Abstract Art fulfils Hegel's search for the Idea
William Digges
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Abstract
This papers proposes the argument that had Hegel been alive today, the current art mediums would have fulfilled his search for the Ideal in Aesthetics.
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Rethinking Hegel’s Modern Conception of Art
in: Stefan Bird-Pollan u.a. (Hg.): Hegel’s Political Aesthetics: Art in Modern Society, London: Bloomsbury, 196-211., 2020
The paper presents a revised interpretation of Hegel’s philosophy of art that is based on the dialectics of the three forms of art analyzed by Hegel. I argue that the dialectics only makes sense if we take the romantic form of art as the sublation of the other two. Accordingly, Hegel has to be understood as championing a modern conception of art, not a classical one. As I show, three characteristics are of primary importance for this modern conception of art: Firstly, art has no firm foundations and thus struggles to accomplish its aims. The struggle in question, secondly, takes place among a plurality of artworks, which is itself realized within a system of different arts. Thirdly, the lack of firm foundations has the consequence that art is constitutively bound up with interpretation and art criticism and thus with conceptual practice.
The Impact of Hegel's Thought on Art with an Approach to the Romanticist Movement
nima ghasemi dehaghi & alma ghasemi dehaghi, 2019
Hegel was one of the most important German idealist philosophers who presented a new understanding of (aesthetics) in (art). From Hegel's perspective, each work of art consists of two parts: 1-The (spiritual) meaning 2-The (physical) form aspect, for this reason, this adaptation itself gives rise to the basic types of art. In fact, the basic character (Romantic Art) is already provided and the (spirit) transcends (matter) and becomes an independent being. In this research, we seek to find new modes of expanding the aesthetic in the realm (art) by approaching art in the period of (romanticism) and getting assistance from (aesthetically) Hegel's perspective. The result is that if we call the work (art) beautiful since its creator is the (spirit) human being, it can be far superior to nature's yield. Hence, in his aesthetics, Hegel also discusses beauty and natural beauty, as he thinks the worst of human contemplation result is superior to nature, because there is always (the spirit), freedom and presence of the artist. So, (beauty) only benefits from the source of the ultimate truth and testifies to it.
Hegel's Aesthetics
Hegel’s epic odyssey of the soul paints the picture of an absolute spirit (God) which is attempting to disclose its own essence to itself through individual spirits. As such, it must proceed in stages — and at every stage of this cosmic self- disclosure, the Absolute must manifest itself to itself in what I like to call higher and higher “degrees of presence”. At the last and highest stage, spirit makes itself manifest to spirit as spirit and in spirit, i.e. by those means afforded to the philosopher. Hegel’s conception of the ultimate moment of spiritual apotheosis as being achievable through thinking has very real implications for his account of art and aesthetics — which are relegated, perhaps, to a subordinate position in his own time. Wether this is a self-serving exaggeration of the philosopher’s importance is in some sense outside of the scope of our present investigation — for out of it flows an astonishingly lucid and consistent account of both the power of art, and its potential to disclose truths of ultimate interest to human beings. Because Hegel’s aesthetics are grounded in, and are congruent with such a robust metaphysics, they are endowed with the means to appraise both the value of individual artworks and the spiritual potential of particular art forms. Hegel is, for better or worse, in the business of making hierarchical distinctions in the realm of art (perhaps one of the greatest taboos in the modern intellectual landscape). What exactly does his hierarchical appraisal of symbolic, classical and romantic art say about both art itself and our modern condition? Do we dwell today in a field of perdition, a vapid and Geist-less zeitgeist? Does the ‘end of art’ herald the impoverishment of spirit? These difficult and tantalizing questions I shall attempt to elucidate in the forthcoming paper.
The Art of Hegel’s Aesthetics: Hegelian Philosophy and the Perspectives of Art History
2017
Some contributors have thought it important to refer to a larger range of specialist critical editions and commentaries (often using the standard abbreviations when referring to these versions). Of these, the most impor tant are the following:
Form and History. On Hegels Aesthetics
In this article, I discuss the philosophical position that marks the end of the Age of Aesthetics: Hegel's philosophy of art. I demonstrate how it has passed the test of time, and will further defend its systematic outlines. I reconstruct Hegel's philosophy of art in a way that relies less on Hegel's own conceptual terminology, but, rather, attempts to shed light on the insights it can afford with regard to some more recent discussions: on the one hand, discussions about how to read Hegel of contemporary debates in postanalytical and continental philosophy, and on the other hand, in light of the post-Hegelian philosophy of art. I reconstruct Hegel's philosophy of art in the light of two key concepts: form and unity. Overall, my article has two parts. The first one deals with Hegel's concept of form, the second deals with his concept of unity. In the background of my argument stands Hegel's thought that art is a particular form of the development of the concept. Hegel's theory allows for an immanent reconstruction of art and thus a thinking of the autonomy of art. We should describe art as a particular form of experience for which a specific unity is characteristic-a kind of unity that entails that the form of experience cannot be understood in a formalist way, but must rather be understood as something that develops in and through history.
Essays/Aufsätze The End of Art and the Non-End of Religion: Hegel on Aesthetics and Religion
While Hegel's infamous "end of art" thesis states that art is "for us, a thing of the past" he insists that philosophy and, to a degree that is often underestimated by contemporary readers, religion endure within the structure of modern life. In this paper I aim to demonstrate how by focusing on Hegel's claim that religion meets no end, we can come to a better understanding of how and why he thinks art does end. This will lead us away from common, but false, picture of Hegel as being indiierent (or even hostile) to art's sensuous mode of intelligibility. Inasmuch as religion remains both necessarily sensuous and a component of social life that realizes freedom and divinity within modernity, the "problem" with art cannot be its sensuousness per se. What art ultimately finds itself unable to do, and what religion can do, is find a way to reconcile the destabilizing force of individual, subjective freedom with a jointly-held representation of who and what we are and what we value most, what Hegel calls "divinity" (das Göttliche). By countenancing the vital role of religion in Hegel's thought, we can therefore better understand one of his most famous, and least understood philosophical claims.
The End of Art and the Non-End of Religion: Hegel on Aesthetics and Religion
Journal for the History of Modern Theology / Zeitschrift für Neuere Theologiegeschichte
While Hegel’s infamous “end of art” thesis states that art is “for us, a thing of the past” he insists that philosophy and, to a degree that is often underestimated by contemporary readers, religion endure within the structure of modern life. In this paper I aim to demonstrate how by focusing on Hegel’s claim that religion meets no end, we can come to a better understanding of how and why he thinks art does end. This will lead us away from common, but false, picture of Hegel as being indifferent (or even hostile) to art’s sensuous mode of intelligibility. Inasmuch as religion remains both necessarily sensuous and a component of social life that realizes freedom and divinity within modernity, the “problem” with art cannot be its sensuousness per se. What art ultimately finds itself unable to do, and what religion can do, is find a way to reconcile the destabilizing force of individual, subjective freedom with a jointly-held representation of who and what we are and what we value most...
Review Of After The Beautiful: Hegel And The Philosophy Of Pictorial Modernism By R. B. Pippin
2015
In After the Beautiful, Robert Pippin articulates and defends a modified version of Hegelian philosophy of art. The "after" in his title indicates both "in the spirit and style of" and "since," so that we are offered a recognizably Hegelian story that is also distinctively adapted to modern life and art in surprising, non-Hegelian ways. He then undertakes to put this Hegelian philosophy of art to work to investigate and elucidate the achievements of pictorial modernism, principally those of Manet and Cezanne, "the grandfather and father of modernism in painting," as Pippin puts it (p. 2). The articulation, defense, investigation, and elucidation are organized around two sets of large, important claims that Pippin makes about Hegel. 1) Hegel is right that art, or at least important art that is responsive to the highest ambitions and possibilities of artmaking, is a socially inflected, affective-sensuous presentation that serves as a critical vehicle of self-knowledge in relation to possibilities
Hegel's Dialectic of Artistic Meaning
The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 1976
WHATEVER ELSE they are, works of art are intentional human products. Our responses to such works are understandings and interpretations. That the works are or may be physical objects, cultural symptoms, or commodities and that audiences may be shocked, sexually ...
he introduction of a historical perspective in aesthetics is usually traced back to Hegel's 1820 lectures on fine art. Given at the Univer- sity of Berlin, these lectures were amongst Hegel's most successful and best attended. 1 By then a recognized intellectual figure, Hegel sets out
2006
T he introduction of a historical perspective in aesthetics is usually traced back to Hegel's 1820 lectures on fine art. Given at the University of Berlin, these lectures were amongst Hegel's most successful and best attended. 1 By then a recognized intellectual figure, Hegel sets out to salvage art from its subjectivization in Kantian and romantic aesthetics, but ends up declaring that art, considered in its highest vocation, is a thing of the past. This judgment on art-that its greatness is a thing of the past-follows from Hegel's attempt to combine a notion of art's historicity with a conception of its absolute essence. Hegel, however, was not the first to think systematically about the historicity of art. For this aspect of art-and, indeed, of reason too-was explored philosophically a good sixty years before Hegel's Berlin lectures by a young and aspiring student of Kant's, namely Johann Gottfried Herder. In a series of essays and fragments, Herder develops an advanced and elaborate alternative to Hegel's conception, a fundamentally non-essentialist approach to art, history, and reason. Over the past twenty years or so, Hegel's attempt to combine an essentialist and an historicist approach to art has been revitalized, with increasing force and sophistication, by Arthur Danto. The attempts to rehabilitate Herder's aesthetics, however, have been few and far between. 3 This is the aim of the present essay, which seeks to contrast the young Herder's non-essentialist understanding of the historicity of art with Hegel's essentialist views on the artwork's historicity, pleading for a rehabilitation of the former. 4 I approach this task from three different directions. First, I offer a brief account of Herder's and Hegel's views on reason, history, and art. Second, I look closer at their conceptions of classical tragedy and sculpture, which, due to Winckelmann's studies,
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Rethinking Hegel and Heidegger on Art
Review of "After the Beautiful: Hegel and the Philosophy of Pictorial Modernism" by Robert B. Pippin, and "Heidegger and the Work of Art History," edited by Amanda Boetzkes and Aron Vinegar.
Between Roses and Camels. Hegel's Aesthetics in the Context of the Artworld and Art History
Hegel y el círculo de las ciencias, vol. II, ed. by Miguel Giusti, Thomas Sören Hoffmann & Agemir Bavaresco. Editora Fundação Fênix., 2023
The main aims of the present paper are a) the investigation of Hegel's persistent, vital engagement with the art and artists of his time, which matured his “concrete” Philosophy of Art; b) the consideration of Hegel’s Aesthetics as a scientific discipline; c) the exploration of the approximations and the resistances between Philosophy of Art and Art History, as well as the diverse constellation of art historians who have engaged with Hegel's Aesthetics: from his Berlin listeners to his most brilliant 20th- and 21st-century interpreters; d) the evaluation of resonances in the contemporary Artworld of themes and figures of Hegel’s Aesthetics and Philosophy, bringing about a dialogue between past and present.
What Was Abstract Art?(From the Point of View of Hegel)
Critical Inquiry, 2002
The emergence of abstract art, first in the early part of the century with Kandinsky, Malevich, and Mondrian, and then in the much more celebrated case of America in the fifties (Rothko, Pollock, et. al.) remains puzzling. Such a great shift in aesthetic standards and taste is not only unprecedented in its radicality.
The Comic Dissolution of Art: The Last Act of Hegel's "Aesthetics"
Theatre Journal, 1981
The whole force of Hegel's discussion of art is directed toward its dissolution as a preliminary to the philosophical gesture of revealing the Absolute to itself.
Art between Hegel and Heidegger
dissertation
In this thesis I tried to see some similarities and differences between Hegel and Heidegger, with regard to their writings on art. To account for Hegel’s Philosophy of Art I was mainly based on his Lectures, but when I saw necessary I moved to his other writings as well. For Heidegger things were simpler, since his thoughts on art are mainly exposed in the essay “The Origin of the Work of Art”. Heidegger was influenced by Hegel in many directions. These influences I found mainly in his account of the role of the artist, of truth, and especially in the notion of the end of art. But in all these instances, Heidegger had added something of his own.
Hegel's Symbolic Stage: An Old Perspective on Contemporary Art
Contemporary Aesthetics, 2013
This paper proposes an evaluation of contemporary art works in light of some of the concepts embedded in Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel's symbolic stage. My belief is that an analysis of Hegel's conditions for the affirmation of art opens the door to a discussion of contemporary artistic trends, a discussion that also takes distance from the (perhaps) abused question of what defines art. Art does more than question itself; art questions, and challenges, the nature of our perception.
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