Hegel on Beauty by Peters Julia

Author:Peters, Julia [Julia Peters]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781317635215
Publisher: Taylor & Francis (CAM)

Beautiful Characters in Art: Heroes and Villains

The Moral Psychology of the Hero

In the Lectures on Aesthetics, Hegel introduces the beautiful character who pursues an ethically worthy purpose under the title of the hero: beautiful characters who also pursue an ethically worthy purpose are heroes. Hegel finds the most striking examples of heroes in Greek myth and art, and in particular in the protagonists of Greek tragedy. In fact, as we will see, Greek tragedy is for Hegel essentially the tragedy of the heroic character. The hero is not only an ethically problematic figure, but he is a person who almost inevitably gets involved in tragic conflicts.

For Hegel, it is essential to the hero that he has a twofold nature; this twofold nature is also what ultimately underlies his problematic aspects. On the one hand, the hero fully identifies with certain principles, and he has made these principles his own in the sense that it has become his second nature to act in accord with them. These principles determine his character as a whole. But on the other hand, these principles are ethical principles, and this means that they are associated with the ethos, the ethical life of a community. It is only in the context of a community that these principles are valid and acknowledged as ethical principles.3 Because he has made them his own and identifies with these principles, the hero is fully at one with himself as he acts in accord with them; to act in accord with them is an expression of his will. But at the same time, as he acts in accord with these principles, the hero also represents the ethical will of a community, or at least purports to do so. Thus the hero’s actions are supposed to be both expressions of his own will and of the will of a community. This aspect of the hero’s nature may also be expressed by saying that an ethical principle of his community comes alive in his individuality and action. The hero embodies this principle. Hegel introduces the term pathos in order to describe this relation of embodiment between the hero and an ethical principle of his community: the ethical principle becomes the hero’s pathos, where a pathos is a ‘power which moves the human soul (Gemüt)’.4 More specifically, on Hegel’s account, this embodiment of an ethical principle by the hero has three implications, the first concerning the hero’s perspective of practical deliberation, the second concerning the relation between will and action in the hero, and the third concerning the phenomenology of acting in accord with an ethical principle from the point of view of the hero.

To begin with, the hero considers it as a necessity to act in accord with the ethical principle he endorses, while this necessity is not a natural necessity, but a necessity rooted in his character. Thus it is not physically impossible for the hero to act in a way that contravenes the ethical principle he endorses. Rather, whatever the alternatives

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