To Berg: I don't think Hegel distinguished nature as mainly trees and flowers in the countryside and concrete and bricks in the city as not nature or as lesser nature. By nature he means that which is material but not man. He says art is man made, a product of the mind and since the mind is able to feel what he regarded as spiritual freedom, a sense of what he terms the Absolute, and since nature is mute even though we may say it's beautiful it cannot participate in making itself consciously beautiful. The conscious mind is essential for Hegel. It enables the fusion of the Absolute with a man-made sensuous form. Hegel thought a perfect fusion of the absolute with sensuous form occurred in classic Greek art and then not again. He argues that the mind has progressed beyond the level of the Greek mind and is now capable of far more abstract thought than the Greeks had achieved and thus is at a level above what can be achieved and expressed in sensuous form. He says religion and philosophy are now so abstract and art cannot embrace that level of abstraction in sensuous form. That's why he writes of the End of Art , where art no longer adequately expresses the most significant ideas of man. This does not mean, really, that no more art is possible but that art must become conceptual, pointing beyond what can be perfectly embodied in sensuous form. He also claims that art must be ironic because it offers a conceptual state of mind outside of art, as one that can be emotionally detached, to consider contradictory feelings with indifference, as with objective judgment. That kind of detachment is always ironic for Hegel.
If we imagine an absolute that is infinite and full, both rational and not, and as a fully free spiritual essence and if we think of man as capable of self consciousness as a part of that absolute and if we think of man as attempting to embody that self-consciousness in some sensuous form (a man-made thing) that aims to exemplify man's most significant idea, (the Divine as Absolute) then we have a sense of what Hegel argues in his aesthetic. Maybe. I do not claim to be so immersed in Hegel to accurately summarize his ideas. I am learning. But one thing is clear if you read Hegel. Hegel ranks the beauty of nature below the beauty of art because art is man made and aims to express a consciousness of the spiritual Absolute which for Hegel is freedom. He says nature cannot do that because it is not self conscious and because it has at best only utility (to survive) and thus its sensuous form is not aimed at the highest and most significant idea. ( I probably screwed that up.) I'll try to find a passage to quote. But why don't you do that? wc ----- Original Message ---- From: joseph berg <[email protected]> To: [email protected] Sent: Sun, July 1, 2012 5:50:28 PM Subject: Re: Hegel On Mon, Jul 2, 2012 at 12:34 PM, William Conger <[email protected]>wrote: > Probably the best summary on the internet is the Stanford enclyclopedia of > art. > See topic: Hegel's Aesthetics > > Hegel limits artistic beauty to man-made...as expression of the Absolute > spiritual freedom in sensuous form. . Needless to say, his elegant logic > and > lucid ideas are compelling (in translation). a Penguin Classic translation > by > Georg Wilheim, 1994, is pretty good and clear. > wc > > > Did Hegel prefer urban environments where opportunities to see nature in all its glory and subtlety are more limited? Shouldn't an appreciation for beauty stem from an appreciation of nature?
