Summary: Lectures on Aesthetics
This book presents a series of lectures on art delivered by Hegel at the University of Heidelberg and later in Berlin between 1818 and 1829.
In these lectures, Hegel defines aesthetics as the science of the beautiful, a concept that would become widely accepted. He distinguishes between different forms of art—symbolic, classical, and romantic—each representing a stage in the unfolding of Spirit.
Hegel gives the term aesthetics its modern meaning. Before him, aesthetics referred to the science of sense perception and sensation.
The association between art and aesthetics had been initiated by Wolff, who argued that works of art should be studied in relation to the feelings they evoke, such as fear or compassion.
Hegel defined aesthetics as the science that considers beauty in art, and it is this definition that has prevailed in common usage.
He excludes the study of natural beauty from aesthetics, reserving it for the study of artistic beauty.
His approach is based on the idea that any science can define its own limits, as well as on the highly debatable and often contested argument that artistic beauty is superior to natural beauty. Indeed, since the human mind is superior to nature, and artistic beauty is its expression, even a flawed idea conceived by a human mind is still superior to any natural creation, for it always possesses spirituality and freedom
1.
Natural beauty is merely an imperfect reflection of the beauty that belongs to Spirit.
Once the domain of aesthetics has been delineated, its very possibility must be established: Is beautiful art worthy of scientific study?
2 Hegel examines several objections one by one, among them the claim that art is not a serious matter but merely a form of amusement, making any scientific treatment of it seem ridiculous and pedantic.
One might defend the seriousness of art by arguing that it serves morality or piety. However, Hegel responds that in this case, art becomes merely a means to an end and loses its intrinsic purpose. Such an approach, he argues, reduces art to a degraded form.
Moreover, art operates through illusion and appearance, and therefore, it cannot serve a truly serious purpose.
Furthermore, because art embodies freedom in both its creation and its forms, it seems impossible to subject it to scientific inquiry, which seeks to establish rules and laws.
Hegel responds to all these objections: art as mere entertainment is not free art but enslaved art. It is the former that will be the subject of aesthetics. Similarly, thought itself can be reduced to mere amusement (as in the case of crossword puzzles), yet this does not exclude it from scientific inquiry.
On the contrary, the purpose of art is to manifest, through sound, image, or material form, the same truths that are found in religion and philosophy: Art represents the highest realities in a tangible, sensuous manner
4.
Finally, while art is indeed appearance, appearance itself is essential to essence; truth would not exist if it did not appear
5. Yet art's appearance is far less deceptive than that of the external world, for it carries within itself the nature and freedom of the mind, which alone is true reality. Moreover, it reveals itself as illusory, whereas phenomenal reality presents itself as real and true.
Nevertheless, Hegel acknowledges an essential limitation of art: By the very fact that it must give its conceptions a sensuous form, art is confined to a determinate content
6.
Thus, there exists a much deeper way of grasping truth—one that no longer allies itself with the sensuous and transcends 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 standpoint of its highest vocation, something past 8.
This does not mean that art is dead or that there is no longer any point in creating. Rather, it means that art has lost its primordial function as the sensuous revelation of truth. However, it may still 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