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Lectures on Aesthetics #1
Esthétique 1: Introduction, 1er et 2me Parties, 3me Partie, Sections 1-2
L'art est-il éternel ? Dans son Esthétique, publiée en 1832, Hegel soutient que le temps n'est plus à la créativité artistique mais aux musées et à la réflexion sur l'art. C'est une conception particulière de l'activité de l'artiste et de sa mission dans l'histoire qui le conduit à en faire ainsi une chose du passé. L'art ne relève pas, d'après lui, du sentiment : sa vocation n'est pas de plaire mais d'exprimer une quête de sens. En élaborant la matière, il élève les apparences muettes de la nature au rang d'une réalité symbolique. Contrairement au beau naturel, le beau artistique vient de l'homme et parle à l'homme. Un peuple retrouve ainsi dans l'art de son temps les représentations qu'il se fait confusément de lui-même. Dans le cours de l'histoire universelle, la religion puis la philosophie finissent par surpasser le travail de l'artiste : elles parviennent mieux que lui à assumer cette fonction de révélation de l'esprit à lui-même. L'art perd alors sa raison d'être...
Une puissante spéculation sur l'essence et sur l'histoire de l'art. --Émilio Balturi
776 pages, Pocket Book
First published January 1, 1994
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995 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 19 of 19 reviews
May 29, 2016
I took a course on this in my Junior year of university. We read volume 1 cover to cover and roughly 1/3-1/2 of volume 2. Needless to say, it was an incredibly difficult and rough class. However it was well worth it. This text served as a nice introduction to Hegel. We learned many of Hegel's basic and essential concepts, along with his method. In the fall semester of Senior year I took another course on Hegel, except this time on PhG Ch. IV and VI and some of SoL. The latter texts were much easier having had the aesthetics under my belt. However, it was not simply a matter of difficulty. Finding Hegel's main texts easier meant I could spend more time on it and get more out of it, without jumping through linguistic and methodological hoops. So if you are new to Hegel I recommend starting here.
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February 4, 2025This milestone is but a mirage. Alas, the 2nd volume beckons.
April 8, 2020
On the other hand however, art seems to proceed from a higher impulse and to satisfy higher needs,—at times the highest and absolute needs . . .
The genuine, immortal works of art remain enjoyable by all ages and nation . . . It could of course be said that what is really excellent must be excellent for all time.
__________
. . . they are simply deceived, poor limited creatures, without the faculty and ability to apprehend and reach the loftiness of my standpoint.
__________
If Western Philosophy is a series of footnotes to Plato, Aesthetics is a series of footnotes to Hegel.
The comprehensive work on Aesthetics. Titanic, expansive, and systematic.
__________
The beauty of art is higher than nature.
However all this may be, it is certainly the case that art no longer affords the satisfaction of spiritual needs which earlier ages and nations sought in it, and found in it alone.
For connoisseurship, and this is its defective side, may stick at acquaintance with purely external aspects, the technical, historical, etc., and perhaps have little notion of the true nature of the work of art, or even know nothing of it at all.
In this way the sensuous aspect of art is spiritualized, since the sprit appears in art as sensuous.
It must be a spiritual activity which yet contains at the same time the element of sensuousness and immediacy.
Almost anyone can get up to a certain point in an art, but to get beyond this point, where art proper only now begins, an inborn, higher talent for art is indispensable.
The aim of art must therefore lie in something still other than the purely mechanical imitation of what is there, which in every case can bring to birth only technical tricks, not works, of art.
Art lifts him with gentle hands out of and above imprisonment in nature.
He lifts himself to eternal ideas, to a realm of thought and freedom.
For other ends, like instruction, purification, bettering, financial gain, struggling for fame and honour, have nothing to do with the work of art as such, and do not determine its nature.
The first point here is the demand that the content which is to come into artistic representation should be in itself qualified for such representation.
First, art begins when the Idea, still in its indeterminacy and obscurity, or in bad and untrue determinacy, is made the content of artistic shapes. Being indeterminate, it does not yet possess in itself that individuality which the Ideal demands; its abstraction and one-sidedness leave its shape externally defective and arbitrary. The first form of art is therefore rather a mere search for portrayal than a capacity for true presentation; the Idea has not found the form even in itself and therefore remains struggling and striving after it. We may call this form, in general terms, the symbolic form of art.
An unknown block of stone may symbolise the Divine, but it does not represent it. Its natural shape has no connection with the Divine and is therefore external to it and not an embodiment of it. When shaping begins, the shapes produced are symbols, perhaps, but in themselves are fantastic and monstrous. [Note]
In this way romantic art is the self-transcendence of art but within its own sphere and in the form of art itself.
Inwardness celebrates its triumph over the external and manifests its victory in and on the external itself, whereby what is apparent to the senses alone sinks into worthlessness.
But, looked at more closely, the true is nevertheless distinct from the beautiful.
Truth in that case is to be gained only by the subjugation of subjectivity.
The beautiful, on the other hand, is in itself infinite and free.
the sphere of the beautiful is withdrawn from the relativity of finite affairs and raised into the absolute realm of the Idea and its truth.
For men have more serious interests and aims which enter in through the unfolding and deepening of spirit and in which men must remain in harmony with themselves. The higher art will be that which has as its task the representation of this higher content.
The ideal individual must be self-contained.
The individual should not be deprived of his right to align himself of his own free will with this or that class. Aptitude, talent, skill and education alone have to lead to a decision in this matter and to decide it . . . First, the individual with his spiritual qualities must already have actually overstepped the natural barrier and its power which his wishes and aims are meant to surmount, or otherwise his demand is over again just a folly.
But in art what should move us is only the inherently genuine ‘pathos’.
Still, by making this demand, we must attack many productions, especially of more modern art.
The important thing is an inherently specific essential ‘pathos’ in a rich and full breast whose inner individual world is penetrated by the ‘pathos’ in such a way that this penetration, and not the ‘pathos’ alone as such, is represented.
As a means for this putting oneself outside and beyond, there remains nothing over in that case except withdrawal into the inner world of feelings which the individual does not leave, and now in this unreality regards himself as a sapient being who just looks longingly to heaven and therefore thinks he may disdain everything on earth.
But in no art should this definiteness go astray into the prose of actual nature and its direct imitation . . .
Similarly, many a man seeks in vain in the most beautiful love-songs for his own feelings and therefore declares that the description is false, just as others, whose knowledge of love is drawn from romances alone, do not now suppose themselves to be actually in love until they encounter in and around themselves the very same feelings and situations [as those described in the romances].
Consequently genius does burst forth in youth, as was the case with Goethe and Schiller, but only middle or old age can bring to perfection the genuine maturity of the work of art.
On the other hand, neither can inspiration be summoned by a spiritual intention to produce. A man who simply resolves to be inspired in order to write a poem, paint a picture, or compose a tune, without already carrying in himself some theme as a living stimulus and must just hunt around here and there for some material, then, no matter what his talent, cannot, on the strength of this mere intention, form a beautiful conception or produce a solid work of art. Neither a purely sensuous stimulus nor mere will and decision procures genuine inspiration, and to make use of such means proves only that the heart and the imagination have not yet fastened on any true interest. But if the artistic urge is of the right kind, this interest has already in advance been concentrated on a specific object and theme and kept firmly to it.
His aspiration remains a more objective joy in the topic of his comparisons and therefore is more contemplative. With a free heart he looks about him in order to see in everything surrounding him, in everything he knows and loves, an image of what his sense and spirit are preoccupied with and of what engrosses him to the full.
The individual has not merely immersed himself directly in his specific situation, feeling, or passion, but that as a high and noble being he is superior to them and can cut himself free from them. Passion restricts and chains the soul within, narrows it, and concentrates it within limits, and therefore makes it inarticulate, talking in single syllables, or raging and blustering in vagueness and extravagance. But greatness of mind, force of spirit, lifts itself above such restrictedness and, in beautiful and tranquil peace, hovers above the specific ‘pathos’ by which it is moved.
Through the eye we look into a man’s soul, just as his spiritual character is expressed by his whole demeanour in general.
Of a similar kind is the witty French saying: ‘God made men in his own image, but man has returned the compliment by making God in the image of man.’
It must be withdrawn from all finitude, everything transient, all preoccupation with what is purely sensuous.
Schiller’s famous saying: “Since the gods were then more human, men were more godlike.”
Absolute truth is on a higher level than the appearance of beauty which cannot be detached from the soil of the sensuous and apparent.
November 2, 2022
Hegel’s most distinctive feature as a philosopher—and what makes him the philosopher par excellence—is his deep reservoir of knowledge regarding history: of culture, of science, of philosophy, and as such. This feature comes out remarkably clearly here, and makes it apparent why Hegel’s aesthetics have long been the most well-received aspect of his philosophical system.
April 10, 2025
Standard for students studying the philosophy of art.
February 12, 2023
I came to this hoping for an aesthetic system sufficiently proto-Marxist to show me a way past regarding texts as ineffable systems for the exchange of meaning with no last instance without getting too structuralist, specifically in a way that would help me model what modernity does to literature in more philosophical terms. I set out to read Hegel and Sartre's aesthetic writings when I was writing my thesis because I knew that they were dense and probably had plenty of models I could make use of, but for various reasons this was impossible by the time I had to submit.
When there was nothing of the kind on offer here I was relieved, in finding that this wasn't the missing ingredient that would have squared everything I was trying to do in my research, but also disappointed that I didn't have anything I could bring forward into something else. Hegel has very conservative taste in art and is of the opinion that art peaked in antiquity, specifically in Greece, with marble statues and tragic theatre which perfectly express the juvenile, pre-Christian stage of mind that human civilisation had at that stage reached.
Hegel is writing from nineteenth century Germany at romanticism's high point, at once appreciating Goethe's talent but also on some level appalled by his works' inwardness and subjectivism (that will over the next century metastisise into the European avant-gardes) and it is this that encourages him to take against that which is disproportionate, overly subjective and irrational in cultural expression, recommending instead more harmony, joyousness and rationality in line with the requirements of the over-riding abstract idea or concept of a particular epoch.
I'm sure there are scholars or critics who have made use of this system (for which I am giving this book four stars) for more radical ends, expanding the idea of the concept in modernity beyond Hegel's proscrpition, Lukács being the primary example, but this is a hermeneutics fundamentally hostile to contemporaneity he singles out Shakespeare's tragedies and discordant music as for criticism and as a social account it's not very deep either, his explanation for Dutch realism depends on the joyousness of the Dutch national character.
The triumph of Hegel's system is his capacity to subsume contingency within the logic of mind so the only way to make sense of anything is to regard it as unfolding as part of something larger, but in the realm of aesthetics, we're back on the level of contingency and Hegel is no better than Marx at speaking to the residuals.
When there was nothing of the kind on offer here I was relieved, in finding that this wasn't the missing ingredient that would have squared everything I was trying to do in my research, but also disappointed that I didn't have anything I could bring forward into something else. Hegel has very conservative taste in art and is of the opinion that art peaked in antiquity, specifically in Greece, with marble statues and tragic theatre which perfectly express the juvenile, pre-Christian stage of mind that human civilisation had at that stage reached.
Hegel is writing from nineteenth century Germany at romanticism's high point, at once appreciating Goethe's talent but also on some level appalled by his works' inwardness and subjectivism (that will over the next century metastisise into the European avant-gardes) and it is this that encourages him to take against that which is disproportionate, overly subjective and irrational in cultural expression, recommending instead more harmony, joyousness and rationality in line with the requirements of the over-riding abstract idea or concept of a particular epoch.
I'm sure there are scholars or critics who have made use of this system (for which I am giving this book four stars) for more radical ends, expanding the idea of the concept in modernity beyond Hegel's proscrpition, Lukács being the primary example, but this is a hermeneutics fundamentally hostile to contemporaneity he singles out Shakespeare's tragedies and discordant music as for criticism and as a social account it's not very deep either, his explanation for Dutch realism depends on the joyousness of the Dutch national character.
The triumph of Hegel's system is his capacity to subsume contingency within the logic of mind so the only way to make sense of anything is to regard it as unfolding as part of something larger, but in the realm of aesthetics, we're back on the level of contingency and Hegel is no better than Marx at speaking to the residuals.
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May 15, 2022Bu kitap, Hegel'in verdiği derslerin daha sonraları derlenip toparlanmış halinden oluşmaktadır.
İlk başta Hegel'in felsefesinin ana özelliğinden biraz bahsedeyim. Diyalektik rasyonalizm, Hegel’in felsefesinin yapı taşıdır. Hegel’e göre hakikat ve varlık iki karşıt unsurdur, yani tez ve anti tezi oluştururlar. Hakikat olarak idealar tek başlarına var olsalar bile varlıkla (olgusal olanla) birleşip sentezi yani insan tinini(akıl) oluşturmadan tek başınalıkları bir şey ifade etmez. Hegel'i diğer rasyonalist filozoflardan ayıran özellik burada ortaya çıkar. Hakikat, varlıkla bir olup beşeri düzeyde tini oluşturduktan sonra zamansallaşır. Dolaysıyla zamansallaşan hiçbir düşüncenin ya da kavramın değişmez bir geçerliliği yoktur. Ama yine de ideal olan mutlak, tabii gerçeklikten daha gerçektir, çünkü beşeri varlıkla birleşip insan tinini oluştursa bile içinde hakikati barındırır.
''... evrensel sanat gereksinimi, insanın içsel ve dışsal dünyayı, içerisinde kendi özünü yeniden tanıdığı bir nesne olarak, kendi tinsel bilincine yükseltme yönündeki akılsal gereksinimidir.''
Hegel'in estetik kavramı ''güzel''in idealinden oluşur. Bir sanat eseri, ideal olanı barındırmadığı müddetçe salt doğa taklididir ve salt doğa taklidi, içinde duyusal ögeler barındırsa da ideal güzellik olmaktan uzaktır. Çünkü Hegel'e göre sanat eseri yapmamızdaki amaç yukarıda alıntıladığım gibi akılsal gereksinimlerimizden ortaya çıkar. Yani salt doğanın tinsel bir amaçlılığı olmadığı için ideal güzelliği de var olamaz
''Bu duyusal şekiller ve sesler, sanatta, sırf kendileri ve kendi dolayımsız şekilleri adına değil, ama bu şekil içerisinde daha yüksek tinsel ilgilere doyum sağlama amacıyla ortaya çıkarlar, çünkü onlar tindeki bir sesi ve bir yankıyı bilincin bütün derinliklerinden dışarıya çağırma gücüne sahiptirler. Bu şekilde sanatın duyusal yönü tinselleşmiştir, çünkü tin sanatta duyusal kılınmış olarak ortaya çıkar.''
Hegel'e göre sanat üretiminde tinsel ve duyusal yönler, tıpkı düşünsel idealizmindeki diyalektik ilişkide olduğu gibi bir arada olmalıdır. Ama sanatta tinsel olan, saf bir şekilde var olmaz, çünkü kendini düşünce gibi içsel değil duyusal bir şekilde dışsal olarak ortaya koyar.
İlk başta Hegel'in felsefesinin ana özelliğinden biraz bahsedeyim. Diyalektik rasyonalizm, Hegel’in felsefesinin yapı taşıdır. Hegel’e göre hakikat ve varlık iki karşıt unsurdur, yani tez ve anti tezi oluştururlar. Hakikat olarak idealar tek başlarına var olsalar bile varlıkla (olgusal olanla) birleşip sentezi yani insan tinini(akıl) oluşturmadan tek başınalıkları bir şey ifade etmez. Hegel'i diğer rasyonalist filozoflardan ayıran özellik burada ortaya çıkar. Hakikat, varlıkla bir olup beşeri düzeyde tini oluşturduktan sonra zamansallaşır. Dolaysıyla zamansallaşan hiçbir düşüncenin ya da kavramın değişmez bir geçerliliği yoktur. Ama yine de ideal olan mutlak, tabii gerçeklikten daha gerçektir, çünkü beşeri varlıkla birleşip insan tinini oluştursa bile içinde hakikati barındırır.
''... evrensel sanat gereksinimi, insanın içsel ve dışsal dünyayı, içerisinde kendi özünü yeniden tanıdığı bir nesne olarak, kendi tinsel bilincine yükseltme yönündeki akılsal gereksinimidir.''
Hegel'in estetik kavramı ''güzel''in idealinden oluşur. Bir sanat eseri, ideal olanı barındırmadığı müddetçe salt doğa taklididir ve salt doğa taklidi, içinde duyusal ögeler barındırsa da ideal güzellik olmaktan uzaktır. Çünkü Hegel'e göre sanat eseri yapmamızdaki amaç yukarıda alıntıladığım gibi akılsal gereksinimlerimizden ortaya çıkar. Yani salt doğanın tinsel bir amaçlılığı olmadığı için ideal güzelliği de var olamaz
''Bu duyusal şekiller ve sesler, sanatta, sırf kendileri ve kendi dolayımsız şekilleri adına değil, ama bu şekil içerisinde daha yüksek tinsel ilgilere doyum sağlama amacıyla ortaya çıkarlar, çünkü onlar tindeki bir sesi ve bir yankıyı bilincin bütün derinliklerinden dışarıya çağırma gücüne sahiptirler. Bu şekilde sanatın duyusal yönü tinselleşmiştir, çünkü tin sanatta duyusal kılınmış olarak ortaya çıkar.''
Hegel'e göre sanat üretiminde tinsel ve duyusal yönler, tıpkı düşünsel idealizmindeki diyalektik ilişkide olduğu gibi bir arada olmalıdır. Ama sanatta tinsel olan, saf bir şekilde var olmaz, çünkü kendini düşünce gibi içsel değil duyusal bir şekilde dışsal olarak ortaya koyar.
December 29, 2023
ok, I loved reading this. BUT, it felt at times like a survey of how deep Hegel can go up his own bum. The answer is pretty deep!
Let's get the bad parts out of the way. At times Hegel is casually racist, this is a very west centric work. More often than not, especially in the examples he provides to build his case, he is straight out objectively wrong! And while it is entertaining to observe his mental gymnastics to try to philosophically justify why our noses have 2 holes, you do wonder hundreds of pages in a book that is typesetted with no margins and what feels like font size 2, what life choices lead you here. Ah, and Hegel fails to explain very simple concepts in simple and comprehensive ways. So why did I love reading this?
Whether you agree or disagree with Hegel on specific points, you still end up thinking ALOT about the various aspects of the arts. And I really enjoyed that. Nevermind that despite the specifics I disagreed with, as a whole, Hegel is on to something. It is impressive how he understands some nuances of art and art making as a none artist.
This is a west centric work, but as far as the western (northern european post humanist nationalist view) is concerned, it is a well informed one. You get a nice summary of that time frame's understanding of the past, the present and future. I actually understood Wagner's obsession with German heroes a lot better, after Hegel reading Hegel's comparison of the artistic handling of subjects in France as opposed to Germany.
All in all, if you are obsessed with aesthetics, and can look past the overly complicated prose, then you will enjoy this!
Let's get the bad parts out of the way. At times Hegel is casually racist, this is a very west centric work. More often than not, especially in the examples he provides to build his case, he is straight out objectively wrong! And while it is entertaining to observe his mental gymnastics to try to philosophically justify why our noses have 2 holes, you do wonder hundreds of pages in a book that is typesetted with no margins and what feels like font size 2, what life choices lead you here. Ah, and Hegel fails to explain very simple concepts in simple and comprehensive ways. So why did I love reading this?
Whether you agree or disagree with Hegel on specific points, you still end up thinking ALOT about the various aspects of the arts. And I really enjoyed that. Nevermind that despite the specifics I disagreed with, as a whole, Hegel is on to something. It is impressive how he understands some nuances of art and art making as a none artist.
This is a west centric work, but as far as the western (northern european post humanist nationalist view) is concerned, it is a well informed one. You get a nice summary of that time frame's understanding of the past, the present and future. I actually understood Wagner's obsession with German heroes a lot better, after Hegel reading Hegel's comparison of the artistic handling of subjects in France as opposed to Germany.
All in all, if you are obsessed with aesthetics, and can look past the overly complicated prose, then you will enjoy this!
Read
June 17, 2025adorei o curso, mas li isso em um dia e to com vontade de chorar (eu sei que devia ter estudado antes, mas sou uma mulher contemporânea que herdou da era moderna o império das paixões, da interioridade absoluta. impuz minha subjetividade sobre a efetividade real e flexionei a ética até que condizesse ao meu impulso)
September 6, 2021
Just as the previous Hegel's books, this is a step by step but in this case of the creation of art.
Despite the horrendous spectre of the "idea" haunting all the chapters, there are beautiful thoughts in some of the paragraphs.
Despite the horrendous spectre of the "idea" haunting all the chapters, there are beautiful thoughts in some of the paragraphs.
October 15, 2024
What is blud yapping about? Probably above my pay grade
July 4, 2025
Super cool but unfortunately dense. Hegel makes very little sense to me but when he does it’s just amazing and so real. Loved the parts about sculpture. Hopefully I will re read this one day.
August 5, 2025
I for one have no doubt that he is right about all of it.
December 3, 2007
I'm not a huge fan of Hegel, at all, but I really do like his views on the history of art and aesthetics overall. A very very difficult read though, as it is Hegel, have to read everything a couple of times before you can grasp his concepts.
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March 6, 2008My dissertation is on Hegel's "Lectures on Aesthetics." It's very interesting, moving from concrete example to historical analysis to philosophical speculation seamlessly. Hegel has been called "the father of art history" by Gombrich.
July 31, 2009
Estoy leyendo el volumen 6 de este gran libro: "EL sistema de las artes particulares".
November 22, 2010
A lire si on a le courage de philosopher.
September 16, 2016
Une bouffée d'oxygène dans la pensée philosophique plutôt clairvoyante ici!
January 9, 2025
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