Hegel on Art: An Interpretation on Hegel’s Aesthetics

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Text originally published in 1962 under the same title.

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HEGEL ON ART

AN INTERPRETATION ON HEGEL’S AESTHETICS

BY

JACK KAMINSKY

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Contents

TABLE OF CONTENTS 3

DEDICATION 4

INTRODUCTION 5

I. THE IDEA 7

II. THE IDEA IN ART 24

III. THE SYMBOLIC STAGE OF ART: ARCHITECTURE 33

IV. THE CLASSICAL STAGE OF ART: SCULPTURE 48

V. THE ROMANTIC STAGE OF ART 62

VI. THE ROMANTIC STAGE OF ART: PAINTING 75

VII. THE ROMANTIC STAGE OF ART: MUSIC 85

VIII. THE ROMANTIC STAGE OF ART: POETRY 94

IX. CONCLUSION AND CRITICISM 120

NOTES—ABBREVIATIONS 128

REQUEST FROM THE PUBLISHER 129

DEDICATION

To Alice

INTRODUCTION

Modern philosophers have criticized Hegel’s philosophy severely. They have generally repudiated his political as well as his metaphysical doctrines. Except for occasional attempts at vindication by Croce, Stace, Mure, and several contemporary European philosophers, thinkers have used Hegel’s views to illustrate the hazards of uncontrolled speculation. American and British philosophers especially have deplored not only his linguistic and conceptual obscurity, but also his notorious totalitarian conclusions. Whereas the nineteenth century gloried in the Hegelian teaching, the twentieth century has rejected it.

There are several reasons why the Hegelian philosophy has come perilously close to attaining the status of an interesting but useless historical relic. Because his style is so diffuse, Hegel has been accused of obscurantism. In view of the recent emphasis on the tools of logic and language, contemporary thinkers have made short shrift of the ambiguities inherent in Hegel’s exposition of the dialectical process. Philosophers have also reacted strongly to the fascistic implications of his theories. His admiration of the strong state and his idealization of the heroic man have made his philosophy extremely unpopular in an age in which the superman concept has been influential in causing two wars. As a result, little effort has been made to determine whether some portions of the Hegelian philosophy might be salvaged.

In particular, Hegel’s aesthetics has been treated most shabbily. Unlike other parts of his work, it has not even been subjected to the kind of strict analysis which should precede the act of rejection. Usually it has been dismissed as a vain attempt to stipulate a deterministic evolutionary procedure for art. The charge of fatalism has inhibited thinkers from undertaking the wearisome task of deciphering Hegel’s language. Hence, there is little real knowledge about his aesthetics beyond the general acquaintance with the notion of the three stages of art and the Idea that in some nebulous way unravels in them. There is little familiarity with some of Hegel’s discerning observations and comments about specific works of art and fundamental aesthetic questions. Yet these detailed observations are of the sort which would most interest contemporary students of aesthetics. We may no longer be satisfied with the Hegelian Absolute, or Idea, but this does not detract from the incisiveness of Hegel’s remarks about the nature of the action in a drama and the organization in a painting.

In this book, therefore, I should like to open inquiry into Hegel’s philosophy of art. I am aware that it is almost impossible to do justice to the richness of his thought in a work as short as this one. Several objections will be raised by those who have read his lectures on aesthetics—that various important insights have been neglected, for instance, or that some profound generalizations have been slighted. But my aim here is very modest. I am primarily concerned with presenting the main principles of Hegel’s theory of art with the hope of stimulating an interest in a seminal work on art. If I have frequently omitted reference to much of the Hegelian metaphysics, it is not because the Hegelian picture of reality is not worthy of consideration, but because I believe (1) the traditional objections to this picture are valid, and (2) Hegel’s observations about the arts can be appreciated without entailing a commitment to his ontology. Thus, I have written this book for all who have wondered whether Hegel’s views on art can have any meaning for a highly skeptical and critical generation. For this reason, much historical material has also been omitted. Sufficient histories of philosophy abound which show Hegel’s importance from an historical perspective.

For special help in making this book possible I am indebted to the American Council of Learned Societies for granting me a Fellowship during 1951-1952; to the Research Foundation of the State University of New York for making funds available for publication; to Mrs. Ruth Bellamy, of University Publishers, for her cogent editorial advice; and to Professor Bernard F. Huppé and my wife for their many helpful suggestions.

JACK KAMINSKY

I. THE IDEA

BECAUSE Hegel’s philosophy of fine art is based not only on his observation of art works and techniques but also on his theory of reality, it is necessary to understand Hegel’s metaphysics in order to attain a clear comprehension of his aesthetic theory. A detailed, complete explication of the Hegelian analysis of reality would require a much more ambitious undertaking than this modest volume. However, in this chapter I will outline the Hegelian metaphysics in order to indicate (1) the role that art plays for Hegel in human affairs, and (2) why Hegel’s system requires the existence of art.

Perhaps the most important notion to understand in Hegel’s theory is the concept which he called the Idea, for it is the Idea which gives art its subject matter and its meaningfulness. The Philosophy of Fine Art contains several careful explications of the connotation to be attributed to the Idea, but the fuller and more precise attempt at definition is to be found in the two works on logic, the Science of Logic and the Encyclopedical Logic.{1}

In the works on logic Hegel not only attempts to show how logical forms gradually evolve out of experience, but he also gives us a full account of the problems that gradually forced him to include such a term as Idea in his system. Primarily these problems arise out of some dilemmas and ambiguities that Kant had left as a heritage to his disciples. First of all, one serious puzzle arose because of Kant’s espousal of a unique dualism. He had argued for the existence of two sorts of reality. On the one hand, there is that of which we are immediately aware and which Kant called phenomena or experience. This reality is of a very curious sort since its formation is almost completely dependent upon the kind of mind that human beings possess. The world of which we are aware is permeated by space and time, but these formal aspects of our perception are necessarily imposed upon perception by ourselves. We describe the world in terms of objects, properties, and relations, but this description occurs because the cognitive faculties of human beings contain the categories of substance, accident, and causality. In short, we have no right to believe that the world would remain the same if human minds were non-existent. Another entity with a different type of mind might not perceive things at all in the way we do. But Kant cautions us not to be unduly skeptical about the possibility of obtaining absolutely certain knowledge. Such knowledge can be obtained if we simply recognize our limitations and analyze the experience that is presented to us. We fall into error and skepticism only when we attempt to speak about matters that are inherently non-experiential.

Kant recognized, however, that if experience were the only reality, then solipsism would be the only philosophy worth believing. If the world man encounters is the kind of world it is because of the mind that he happens to have, then everything to which he ascribes existence exists because of his mind. Destroy his mind and the world is destroyed. This conclusion Kant sought to avoid, and he therefore posited a second reality, the world of noumena, or things-in-themselves. The noumena for Kant were the realities that were present prior to their conversion by the forms and categories of the human mind. They were what entities would be like if they had not undergone the transformations of space and time and the categories. They were the Lockean substance—unknown but indubitable.

By positing these noumena Kant avoided the pitfalls of solipsism and subjective idealism. But at the same time he introduced a difficulty that was to plague all the later idealists of the nineteenth century. If knowledge of the world can only be knowledge of the world of phenomena, then how can we be permitted to speak of entities that cannot partake of such a world? In fact, Kant sometimes spoke of these entities as if they were many in number and as if they caused the content of experience to be precisely what it is. But how could these categories, Plurality and Causality—which Kant had specifically claimed could apply only to spatiotemporal phenomena—apply to what was outside the forms of space and time?{2}

A second problem arose in connection with the categories themselves. Kant had described twelve categories which were supposed to form the structure of experience. But Kant’s explanation of the principle that governed the deduction of the categories was not satisfactory. Furthermore, Kant had not indicated why twelve and only twelve categories were required. It was not sufficient to argue that these intrinsic structures did in fact permeate the experiences of human beings. This type of psychological argument could not validate Kant’s belief that such structures were necessary if experience was to occur. Something can be common to experience without being necessary to it. Furthermore, Kant’s view that experience is not possible without such structures is also a psychological argument and, therefore, unwarranted. Kant asserted that we cannot think away the categories and the forms of space and time. But the fact that we cannot think away a given concept does not make the concept necessary. We may have been trained from childhood to use the concept; it may have certain emotional implications which prohibit our ability to reject it. It may be necessary to us in a psychological but not a logical sense.

Finally, Kant’s endeavor to show that the categories were derived from the judgments employed in ordinary formal logic was also unsatisfactory.{3} Kant had, for example, asserted that his category of Unity was a derivation from the purely universal judgment found in logic. Since thinking requires the logical form all X is Y, the mind must employ concepts of Wholeness and of Unity. Similarly, the presence in our logic of categorical judgments like X is Y where X takes proper names as values seemed to Kant to point to the need for the mind to operate in terms of individuals and properties, i.e., the categories of Substance and Accident.{4} All the categories were inferred in this way from the various judgments in the traditional logic.

However, this attempt to show the necessity of admitting specific structures into experience gave rise to two objections. (1) Kant had not adequately analyzed how statements about the categories could be inferred from statements of logic. The statements that denoted the categories were synthetic a priori; the statements of logic were analytic a priori. How could an analytic a priori judgment give rise to a synthetic a priori one? What assertion of formal logic, for example, allows the deduction of every effect must have a cause? (2) Even if there were some way of inferring categories from logic, the major aspect of the problem would still not be resolved. Inquiry would have to be directed towards an explanation of the origin and necessity of formal logic itself.{5} Why should the axioms of traditional logic be considered the only ones that can properly be employed in all thinking? If thought is to be capable of proving anything at all, Hegel declared, if logic must insist upon the necessity of proofs, and if it proposes to teach the theory of demonstration, its first care should be to give a reason for its own subject-matter, and to see that it is necessary.{6}

The necessary existence of the categories, therefore, had not been proved. And, as a result, two alternatives presented themselves to the followers of Kant. Either Kant’s entire transcendental scheme was to be rejected on the grounds that it had not really answered Hume’s objections, or else a search was to be made for some yet undiscovered principle whose necessity in experience could not be questioned and from which all the categories could be deduced.{7} Hegel, along with Fichte and Schelling, accepted the second alternative. As will be seen, the search for this principle led Hegel to the construction of his own philosophy with its concept of the Idea.

Finally, a third major objection was directed against Kant. Kant had maintained that the only knowledge available to us was that derived from the phenomenal, not the noumenal, world. However, our minds do not always function in the most appropriate way. We recognize that there are noumena, but instead of admitting that we can know nothing about this domain of reality, we attempt to ask the same questions of it as we do of the phenomenal world. Since we find general laws in the phenomenal world, we expect to find general laws that will hold for both the noumenal and the phenomenal worlds. As a result, we are gradually led to ask questions concerning the origins of the universe and the nature of the Being that created it. We attempt to apply to noumena the categories that can only be legitimately used with phenomena. When this occurs, Kant explained, we suddenly find ourselves involved in all sorts of curious dilemmas. We find ourselves able to prove that the world was created in time and also that it was not created in time. We can prove that there are indivisible eternal substances and also that there are no indivisible eternal substances. Such contradictions, Kant asserted, can never be resolved because the questions that were originally asked were not really legitimate. We can ask questions about phenomena, but all questions about noumena will lead us to contradictions. Human reason, therefore, oversteps itself as soon as it attempts to formulate positive conclusions about such noumenal matters as the soul, the universe, and God.

However, even Kant had recognized that there were some features of experience that seemed to require the existence of specific noumena. The fact that human beings are involved in moral situations, for example, seemed to imply—even if no proof could be given—that God existed. Thus, although no direct information could be obtained about the noumenal world, some inferences about it seemed to be possible. In short assuming there is a noumenal world, we could not be so ignorant about it as Kant believed.

In the light of these three general objections Hegel supplied four revisions of the Kantian views:

1. Kant seemed to think that the limitations of human reason were revealed by the seemingly irresolvable contradictions and dilemmas regarding questions about the soul, the universe, and God. But Hegel argued that contradictions were involved in every inquiry that reason conducted.{8} In the most immediate observation there is implicit what is not observable. When we see a table we are also aware that in the same observation there is that which is not a table. But reason is not content with this apparent contradiction. Reason resolves the contradiction by making explicit the law that things cannot be both A and not-A at the same time and in the same respect. Similarly, the fact that questions about the soul, the universe, and God lead to contradictions is not sufficient to make such questions spurious. It might very well be that the philosophic scheme which will resolve such contradictions remains to be found.

2. Kant had limited the powers of reason because he believed that it was invalid to deduce non-empirical conclusions from empirical data. But Hegel reiterated his thesis that the very essence of knowledge is to go from the observable to the non-observable, from the immediate to the mediate, from the explicit to the implicit. We use phenomena in order to gain insight into natural laws which are themselves never observable.

3. Kant may have been right in declaring that without the twelve categories there could be no human experience. But he was wrong in believing that these twelve exhausted all the necessary features that characterized experience. The concept of Becoming, for example, was also required in the description of experience. To distinguish the real from the unreal, the concept of Concrete was also needed. Furthermore, Kant had a mistaken view of the occurrence of structure in experience. He believed that all the necessary features are given as soon as experience occurs. But just as the essence of the acorn steadily unfolds until the oak is reached, so also the necessary features in experience unfold as experience continues. Not only the body evolves, but experience as well. At any given moment in the evolution of body additional characteristics have still to appear which are part of the essence, or form, of the body. Similarly, at any given moment in the evolution of experience further characteristics (categories) have still to occur which are part of the essence, or form, of experience. For this reason Kant’s categories were only a small portion of the truth. They were descriptions of the necessary features that experience possessed at a given moment, not of the features it could possess once it had realized all potentialities. A more inclusive and thorough account of the categories was required.

4. Finally, Hegel who, unlike Kant, had strong ties to the arts believed that Kant’s position made the arts cognitively meaningless. For Kant, cognitive judgments referred either to the structure or the content of experience. But what was to be done with judgments such as X is beautiful? Kant had argued that the predicate beautiful was not to be equated with any scientific predicate. In fact, he explicitly stated that all attempts to turn aesthetic judgments into scientific or empirical ones were doomed to failure. Aesthetic judgments were to be regarded as referring to a very special kind of feeling—the harmony of the cognitive faculties—which occurs when certain specific objects are presented to the senses. In short, Hegel pointed out, Kant was making the aesthetic judgment strictly subjective. Whereas the statements of science refer to phenomena which are at least in some mysterious way attached to noumena, the statements of aesthetics refer strictly to human feelings. The predicate beautiful is to be used to indicate the emotion that is aroused when a given object appears; it is not a description of a property of the object.

Hegel, however, was convinced that a more thorough examination of the categories would show that the predicate beautiful had as much application as has any other predicate. As experience evolves, religious as well as aesthetic concepts become necessary means by which experience is made intelligible.

Hegel, therefore, had some very serious reservations about the Kantian philosophy. He agreed that Kant was the first philosopher to deal with the ways in which the human mind creates its own reality, but felt that he had left too much unexplained. He had not dealt adequately with the categories and, because of the resultant restrictions on knowledge, had been forced to eliminate aesthetics as a genuine area of knowledge. What was demanded, therefore, was a full-scale revision of