content. The Christian Trinity has God the Father
(Hegel's notion of the Absolute Idea), God the Son (the world of Absolute
Nature), and the Holy Spirit (the unfolding historical reality in the form of
self-conscious Mind or Absolute Spirit).
The
Trinity functions through the Christian Churches as God the Father, the eternal
all-embracing universal; God the Son, the infinite, particular manifestation;
and God the Holy Spirit, individual eternal love.
Christ's death expresses the alienation
between the finite (thesis) and the infinite (antithesis), and their ultimate
reconciliation (synthesis). Without this doctrine, people would still view God
as "other than" and beyond the world.
Although Christianity gives the highest
religious expression to the truth of Absolute Spirit, only philosophy can fully
clarify its truth.
Philosophy
In philosophy the artist's external
sensuous vision (thesis) and the mystic's internal vision (antithesis) unite in
thought (synthesis). In philosophy, knowledge of the Absolute Spirit is unique:
the idea in and for itself Thus, the knower and the known are identical. As the
synthesis, philosophy is the process of historical development and realization.
In philosophy, the Absolute Spirit
reflects on its own impact on history. Philosophy is like the mirror of the
Absolute Spirit. The history of philosophy is the dialectical unfolding of the
Absolute Spirit's self-consciousness in the human mind.
On Women
Hegel treats marriage as a unity that
transcends arid subordinates the individual personalities of the husband and
wife. This does not have the same meaning, however, for the man as for the
woman. She should dedicate her entire being to the family unit, which is the
reason for her existence.
The man enters into involvement with
the family, but his life exists also outside the family in his profession, in
society, and in the state.
Following the ancient tradition, Hegel
thought women could not reason abstractly, so they could never understand
rational universal principles or the study of philosophy. Because their minds
function at the lowest aesthetic stage, women act only on feeling and opinion.
As rational beings, men must take the responsibility of managing affairs of the
state and dealing with scientific subjects.
“One sex exhibits power and mastery,
while the other is subjective and passive. Hence the husband has his real
essential life in the state, the sciences, and the like, in battle and in
struggle with the outer world and with himself . . .
In the family the wife has her full substantive place.
Women can, of course, be educated, but their minds are not
adapted to the higher sciences, philosophy, or certain of the arts. These
demand a universal faculty. Women may have happy inspirations, taste,
elegance, but they have not the ideal. The difference between man and woman is
the same as that between animal and plant The animal
corresponds more closely to the character of the man, the plant to that of the
woman. In woman there is a more peaceful unfolding of nature, a process, whose
principle is the less clearly determined unity of feeling. If women were to
control the government, the state would be in danger, for they do not act
according to the dictates of universality, but are influenced by accidental
inclinations and opinions. The education of woman goes on one hardly position
only through stress of thought and much specialized effort.
Dialectic Materialism:
Marx's Response to Hegel
Karl Marx:
"the philosophers have only interpreted the world
differently: the point is to change it."
Marx was a materialist, (the only
things which exists are physical objects and physical forces)
Marx agreed with Hegel that the dialectical
process takes place in nature and in history.
He rejected Hegel's idealism (that the
dialectic is the progressive self-unfolding of thought) but claimed instead
that history was the dialectical unfolding of Economic Systems.
In Das
Capital, Marx wrote:
“My dialectical
method is not only different from the Hegelian, but is fundamentally its
direct opposite. For Hegel the thought process is the derniurge
(or creator) of the actual, and actual existence is only the outward
manifestation of the Idea. But I, on the contrary, regard the ideal as nothing
else than the material reality, transposed and translated in the human head.
According to Marx,
what makes us human is that we produce our means of sustenance. We are what we
are because of what we do. We meet
our basic needs in productive activities such as fishing, farming. and building. Unlike animals governed by instinct, we create
ourselves by transforming and manipulating nature. Through production we
generate a society that in turn shapes us.
Summary
The
struggle of Absolute Spirit self-actualizing into perfection is what Hegel
calls history.
History
itself is a dialectic process that moves in three steps from an original thesis
to a contrary antithesis and then, after a struggle between them, to a new idea
that combines elements of each in a synthesis.
The
Absolute Spirit first becomes conscious of itself in the individual, what Hegel
called subjective spirit. It reaches higher consciousness in the objective
spirit of family, society, and ultimately, the state.
The
Absolute Spirit reaches it highest form of
self-realization in art, religion and philosophy. Of these, philosophy is the
highest form of knowledge. Through philosophy, the Absolute Spirit reflects on
its own impact on history.
Hegel
had pointed out that historical development is driven by the tension between
opposites-thesis, antithesis, and synthesis. Marx agreed with the dialectical
process, but he did not think the force of the process was Absolute Spirit. For
Marx, the economic life of the community is the force that creates change. Marx reasoned that a society's superstructure
comprises and expresses itself in the way it thinks, as well as its political
institutions, laws, morals, science, and philosophy.
The three levels that make up the foundation of any society
are
(1) the condition of production
(2) the means of production
(3) production relations.
Marx also observed the dialectic at work in five epochs in
history:
(1) the primitive or communal
(2) slavery
(3) feudalism
(4) capitalism, and
(5) socialism or communism.
Economic structure is the basis for each epoch.
The evolution of economic order is propelled by class
struggles (the “haves” with the “have-nots”).
Ultimately, over time, the system becomes so unstable that it collapses
under its own internal pressures (sows the seeds of its own destruction).
In latter-day Capitalism, the conflict occurs between the
two classes Capitalism creates and sustains; bourgeoisie (the capitalists) and
the proletariat (workers). The conflict occurs between those who own the means
of production and those who do not. Because the capitalists do not want to
relinquish their power, revolution is the only way to better the workers'
conditions.
In a capitalistic society, the worker labors for someone
else. His labor becomes separated from him: It no longer belongs to him. The
worker becomes alien not only to his work, but also to himself. He loses touch with his own inner being. Only
when the workers of all countries unite in revolution will such exploitation
cease.
The proletariat must rise and take over the means of production. When this occurs, a new "classless society" will begin. In such a society the people themselves own the means of production. Each person gives according to his abilities and receives according to his needs. Capitalism and alienation transform into socialism and communism. At this point there will be no class struggle since there will exist only a “Classless” society. Therefore the evolution of economic systems will cease and “History” will be over.