In my previous post on Introduction to Aesthetics, I lamented the commandeering of the term aesthetics by Instagram influencers and the plastic surgery industry. There is, of course, nothing novel in either the evolution of a concept or in people’s resistance to its changing, as philosophers throughout the centuries have debated the meaning and bemoaned the perceived dilution and corruption of concepts such as beauty, aesthetics, and art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel famously argued from such a position in the early 19th century through his theory on the “end of art.”
Born roughly four decades after fellow German Immanuel Kant, Hegel was a prominent figure in the post-Kantian German Idealism philosophical movement. As an Idealist, Hegel believed that all that is real, all that truly exists, is rationality, which can be understood and expressed in a unified philosophical system (see Hegelianism). Hegel held that beauty is an innate property of an object (as opposed to a subjective impression) and that beauty is a sensuous manifestation of free Spirit, or Geist. Art, as the creative expression of this Spirit, is in Hegel’s mind, the truest or highest form of beauty.
The Spirit Within Us
To translate, roughly – humanity possesses Spirit, a self-conscious awareness or self-determination, that is singular to us and makes us free in a way that organisms lacking this self-understanding are not. This freedom gives us the capacity for logic and ethical reasoning, which provides for a richer, higher experience of reality. Hegel believes that through art, we are able to express this self-conscious freedom in a way that reveals truths about our nature. He further posits that for art to embody ideal Spirit, its subject must be of the divine – that is, divinity embodied in the human form or that which is divine within humanity.
As Hegel believes that the human figure is the sole form that can embody absolute reason, it is the human form that should be the central focus of art. It is for this reason that Hegel holds fifth and fourth Greek sculpture of gods and heroes as the ideal form of art, and thereby the ideal form of beauty. He esteems both classical Greek sculpture and drama as exemplary objects of art in their perfect fusion of the spiritual (divine) and the natural (sensuous).
A Thing of the Past
Now, if all this sounds rather rigid and arcane, it helps us to understand Hegel’s conceptualization of beauty and how he arrives at his “end of art” theory. For Hegel, this “end” began with the Reformation and the advent of “romantic art”, which he employs to mean anything under the umbrella of Western, Christian art. In contrast to the prominent role that religion played in the art of Ancient Greece or the Middle Ages and the Renaissance, art during the Reformation became increasingly more secularized and humanized (in the non-ideal, non-divine sense).
Rather than, say, depicting religious love of the Madonna and child or the moral resolve of the tragic hero, art in the modern age shows the ordinary woman going about her mundane work or an imitation of a natural landscape. The purpose of art is no longer to reveal the divine and so it is not something to be revered. As art loses its central role in religious life, as it ceases to illuminate the truth and the divine in us, it no longer fulfills its highest purpose. So while Hegel does not argue that art simply has or will cease to exist, he asserts that it no longer provides for our highest needs and that its influence must necessarily wane and its role in life be more limited.
The End Is the Beginning Is the End
It seems a reasonable assumption that most modern readers would readily concede that Hegel is generally correct in his assessment of the evolving nature of art and humanity’s relationship to it. But his assertion that art which does not embody this ideal Spirit is less true, less edifying, or that its beauty is diminished, would seem a harder sell. Nevertheless, Hegel’s influence on aesthetics and philosophy more broadly remains extensive, with his work on “the end of art” informing Arthur Danto’s essay of that name and Martin Heidegger’s post-modern treatment of art.
Having set the stage with some of the more prominent early aesthetic thinkers, we’ll turn to philosophers of the 20th and 21st centuries in the following posts. And in the meantime, in case you somehow haven’t had enough Hegel, here are some additional resources for your edification/self-flagellation:
- Art History Unstuffed, “Hegel and His Impact on Art and Aesthetics,” https://arthistoryunstuffed.com/hegel-impact-on-art-aesthetics/
- Thomas F. Bertonneau, “Hegel’s Christian Aesthetics,” https://orthosphere.wordpress.com/2017/06/21/hegels-christian-aesthetics/
- Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, “Heidegger’s Aesthetics,” https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/heidegger-aesthetics/
- American Society for Aesthetics “Arthur C. Danto Remembered,” https://aesthetics-online.org/page/ArthurCDantoNC
