The Philosophy of Fine Art. Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel

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СКАЧАТЬ However much animal life, as the culminating point of natural beauty, unfolds its freest expression as a living principle, it is comparatively narrow in its range and subject to very limited qualities. The circle of such existence is a strait one; and in this the predominant interests are those of the satisfaction of natural instincts such as hunger and sex-attraction. Soul-life, regarded as the inward principle expressed through external figure, is poor, abstract, and empty of content. Add to this the consideration that this inward is not manifested at all as inward. The soul in its essential substance is not revealed by the life of Nature; it is, in fact, the determining characteristic of Nature that its soul remains shut in itself, does not, in other words, proclaim itself in its ideality. As already pointed out, the soul of an animal is not this ideal unity self-acknowledged. If it were otherwise we should have the manifestation of such personality brought home to others. Only in the self-conscious Ego do we find the ideal in its simplest terms, which is itself an ideal medium to itself, knows itself as this simple unity, and thereby endows itself with a reality, which is not limited to bodily and sensuous form, but is itself of an ideal character. Here, for the first time, reality is in possession of a form adequate to the notion; or rather the notion sets itself up as its own opposite, makes itself objectively real and finds its own realization in that objectivity. The animal life, on the contrary, is only potentially such a unity as that in which reality as bodily form is other than the ideal unity of soul. In self-consciousness we have this unity realized, whose opposing factors are constituent elements of one transparent ideality. And it is as this concrete totality of self-consciousness that the Ego is manifested to others. The forms of animal life merely enable us through imaginative perception to divine the soul's existence. Such only possess the troubled semblance of a soul, betrayed to us through the breath or exhalement which permeates the whole, gives some unity to all the members, and reveals in the entire instinctive life the first germs of an independent character. Herein lies the primary defect of the beauty of Nature, even when taken at its point of culminating form: and it is precisely this defect which will introduce us to the necessity of the Ideal as the beauty of art. But before we consider at length the nature of this Ideal, there are two determinations involved as the most immediate result of this inherent defect in natural beauty, which invite our attention.

We have stated that in the animal form the soul appears as the bond of connection within the organism and the unified point of animation only under a cloud240 and destitute of any fully realized content. We only find there a quite indeterminate and restricted mode of soul-life. We will now consider the abstract limitations of this mode more closely.

      B. THE EXTERNAL BEAUTY OF ABSTRACT FORM REGARDED AS UNIFORMITY, SYMMETRY, CONFORMITY TO RULE AND HARMONY AND REALITY IN THE SENSE OF ABSTRACT UNITY OF THE PHYSICAL MATERIAL.

      There is in Nature an external reality which is, of course, visible and definitely objective, but the inward unity of which, instead of presenting itself in the concrete inwardness referable to the unity of soul-life, only goes to the point of indeterminacy and abstraction. In other words, it stops short of the inwardness self-actualized in an ideal form and as the particular existence conformable to its ideal content. Its appearance is that of the defining principle on the face of external reality. Now the specific characteristics of inwardness in all its concreteness should be these. First, the principle of soul-life is asserted for itself no less than is potentially replete with content. Secondly, external reality interpenetrates this ideal arcanum, and by so doing fully reveals its true form as such external reality. A concrete unity of this nature is not reached by mere natural beauty: it lies beyond as the Ideal. On this plane of existence we cannot say that such a concrete unity enters into the manifestation of form. We have to deduce it through analysis, examining in their separation and singularity the distinguishing features which the unity supports. The form that informs here and the sensuous external reality fall apart from one another; or rather we have two distinct aspects which we are compelled to consider separately. By virtue of this fact, which we may either regard as a division of the material of sense or as a review of certain facts taken in abstraction, the inward unity, which is one aspect of the external reality, itself falls outside it; that is to say, it is not itself asserted in that rational reality as the wholly immanent form of the entire notion which constitutes it, but rather as an Ideality and determinacy imposed externally.

      Such are the points of view thus presented us which we will now consider more closely.

      First, then, we have to discuss

      1. THE BEAUTY OF ABSTRACT FORM

The form of natural beauty in its abstraction is a form which is determinate and thus of limited range; in a further aspect of it it is focussed in a unity of abstract relation to itself241. On closer inspection we shall, however, find that the external manifold controls this form of abstract beauty by reason of its own determinacy and unity. We must not, however, imply in these latter any immanent inwardness or form of vital ideality, but regard them as purely material definitions and unity of the external medium. Forms of such a character are uniformity, symmetry, or conformity to rule, and finally harmony.

      (a) Uniformity

      Uniformity is, speaking generally, equality in external presentment, or, more specifically, the unbroken repetition of one and the same definite form, supplied by the determining unity to the form of objects. Such a unity, in virtue of its initial abstraction, is at the furthest extreme removed from the rational totality of the concrete notion. Its beauty is therefore a beauty which is referable to the faculty of the analytical understanding. The fundamental process of that faculty is to perceive objects in their abstraction, not in their self-determined completeness and identity. For example, among all lines the straight line is that which is most uniform, because it alone manifests one abstract and undeviating direction. For the same reason the cube is a figure dominated by regularity of content. All its sides are of the same size, the same length of line and the same angles, which, on account of their being rectangular, however much their size is changed, manifest no change in the form of their angles as is the case with angles which are obtuse or acute.

      With this characteristic of uniformity we must closely connect that of symmetry. Form is unable long to rest in that barest abstraction of its determination, namely, undifferentiated equality. A diverse relation is sure to assert itself, breaking into the empty form of identity. In this way we obtain symmetry, which consists in no mere identical repetition of one form, but in a combination with some such form analogous to it, identical, that is to say, in its self-determination, and yet manifesting a distinct contrast with it. Through such a combination we obtain another kind of equality and unity, whose determination is more extensive and more varied. If, for example, on one side of a house we meet with three windows of the same size separated at equal intervals of distance, then three or four more of loftier size than the first-mentioned standing at more extended or closer intervals in relation to them, and again three more precisely similar in size and distance to our original ones, we have then before us a symmetrical arrangement. Mere uniformity and repetition of the same distinctions will never produce this result. We may find such distinguishing features in size, position, form, colour, tones, and many others like them, which, however, to produce symmetry must be harmoniously related to similar forms of construction. When we find a combination which presents to us an arrangement of such distinguishing characteristics according to some clearly uniform principle that then is symmetry.

Both these attributes, uniformity and symmetry, being the determinations of the form and unity of external appearance, are mainly applicable to distinctions in size. For it stands to reason that what is expressly posited as external rather than truly immanent determination is generally a quantitative242 determination, whereas the qualitative fixes the inherent character of anything. Consequently that which is assumed only to affect the external appearance cannot be concerned СКАЧАТЬ