Friedrich Hegel's Philosophy - Term Paper Example

Introduction Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (August 27, 1770 – November 14, 1831) was one of the creators of German idealism and an influential German philosopher whose philosophy of art or aesthetics constituting the first sub-section of his philosophy of absolute spirit forms part of German’s rich aesthetic tradition. He had a wide knowledge and an excellent understanding of many of Western tradition’s great works of art, works of Persian and Indian poetry and works of Egyptian art (Althaus, para1). In his philosophy of art which many consider as one of the greatest aesthetic theories since Aristotles Poetics and which forms part of his philosophy of spirit, Hegel gives a wide-ranging account of the historical development of art. He starts from symbolic art through classical art to romantic and then modern art, beauty in art and the individual arts of painting, sculpture especially that of Greeks, architecture, poetry and music. Hegel published thoughts on aesthetics and held lectures on aesthetics in Berlin and Heidelberg. These lectures on aesthetics represent the most systematic and comprehensive philosophical investigation of the arts produced in modern times (Harrison, para1). For Hegel, The purpose of art is not just for arts sake, but also for beautys sake. Here, the true character of freedom is given sensuous expression. In other words, the purpose of art is to give one’s spirit expression to understanding of itself or to enable one to bring to mind the truth about himself or herself and thereby become aware of whom he or she truly is. To him, beauty is the direct sensuous manifestation of freedom – it shows us what freedom looks and sounds like when it gives itself sensuous expression. Hegel says that art is essentially figurative because its purpose is to embody and express free spirit, which is achieved most adequately through idealized images of human beings. For Hegel, art delivers man close to full intelligibility and it therefore has a place in absolute spirit (Desmond, para1). Hegel recognizes that art can portray animals, plants and inorganic nature, but he sees it as arts principal task to present divine and human freedom. According to Hegel, when the spirit withdraws into itself out of nature and becomes pure self-knowing interiority, one attains a deeper freedom as expressed in Christianity. Romantic art is a new form of art associated with the emergence of Christianity. Hegel uses the term romantic to refer to the whole tradition of art that emerged in Western Christendom. Romantic art is the sensuous manifestation of the inner spirit’s freedom that is capable of genuine beauty. The freedom it manifests finds its highest expression and articulation in religious faith and philosophy. In other words, romantic art gives expression to a freedom of the spirit whose true home lies beyond art. Hegel describes that the development of romantic art involves the increasing humanization and secularization of art. During the renaissance and in the middle ages, people closely tied art to religion. Its function to a large degree was to make the divine visible for instance, in ancient Greece. However, reformation turned religion inward and people started to find God to be present not in the icons and images of art but in faith alone. Hegel therefore points out that those who live after the reformation do not venerate works of art any longer. In addition, they released it from its close ties to religion and made it fully secular. The important thing to Protestantism is to get a sure grip in life, to make it valid in itself independently of religious associations and to let it develop in unrestricted freedom (Hegel, para1). This is the reason that shapes Hegels view that art is, on the side of its highest destiny, “a thing of the past” (Hegel, para2). By this, he means that art no longer meets our highest needs in the modern age and no longer gives people the satisfaction that it afforded to earlier civilizations and cultures. Abstract creations mark art in this modern age. He implies that when art formed an integral part of people’s religious life and revealed to them the nature of the divine and the true character of their fundamental ethical obligations as in Greece, it satisfied their highest needs (Houlgate, 2009). Art no longer represents reality. With these astute observations, Hegel foreshadowed the rise of abstract art, which has abandoned its representative function. Today, the proper place for art is the museum. It has lost the aura of the sacred that once enveloped it. As Hegel pronounced this in Berlin where he was lecturing on aesthetics, Schinkels 1830 Altes Museum, the first museum where artists exhibited art in its historical sequence, was already rising near Berlin (Gray, para2). By art on the highest side of its highest destiny, Hegel was referring to art that surrounded the aura of the sacred that is, art that expressed humanitys deepest interests, the minds most comprehensive truths and the divine nature. The modern enlightened world in Hegels view do not experience art surrounded by the aura of the sacred as it was in the beautiful days of Greek art and the golden times of the latter middle ages (Caicco, para2). Like Heidegger, Hegels assertion was not to deny that art would continue to change, develop and hence produce accomplished new work. It was an acknowledgement that in modern peoples lives, the overall place of work is a minor one, dooming even a masterpiece like to relative insignificance. Unlike in earlier times, art is no longer formative of peoples very sense of themselves and the reality they inhabit. Therefore, Hegel is questioning the possibility of effective art in the modern world. To him, art is finite and it can die thereby losing its power of disclosure and merely appear as an attractive object whose place is in the museum (Clark, para2). Hauser and his co-authors interpret it to mean that artistic production has fallen below the level it has already achieved and that it shows signs of collapsing. To them, Hegel was talking of the inability of art to correspond to a standard of truth. In other words, in the modern society, art is no longer the highest way in which truth achieves its existence. Hegel was not talking about the depravation of artistic quality. Hegel’s assertion does not mean that art in the modern, post-reformation world has no role to play and that it provides no satisfaction at all. Rather than seeking absolute truth in art, moderns now seek it in religious faith or in philosophy. In Hegels view, the considerable importance people assign to philosophy is evident in the prominence of the philosophical study of art itself in modernity. Yet, art still performs the important function of giving audible and visible expression to our characteristically human freedom and to our understanding of ourselves in all our finite humanity. Hegel therefore does not claim that art as a whole simply ends in the modern age. Rather, his view is that art plays a more limited role now than it did in the middle ages or in ancient Greece. Yet he does think that art in modernity ends in a certain respect when he says that art in modernity falls apart into the celebration of witty, humorous subjectivity on one hand, and the exploration of everyday contingencies on the other. After the reformation, Hegel thinks that much poetry and painting rather than focusing on the intimacy of religious love or the magnificent resolve and energy of tragic heroes focuses its attention on the prosaic details of ordinary daily life. To the degree that such art works no longer aim to give expression to human freedom or divine but seek to do no more than imitate nature, they prompt Hegel to consider whether they still count as art works in the strictly philosophical sense of the term. He claims that such works are genuine works of art only when they do more than merely imitate nature. He gives the paintings of the sixteenth and seventeenth-century Dutch masters as the naturalistic and prosaic works that best meet this criterion. According to Hegel, the painter’s aim is not simply to show us what flowers, trees or grapes look like because we already know that from nature but to capture the life of things which is often fleeting. That is, he aims to portray a vanishing glimpse of the moon or the sun, a smile, the expression of a swiftly passing emotion, the lustre of metal and the shimmer of a bunch of grapes by candlelight among others. Indeed, the painter often seeks to delight people specifically with the animated play of the colours of silver, gold, fur or velvet. Hegel notes that in such works, one encounters not just the representation of things, an objective music and a peal in colour (Hegel, Para1&2). A genuine work of art gives the sensuous expression of divine or human freedom and life. Paintings that are naturalistic and prosaic depictions of everyday human activity or objects would consequently appear to fall short of genuine art. However, Dutch artists precisely turn such depictions into true works of art by imbuing objects with the fullness of life. Hegel claims that in so doing, they give expression to their own exuberant subjective skill, sense of freedom, contentment and comfort. Although the paintings of such artists may lack the classical beauty of Greek art, they exhibit magnificently the subtle delights and beauties of everyday modern life. Hegel finds a much more overt expression of ironic, witty, humorous subjectivity that one can describe as anarchic in works of modern humour. Such subjectivity manifests itself in playing with objects, deranging and distorting material and rambling back and forth, and in the cross movement of subjective views, expressions and attitudes whereby the author sacrifices himself or herself and his or her subjects alike. Hegel maintains that works of true humour do well in making that which is substantial come out of contingency. Works that neither gives body to true self-determining freedom and life nor affords the supreme idea of depth but merely manifest the power of arbitrary wit to subvert the settled order do not count as genuine works of art. He adds that when the subject lets itself go in this way, art ends. In this regard, Hegel does after all proclaim that art in modernity ends or dies. This is because in modernity, there appears certain works of art that no longer express life and true human freedom and they are therefore no longer genuine works of art, not because art no longer executes a religious purpose fulfilling the highest vocation of art. However, in Hegels view, art still has a future he says that we may well hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection. For him, the unique character of genuine art in contemporary modernity is twofold. On one hand, it remains bound to express freedom and concrete human life and on the other hand, it is no longer restricted to any of the three art forms. This means that it does not have to observe the proprieties of classical art or explore the deep emotional inwardness or heroic freedom or comfortable ordinariness found in romantic art. Hegel says that modern art can draw on features of any of the art forms symbolic art included, in its presentation of human life and that it can indeed also present freedom and human life indirectly through the depiction of nature (Houlgate, para8). Conclusion Hegel however does not provide an exhaustive account of all recognized arts for example, he says little about dance and nothing about cinema. He only examines the arts that he thinks are made necessary by the very concept of art itself. These are architecture poetry music drama painting and sculpture. His view has brought contradictions among people, as most tend to either overstate or understate his view while others remain confused. Works cited Althaus, H., Tarsh, M. Hegel, (2000). Retrieved 13th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=H-wTvBUvrOAC&pg=PA205&lpg=PA205&dq=Hegel%27s+lectures+on+art&source=bl&ots=Z66eOC3LCf&sig=v0cyUjaxWbDXeLdp9c23UVuM4us&hl=en&ei=oQfiSZfSGZPGM4SwmIMJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=10#PPA205,M1 Caicco, G. Architecture, ethics, and the personhood of place, (2007). Retrieved 13th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=NJsYGB-ntIYC&pg=PA135&lpg=PA135&dq=art+is,+on+the+side+of+its+highest+destiny,+a+thing+of+the+past&source=bl&ots=5_CaWwfsPi&sig=frKCmDOjc5NVpyT7JaUoZl0Dik&hl=en&ei=5uviSciVLp_pnQfAypipCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA136,M1 Clark, T. Martin Heidegger, (2002). Retrieved 14th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=wRkWlCNhx3YC&pg=PA42&lpg=PA42&dq=art+is,+on+the+side+of+its+highest+destiny,+a+thing+of+the+past&source=bl&ots=uT5MjU_KkJ&sig=ibu9-V2LlFD_96rjJIQsoPEBqYE&hl=en&ei=5uviSciVLp_pnQfAypipCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA50,M1 Desmond, W. Art and the Absolute, (1986). Retrieved 15th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=IzWhVs9zTHoC&pg=PA60&lpg=PA60&dq=Hegel%27s+treatment+of+religion+and+religious+art&source=bl&ots=c-pEU85Xko&sig=vlxyNtHvSjwwfpaDV0uSRVSG_qQ&hl=en&ei=JAXiSaD-FI--MujUqJEJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPA61,M1 Gray, J.G. On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy By Georg Wilhelm, (1997). Retrieved 14th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=ldLBRsCHgmUC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12&dq=Hegel%27s+lectures+on+art&source=bl&ots=zpmq2y8SzP&sig=W4wNzo-UiMkJv26PN9yBud-G66s&hl=en&ei=oQfiSZfSGZPGM4SwmIMJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPR14,M1 Harrison, C. et al. Art in theory, 1815-1900. Retrieved 13th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=8aHtX9Hkxo0C&pg=PA58&lpg=PA58&dq=Art+in+theory,+1815-1900+By+Charles+Harrison-+on+Hegel&source=bl&ots=NJz1Oz9nNF&sig=e-9S0LoZkQWKuJ7SiIz3Q-kU4ek&hl=en&ei=aCjlSfjtBuHinQeOu8ChCQ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA58,M1 Hauser, A. et al. The sociology of art, (1982). Retrieved 14th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=uCo-AAAAIAAJ&pg=PA716&lpg=PA716&dq=Hegel%27s+view+that+%27art+is,+on+the+side+of+its+highest+destiny,+a+thing+of+the+past&source=bl&ots=tfJVkYmY0C&sig=XvGTUtmMXAX3mfTjhKvx8H2IrMs&hl=en&ei=vwPiSarqFIrAM_Ht8IIJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#PPA716,M1 Hegel, J.G.W. On Art, Religion, and the History of Philosophy, (1997). Retrieved 13th April, 2009 from: http://books.google.co.ke/books?id=ldLBRsCHgmUC&pg=PR12&lpg=PR12&dq=Hegel%27s+lectures+on+art&source=bl&ots=zpmq2y8SzP&sig=W4wNzo-UiMkJv26PN9yBud-G66s&hl=en&ei=oQfiSZfSGZPGM4SwmIMJ&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=7#PPR12,M1 Read More