Читать книгу The Philosophy of Fine Art - Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel - Страница 12

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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 or spiritual in its quality, which in part to all appearance proceeds from the enjoyment we derive from the images excited (I presume he means ethical or spiritual ones)188, and in part from the pleasure which the mere activity of an intelligent appreciation infallibly brings with it."

Such are the principal factors according to which this undoubted connoisseur of art defines his subject relatively to the beautiful. It may very possibly pass muster with a certain type of uncritical reader. It is, however, very unsatisfactory regarded from the philosophical standpoint. For what does it at bottom amount to but this, namely, that the sense of vision or spiritual sense, we may add the understanding itself, are moved pleasurably, or excite a feeling which results in awakened pleasure. The entire argument hinges on this one aspect of awakened gratification. This reduction, however, of the activity of the beautiful to terms of feeling—that which pleases and charms us—has been disposed of once for all by Kant. His exposition has already left far behind the feeling for the beautiful.

We will direct our attention now from this polemical tractate to a further consideration of the Idea its hostility has failed to weaken. In this, as already stated, is comprehended the concrete unity of the notion and its objective realization.

(a) Now, first, we will observe, in directing our attention more closely to the essential nature of the notion, that it is no purely abstract unity opposed to the differences of phenomenal reality; rather, as the notion, it is already the unity that integrates those relations, and by doing so is concrete totality. The abstract conceptions such as man, the quality blueness, and their like, are not notions as such at all, but rather should be called abstract general concepts, which are only raised to the dignity of the notion, when we have demonstrated that they contain opposing factors in unity, and, in such a way, that this self-related nexus of unity constitutes their notional truth. For instance, the concept "blueness" as a colour receives such a notional value when it is grasped as the unity, and, indeed, the specific unity of light and darkness189. In the same way the concept "man" contains within it the opposing factors of sense, life, and reason, body and mind (spirit); but a particular man is not to be regarded as a whole consisting in some way of these two aspects of his personality placed in a relation of indifference side by side as constituents of the same. Rather, in virtue of the notion, such a whole contains these constituents in concrete and mediated190 union. Add to this that the notion is so completely the absolute bond and unity of its differences, that independently they cease to exist, they are unable to assert the particularity, in virtue of which they might escape from such a union. For this reason the notion includes all its determining constituents in the form of its own ideal unity and universality, which constitute its subjective character in contradistinction from the real as the object of sense-perception. For example, gold is, as a particular object, of specific weight, definite colour, and placed in a certain relation to specific acids. Such are varied characteristics of gold, and yet are invariably found in a unified whole. The smallest speck contains them all in inseparable union. By analysis or abstraction we indeed separate them, but in their notion they are inseparably one. The inability of the differences, which the notion in its truth essentially possesses, to stand alone in their isolated self-identity is of a similar nature. A still more apposite illustration is presented by the unique concept of the self-conscious Ego in its universality. For that which we call soul, or more appositely the Ego, is the notion itself in its free existence. The Ego contains a congeries of most distinct concepts and thoughts in itself; it is a world of ideas; yet none the less this infinitely complex content, in so far as it lies within the Ego, remains without a vestige of substantiality or materiality packed within this ideal unity, as the pure and throughout fluid transparency of the Ego itself reflected to itself. And this is precisely the way in which the notion retains its varied determinations in ideal unity.

The determinants of the notion which are most cognate to the notion as such are the universal, the particular, and the single. Every one of these determinate qualities taken by itself is a mere abstraction. As thus regarded, however, abstract, that is to say, from one another, they are not present in the notion: that is rather their ideal unity. The notion is therefore the universal, which, on the one hand, negates itself to a condition of relativity and particularization, but, on the other, this riving asunder, in so far as it is negation of the universal, is itself again annulled. For the universal as present in the particular, which itself is only the particular aspects of the universal itself is present in no particular absolutely, but rather in that very particular reaffirms once more its essential unity as universal. In this return upon itself the notion is infinite negation; negation, I mean, not as against another, but self-determination, in which alone it subsists in its positive and correlative unity. In this way it is singularity in its truth; it is the universal nexus which shuts itself up with itself in its particulars. As the highest example of this property of the notion we would refer back to what we have already, if in a summary way, said about the essential activity of Spirit.

Through this infinite capacity of return upon itself the notion is already, by virtue of its intrinsic wealth, totality. It finds the unity of itself in the being of another, and for this reason possesses a free activity, being, however, negation as self-determination, not as the alien limitation of its own substance through something other than itself. But regarded as such totality the notion is already in potential possession of all phenomenal reality, and is that which mediates and restores the unity of the Idea. And whoever ventures to think that in the Idea we have presented to us something totally different and apart from the notion, has as little knowledge of the nature of the Idea as he has of the notion. At the same time there is, no doubt, a difference between the notion and the Idea, and it is this: in the former the particularization is only an abstract particularization, for this reason that in the notion the determinate relations are alone coherent in its transparent medium, that is to say, in its unity and ideal universality. The notion, therefore, itself remains subject to the one-sidedness of its particular material, and is hampered with the defect that although in its own nature it is a totality, yet it is only in the aspect of it as unity and universality that it is entitled to free self-development. But inasmuch as this defect in its completeness is foreign to its own essential form, the process of its activity is to remove it. It negates itself as this very ideal unity and universality and allows that which is enclosed in the barren chamber of ideal subjectivity to flow forth freely into real and substantive objectivity. In other words, the notion through its own activity posits itself as objective reality.

(b) Objectivity is therefore, truly apprehended, the real existence of the notion. It is, however, the notion under the mode of self-substantive particularization and of a differentiation of all antithetical phases191 of reality, whose ideal unity the notion in its subjective capacity constituted.

But inasmuch as it is the notion, and only the notion, whose function it is to endow objectivity with its determinate existence and reality, so too it is only through objectivity that the notion is unveiled in its actuality. The notion is, however, the mediating and ideal unity of all its particular antitheses. Within its differentiated reality this ideal unity, effective throughout particularity in modes adequate to the notion, has to establish itself in them, precisely in a way similar to that in which the realized particularity of their unity, as thus mediated to the point of ideality, has also to exist in them192. This is the might of the notion, which refuses to surrender or forfeit its universality among the disjecta membra of the objective world, but rather reveals its essential unity through such reality and within it. For it is nothing less than the very life of the notion to preserve its unity in the material which is offered it. Only by so doing is it real and veritable totality.

(c) This totality is the Idea. The Idea is not simply the ideal unity and subjectivity of the notion. It is quite as much its true and objective reality; it is, however, an objectivity which does not confront the notion as an opposing factor, but is rather that in which the notion itself is self-determined. In whichever aspect we contemplate the notion, whether as subjective to our apprehension, or as objectively real, the Idea it manifests is a totality. But it is more than this. It is the unity which for ever is mediating between and bringing into more perfected harmony the two totalities. Only as thus apprehended is the Idea truth and indeed all truth.

2. All that exists, then, has only truth in so far as it is a definite existence of the Idea. For the Idea is alone the truly real. The truth of the phenomenal is not derived from the fact that its particular existence is of an inward or external character, and as such is in a general sense reality; it is so wholly in virtue of the fact that such reality is adequate to the notion. Then alone is determinate existence real and true. And the truth, to which we here refer, is not a subjective interpretation of it, namely, that a particular existence is accordant with my own conception of it. It is truth in the objective sense that the reality of the Ego, or of any external object, action, or circumstance actually contributes to the realization of the notion. If this identity is not established the existence remains purely phenomenal. Instead of the objectification of the notion in its completeness what obtains is purely a detached aspect of it; and with regard to this, whatever self-subsistence it may appear to have in opposition to the unity and universality of the notion, such can only work to its final confusion by setting it in hostility to the true notion itself. Our conclusion, therefore, is that only the reality which adequately expresses the notion is truly reality, and the reason it is so is that therein the Idea manifests itself as existence.

3. We have maintained that beauty is Idea. It follows that beauty and truth are, in one aspect of them, identical. In other words, beauty must itself in its intrinsic being be true. A closer investigation will further show to us that truth must be distinguished from beauty.

The idea is true in the sense that it is so by virtue of its essential being and according to its fundamental principle193, and as such truth it is thought194. It is not its sensuous and external existence, but the universal Idea of thought as present in this. At the same time the Idea is driven to seek its realization in external and objectively determined existence, both in the sphere of Nature and that of Mind. The true, in the absolute sense, also exists. And in so far as, in this its external existence, it is immediately apprehended by consciousness, and the notion rests in immediate unity with its external appearance, the Idea is not only true, but is also beautiful. The beautiful may therefore be defined as the sensuous semblance195 of the Idea. For the sensuous condition and the objective world generally maintain no real self-subsistence in beauty, but have merely to surrender the immediacy of their being. In beauty such are posited simply as the determinate existence and externality of the notion, and as a form of reality, which itself manifests the notion in unity with its external appearance in this its particular objective existence. For this reason it can only pass as the semblance of the notion.

(a) Accordantly with this it is impossible for the understanding196 alone to grasp the significance of beauty. For inasmuch as objective reality is apprehended by this faculty as something at least quite other than ideality, sensuous perception, as something very different from the notion, the external object as something that is anywhere rather than within world of the conscious self, to that extent it cannot fail to emphasize the contradictions implied in such separation, rather than penetrate to the ideal unity we have above described. The understanding remains rooted in the finite, the incomplete and untrue abstraction. The beautiful is on the contrary itself essentially infinite and free.

For although the content of beauty is stamped with particularity and to that extent limited, such content is essentially in its mode of environment a totality that is infinite197 and a free existence; and it is both for the reason that it is the notion, which does not pass beyond this its objective semblance, and so fall into finite and one sided abstraction with it, but rather is immersed as a blossom with this its objectification and through the imminent unity and perfection of such inclusion is revealed as essentially infinite. With equal truth we may affirm that the notion in sealing, as it were, with a soul the real existence, in which it is part of the objective world, is itself by itself freely manifest in that world. For the notion will not suffer that external existence in the sphere of beauty to follow, as it would otherwise, the laws that therein are paramount: rather it determines out of its own riches the articulation and form of its appearance therein; and it is precisely this harmony of the notion with the mode of its external existence which constitutes the essential life of beauty. And the bond which braces all together, no less than the power behind it, is self-conscious life, unity, soul, and artistic personality.

(b) We conclude, then, that if we consider beauty in its relation to conscious life, on the subjective side that is, it is neither to be adequately apprehended by an intelligence that persists in the unfree medium of purely finite existence, nor is it the object of the finite Will. We will enlarge a little on both points.

As finite intelligence we are aware in feeling of the inner no less than the outer objects of consciousness; we observe them, perceive them to be true to our senses, allow them to form part of the content of our perceptions, concepts, and finally, no doubt, to become the abstractions which our understanding presents to us, reflecting on their appearance, and endowing them with the abstract form of universality.

Now the finiteness and absence of freedom inseparable from this mental attitude consists in the assumption that the things perceived are self-subsistent. We direct our attention to these objects, suffer them to impress us, form our ideas of them, possessed with the faith in their material existence as objects, and convinced that all we have to do is to perceive them as they appear to our passive reception, to preserve, in short, the formal side of our attention intact, holding such unfettered by our fancies, opinions, and prejudices. In thus accepting this one-sided freedom of objects we posit at the same time the want of freedom in their mental apprehension. To such the content is one wholly given from outside; and instead of a true self-determination through difference we have nothing but the reception and acceptance of what is presented as a part of the objective thing. We would arrive at truth by the suppression of all that belongs to ourselves198.

A criticism of like nature, though the defect is here just at the other extreme, may be applied to the finite Will. In this theory interests, objects, intentions, and conclusions are all relegated to the subject, whose will it is to enforce them as against the existence and properties of the material thing. This it can only do by the annihilation of the object itself, or at least, in so far as it can modify or change its form and energies, by transmuting its qualities, or permitting them to exercise such a change on each other, as water may exercise on fire, fire on iron, iron on wood, and so forth. We now find that it is the particular things, which the subject has enrolled in its service, as things to be regarded and treated as useful, which in their turn have been deprived of their self-subsistence. In other words, they have come to be regarded as objects, whose notion and meaning is not their own, but derived from the reflecting consciousness, so that what is most essential to them is precisely this relation of service in which they stand to the subjective purpose, that is, our own intelligence. The values of either side of the relation are thus completely reversed. The objective thing has lost freedom and the conscious subject secured it. As a matter of fact, the freedom on both aspects of the relation is, owing to the finitude and abstraction it implies under such a view, a purely supposititious one.

In the sphere of theory here it is the assumed independence of the objective world which creates the finitude and bondage of the conscious Ego. In that of the practical world this dependence is due to its one-sidedness, the conflict and contradiction of its aims within and the impulses and passions which press from without, no less than to the unreconciled opposition of a world of objects. For the separation and opposition of these two aspects of one whole, that is, objects and relating self-conscious life, is presupposed in, and indeed is an accurate definition of, this point of view.

And, similarly, with reference to the lack of freedom in the object. Here, too, in the sphere of intelligible conception, the independence of the object is assumed, but the freedom assumed is only apparent. For it is only posited as bare objectivity without securing the presence of its notion, as the unity and universality of the conscious subject, within such objectivity. It still remains outside it. Every object thus placed external to the notion merely exists as particularity, which comes back to us in external guise together with its manifold, and is, in all the unlimited scope of its relations, through its contact with other objects, subject to the conditions of its origin, change, opposing force and final overthrow. In the practical world the dependence of the object is expressly, in this view, assumed, and the opposition of the thing is posited in definite relation to volition without possessing in itself the power of ultimate self-subsistency permitted to the latter.

(c) The apprehension of the object as beautiful unites these two abstract points of view. It in fact annuls the one-sidedness of both whether relatively to the subject of consciousness or its object, and by doing so cancels the finitude and lack of freedom which characterize them.

Philosophically regarded199, the reason is this, that the object is not apprehended in its existence as an isolated thing whose notion as the object of human thought is removed from the objectivity which belongs to it as something outside it, and which in its particular reality extends and is dissipated in every conceivable direction as a manifold content of intelligible relations. An object which is beautiful suffers its own notion to appear as realized in its objective presence, and reveals in that appearance the unity and life inseparable from the conscious subject. For this reason the object may be conceived as sweeping back into the curve of its unity that impulse of continuous externality, cancelling its dependence on other objects, and transmuting to our vision its unfree finitude into free infinity.

Furthermore, the Ego in its relation to the object of beauty ceases to be merely the abstract attention or sensuous perception, and the floating away of such perceptions into equally abstract reflections. Rather, it is itself concretely realized in this object, being at once the unity and reality of its notional idea, and uniting for itself in its rounded concreteness that which has hitherto remained, as abstractly perceived, apart in the Ego of the subject of perception and the thing perceived.

Coming now to the practical import of this relation as it applies to the object of beauty, we have already drawn attention to the fact at some length, that in the contemplation of it the element of sensuous passion drops away. All personal impulse that the individual may feel toward the object is done away with through that very aesthetic contemplation, which regards it as self-subsistent in itself, in other words, its own object. For this reason, the purely finite relation of the object also disappears, the relation, that is, in which it subserved, as a means for their realization, aims which were foreign to it, and towards the fulfilment of which it was either presented as unfree or was compelled to take up, however strange, into its own existence. At the same time that relation of the Ego in the practical world which we found to be unfree disappears, inasmuch as it differentiates itself no longer in subjective motives and their means or material, remaining fixed in the finite relation of the formal "ought" for the carrying out of its subjective ends in the object, but is here confronted with the notion and its aim completely realized.

We may say, then, that the aesthetic contemplation of the beautiful is a liberal education, a portrayal of the object in its free and infinite being, with no detracting consideration of its use or employment for finite wants and purposes. Further, the object as a thing of beauty is neither under force or compulsion at our hands, nor is it in conflict with and overcome by other things outside it. It is of the essence of beauty that the notion, end and soul thereof, no less than its existent form, and variety generally, manifest themselves out of their own intrinsic wealth rather than through the energy of something outside them. The reason of this lies in the fact, already insisted upon, that their truth consists solely in the unity and harmony of their notion with their objective existence. And inasmuch as the notion is itself concrete totality, its objective reality also appears as a manifestation of the same, homogeneous in all its parts, which, as thus imbedded in the notion, appear to fall into such ideal unity and animation. For this harmony of the notion and its envisagement is nothing less than perfected suffusion200. Accordingly the exterior form and shape is manifested, not as such by its separation from other material, or as an impression mechanically related to aims which are foreign to it, but as the form of reality wherein the notion accommodates itself out of its own stuff and substance. Finally, however much the particular aspects, parts or articulations of the beautiful object are presented in the ideal unity of the notion and its unified envisagement, that harmony must be so rendered visible to sense, that in relation to one another they preserve the semblance of self-subsistent freedom; in other words they must not only possess the ideal unity of the notion as such, but must reflect back the side of a reality which is substantially objective also. Both aspects, in short, must be present in beautiful objects; for these are, on the one hand, the necessity posited through the notion and discovered in the harmonious conclusion of these particular aspects, and on the other, the envisagement of their freedom as essentially one with the whole, and not merely that of the unity which exists between the parts. Necessity in its full definition means the just relation of the two aspects, which coalesce so completely that to posit one is to posit the other. Such a necessity must unquestionably be present in beautiful objects. It is not, however, under the mode of necessity that it appears; rather it should conceal itself beneath the semblance of unintentional accident. Otherwise the particular parts of such a real presence lose the position they should occupy according to their own real existence, and only appear in the service of their ideal unity, to which they therefore remain in abstract subordination.

In virtue of the freedom and infinitude above analysed, which is inherent in the notion of beauty, whether we view it in its objective presence as a thing of beauty, or under its aesthetic contemplation, we disengage the province of the beautiful from the relations of finite condition, to exalt it into that of the Idea and its truth.

188. This is, of course, a note of Hegel himself.

189. This, of course, has reference to Hegel's unfortunate belief in Goethe's theory of colour.

190. Mediated (vermittelt), because the concrete is first apprehended through its differences, and only after reflection do we arrive at the notional unity which transcends and unites them.

191. Momente. Phases asserted and reconciled in the evolved notional unity, organic or otherwise. The notion is subjective because it is an ideal unity.

192. The text is clearly corrupt. The full-stop after herzustellen should be a comma, and auch would be preferably changed to als die.

193. As essentially reason.

194. Not the substantive, but past participle.

195. Das sinnliche Scheinen.

196. Verstand in the technical sense of Kant's philosophy; that is, the faculty of scientific observation or ordinary perception—analytical, in contrast to reason (Vernunft), the synthetic faculty.

197. Infinite, that is to say, as human freedom is infinite, as mind is infinite, an ideal totality, a whole complete in itself, not an endless progress, which is a contradiction.

198. Or, as Hegel says, "by suppressing the subjective principle altogether."

199. Theoretischen here used in sense of true philosophical theory, not one-sided views as above.

200. Vollendete Durchdringung, i.e., a penetration through all parts.