Summary: Lectures on Aesthetics

Hegel gives its modern meaning to the term "aesthetics". Before him, aesthetics referred to the science of sense, of sensation.

The rapprochement of art and aesthetics had been initiated by Wollf, as he considered that works of art should be studied in relation to the feelings they produced (fear, compassion).

Hegel called aesthetics the science that considers the beautiful in art, and it is this term that is now retained in common usage.

He excludes from it the study of natural beauty, but reserves for it the study of artistic beauty.

It is based on the idea that any science can set itself the limits it wants, and on the argument, eminently disputable and contested, that artistic beauty is higher than that of nature. Indeed, the human mind being superior to nature, and artistic beauty being an expression of it, any bad idea that passes through a man's head is nevertheless higher than any production of nature, for it always possesses spirituality and freedom ¹.

Natural beauty is only an imperfect reflection of the beauty that belongs to the spirit.

Once the field of object of this discipline, aesthetics, has been delimited, its possibility must be founded: Is beautiful art worthy of scientific treatment? ². Hegel examines one by one several objections: among others, the fact that art is not a serious thing, but a mere game of amusement, which it would be ridiculous and pedantic to treat scientifically.

Certainly, one can defend the seriousness of art, saying that it can be placed at the service of morality, or piety; but then answers Hegel, art is only a means, and does not find its end in itself. This is only a degraded form of art.

On the other hand, art operates through illusion, appearance, and therefore cannot achieve a serious end.

Furthermore, art is freedom of production and its forms, so it is impossible to make it the object of a science, which seeks to identify rules or laws.

Hegel responds to all these arguments: art as mere entertaining play is not free art but enslaved art. It is the former that will be the object of aesthetics. On the other hand, thought can also be used as mere entertainment (we can take the example of crosswords): this is not why it is excluded from the sciences.

On the contrary, the purpose of Art is to manifest, through sound, image or matter, the same truths that can be found in religion or philosophy: Art represents what is highest in a sensible way ⁴.

Finally, certainly art is appearance, but appearance itself is essential to essence; truth would not be if it did not appear ⁵. It is an appearance far less deceptive than that of the external world, because it carries within it the nature and freedom of the mind, which alone is reality; and because it shows itself as illusory, whereas phenomenal reality presents itself as the real and true.

Hegel will nevertheless concede an essential limitation of art: By that very fact that it is obliged to give its conceptions a sensible form, art is limited to a determinate content ⁶.

Thus, there is a much deeper way of understanding truth, when the latter no longer makes an alliance with the sensible and exceeds it to such an extent that it can neither contain nor express it ⁷.

Hegel then expounds his famous theory of the death of Art:

Art is and remains from the point of view of its highest destination something past ⁸.

This does not mean that art is dead, and that there is no longer any point in creating. It means that art has lost its primordial meaning as a sensitive revelation of truth; on the other hand, it can find other meanings.

¹ Esthétique, le Livre de Poche, Paris, 2001, trad. C. Bénard, introduction, p.52
² ibid.
³ p.53
⁴ p.58
⁵ ibid.
⁶ p.60
⁷ ibid.
⁸ p.62