Summary: Lectures on Aesthetics (page 6)

Is the purpose of art to purify man of his passions by representing them—on canvas, on stage, and so on? This idea is formulated by Aristotle in Poetics.

According to him, when people witness tragedies performed on stage—murder, for instance—they are freed from their own murderous desires. There is a kind of relief in this process: art presents our passions before us and thereby softens them, for we finally see them externalised. We begin to feel free in relation to them, because they now confront us as something objective¹.

We all experience this relief of externalising what is inner when we weep; yet art, by expressing these passions through words, colours, or music, provides an even greater sense of release.

However, we cannot ascribe an educational function to art. Its purpose cannot be moral perfection achieved through the purification of passions (catharsis). If that were the case, art would be reduced to a mere means, no longer finding its purpose within itself.

Ultimately, this conception of art rests on a doctrine that posits an irreconcilable opposition between passion and reason, where reason is meant to tame the former.

Understanding sets these two terms in opposition, just as it contrasts the universal and the particular, the in itself and the for itself, the sensuous and the spiritual, freedom and necessity, concept and life, theory and experience. This is the mode of thought characteristic of understanding—it separates opposing terms without considering their reconciliation or synthesis. This division makes man an amphibious being, forced to live in two contradictory worlds².

The task of philosophy is to demonstrate that truth lies only in the conciliation and mediation of these opposites³.

Understanding, however, is incapable of this; it cannot escape the rigidity of fixed oppositions⁴.

For Hegel, the work of art is precisely that in which these opposing terms are reconciled. The very purpose of art is to make this truth visible in a sensuous form—the truth of the reconciliation of opposites, which understanding alone cannot grasp:

Art is called upon to reveal truth in the form of a sensuous artistic configuration; it is called upon to manifest this reconciled opposition.⁵

In other words: Artistic beauty has been recognised as one of the means by which the aforementioned opposition and contradiction—between the mind, concentrated abstractly within itself, and nature—are dissolved and reconciled into unity⁶.

Kant recognised the necessity of such unity. He posited reason as the foundation of both intelligence and will.

However, he pushed the rigid opposition between thought and object, abstract universality and sensuous singularity, to its extreme—particularly in his moral philosophy, as expounded in the Critique of Practical Reason. Indeed, the Ideas of reason—the unity of opposites—are unknowable by thought, and their practical realisation remains a mere duty perpetually deferred ad infinitum⁷.

Thus, in Kant's system, this unity has no true reality; whereas for Hegel, only unity is real, opposites being mere abstractions.

Certainly, in the Critique of Judgment, beauty is recognised without concept as the object of necessary pleasure. As a result, in the Kantian notion of the beautiful, universal and particular, end and means, concept and object interpenetrate perfectly⁸. Nevertheless, this seemingly perfect conciliation must, in Kant's view, remain purely subjective⁹.

For Hegel, it is Schiller who deserves credit for having conceived conciliation as truth and for having realised it in artistic production¹⁰.

According to Schiller, the work of art tends to cultivate inclinations, sensibility, and impulse in such a way that they themselves become rational¹¹. At the same time, it brings reason, freedom, and spirituality out of their abstraction and, united with the natural element—rationalised within the work of art—allows them to acquire flesh and blood¹².

Thus, Schiller scientifically conceived the essence of art as the unity of the universal and the particular, of freedom and necessity, of the spiritual and the natural¹³.

¹ p.106
² p.112
³ p.113
⁴ p.112
⁵ p.113
⁶ p.114
⁷ p.115
⁸ p.118
⁹ p.119
¹⁰ ibid.
¹¹ p.121
¹² ibid.
¹³ ibid.