Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics by Georg Hegel

Author:Georg Hegel
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: Penguin Group USA, Inc.
Published: 2010-10-25T04:00:00+00:00

Commentary

I. 1. The Latinate aesthetica(later translated into German as âsthetik)was first used by A. G. Baumgarten (1714–62), in his Metaphysica(1739) and Aesthetica(1750). It derives from the Greek aisthanesthai, ‘to perceive’, aisthēsis,‘perception’, and aisthētikos,‘capable of perception’. Thus it is originally, as Baumgarten defines it, the ‘science of sensory knowledge’, but it was soon restricted to the ‘science of sensory beauty’. The term covers the beauty of nature, as well as of art. Baumgarten was a follower of Christian Wolff (1679-1754), the mathematician and rationalist philosopher whose thought dominated German philosophy before the rise of Kantianism.

2. From the Greek kalos,‘beautiful, fine, etc.’, the superlative kallistos,‘most, supremely beautiful, etc.’, and hallos,‘beauty’. Thus ‘kallistic’, the ‘science of beauty’, is not especially associated with feeling and perception, but, like ‘aesthetic’, it covers nature as well as art.

3. Wissenschaft: this is used more widely than our ‘science’ the systematic study of e.g. history or art is a Wissenschaft.

4. schö’ne Kunst: this covers architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and poetry or literature (and sometimes dance – but not for Hegel), in contrast to crafts and to the seven ‘liberal arts’ of the Middle Ages.

II. 1. ans dem Geiste geborene und wieder geborene: lit. ‘born and born again from the spirit’. The word Geist covers most of the senses of both ‘mind’ and ‘spirit’, and Bosanquet uses both these words to translate it. Bosanquet here detects an allusion to ‘born of water and of the Spirit’ (John 3:5), referring to spiritual rebirth. Natural objects, materials, etc. are transformed by spirit, i.e., in this context the human mind, and are reborn as works of art. Cf. section XLVI:‘it… has received the baptism of the spiritual’.

2. That mind and its products are higher than nature does not strictly entail that the beauty of the mind’s products is higher than the beauty of nature, any more than it entails that e.g. redness in paintings is ‘higher’ or more intense than the redness of roses. But beauty is not, for Hegel, only a surface (‘skin-deep’) quality, but includes whatever makes something worthy of aesthetic contemplation, and thus varies in proportion to the ‘height’ of the beautiful object. Cf. section LII, n. I.

3. ‘Not in the sense of fancying what you please, but in the technical sense of having separate existence; detached, so to speak, from the general background of things, not a mere concurrence of other elements’ [B]. But many natural objects, esp. animals, have a relatively separate existence, and if the sun or sunset is considered aesthetically it is considered as detached from the general background. It is more likely that ‘freedom’ here means ‘freedom from the constraint of rules or laws’. See section VII, n. 2.

4. ‘Has no power of distinguishing itself from other things’ [B]. But natural objects, esp. animals, are able to distinguish themselves, and ‘indifferent’ should contrast with ‘free’ and ‘self-conscious’, meaning something like ‘unaware of, and unconcerned about, its own nature, and fate’. Hegel seems here to be comparing the sun with the mind, rather than with the products of mind.

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