Lectures on Aesthetics
Encyclopedia
Aesthetics
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy dealing with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. It is more scientifically defined as the study of sensory or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste...
given by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel was a German philosopher, one of the creators of German Idealism. His historicist and idealist account of reality as a whole revolutionized European philosophy and was an important precursor to Continental philosophy and Marxism.Hegel developed a comprehensive...
in Heidelberg in 1818 an in Berlin in 1820/21, 1823, 1826 and 1828/29. It was compiled in 1835 by his publisher Heinrich Gustav Hotho
Heinrich Gustav Hotho
Heinrich Gustav Hotho was a German historian of art and Right Hegelian. He is famous for being the compiler and editor of Hegel's posthumous work Lectures on Aesthetics....
, using Hegel's own hand-written notes and notes his students took during the lectures but eventually distorting his master's thought.
Hegel's Aesthetics is regarded by many as one of the greatest aesthetic theories to have been produced since Aristotle
Aristotle
Aristotle was a Greek philosopher and polymath, a student of Plato and teacher of Alexander the Great. His writings cover many subjects, including physics, metaphysics, poetry, theater, music, logic, rhetoric, linguistics, politics, government, ethics, biology, and zoology...
. Hegel's thesis of the "end of art" influenced several thinkers like Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno
Theodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
, Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger
Martin Heidegger was a German philosopher known for his existential and phenomenological explorations of the "question of Being."...
, György Lukács, Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida
Jacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
and Arthur Danto
Arthur Danto
Arthur Coleman Danto Arthur Coleman Danto Arthur Coleman Danto (born January 1, 1924 is an American art critic, and professor of philosophy. He is best known as the influential, long-time art critic for The Nation and for his work in philosophical aesthetics and philosophy of history, though he...
. Hegel was himself influenced by Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann
Johann Joachim Winckelmann was a German art historian and archaeologist. He was a pioneering Hellenist who first articulated the difference between Greek, Greco-Roman and Roman art...
, Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant
Immanuel Kant was a German philosopher from Königsberg , researching, lecturing and writing on philosophy and anthropology at the end of the 18th Century Enlightenment....
, Friedrich Schiller
Friedrich Schiller
Johann Christoph Friedrich von Schiller was a German poet, philosopher, historian, and playwright. During the last seventeen years of his life , Schiller struck up a productive, if complicated, friendship with already famous and influential Johann Wolfgang von Goethe...
and Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling , later von Schelling, was a German philosopher. Standard histories of philosophy make him the midpoint in the development of German idealism, situating him between Fichte, his mentor prior to 1800, and Hegel, his former university roommate and erstwhile friend...
. Heidegger calls Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics "the most comprehensive reflection on the essence of art
Art
Art is the product or process of deliberately arranging items in a way that influences and affects one or more of the senses, emotions, and intellect....
that the West possesses".
Content
The lectures are presented under three broad headers.- The first part is devoted to the general notions of beautyBeautyBeauty is a characteristic of a person, animal, place, object, or idea that provides a perceptual experience of pleasure, meaning, or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as part of aesthetics, sociology, social psychology, and culture...
and ideal. - The second part examines this ideal as it realizes itself in three stages, the "particular forms of art", each respectively represented "in full" by Egyptian architecture (which displays its aporetical nature under the guise of a SphinxSphinxA sphinx is a mythical creature with a lion's body and a human head or a cat head.The sphinx, in Greek tradition, has the haunches of a lion, the wings of a great bird, and the face of a woman. She is mythicised as treacherous and merciless...
), the representation of the gods in classical Greek statuary and the Passion of Christ (taken as the content of representation):- symbolic art,
- classical art
- romantic art
- The third and final part concerns itself with the examination of each of the five major art forms in ascending order:
- architectureArchitectureArchitecture is both the process and product of planning, designing and construction. Architectural works, in the material form of buildings, are often perceived as cultural and political symbols and as works of art...
- sculpture
- paintingPaintingPainting is the practice of applying paint, pigment, color or other medium to a surface . The application of the medium is commonly applied to the base with a brush but other objects can be used. In art, the term painting describes both the act and the result of the action. However, painting is...
- musicMusicMusic is an art form whose medium is sound and silence. Its common elements are pitch , rhythm , dynamics, and the sonic qualities of timbre and texture...
- poetry
- architecture
Hegel's exposition is faithful to his dialectical method, showing how the various forms art has taken are dissolved and give place to "higher" forms through the work of the negative, i.e. the internal contradictions these forms each bear in their time.
Hegel documents the rise of art from symbol
Symbol
A symbol is something which represents an idea, a physical entity or a process but is distinct from it. The purpose of a symbol is to communicate meaning. For example, a red octagon may be a symbol for "STOP". On a map, a picture of a tent might represent a campsite. Numerals are symbols for...
ic architecture, classical sculpture
Sculpture
Sculpture is three-dimensional artwork created by shaping or combining hard materials—typically stone such as marble—or metal, glass, or wood. Softer materials can also be used, such as clay, textiles, plastics, polymers and softer metals...
and romantic
Romantic poetry
Romanticism, a philosophical, literary, artistic and cultural era which began in the mid/late-1700s as a reaction against the prevailing Enlightenment ideals of the day , also influenced poetry...
poetry
Poetry
Poetry is a form of literary art in which language is used for its aesthetic and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning...
. At the time it was noted for the wealth of pictures included with it. In Hegel's discussion of sculpture he outlined his ideas on human beauty. Most notably, these lectures famously included Hegel's pronouncement of the "death of art" (i.e., the notion that art could no longer be a proper vehicle for humanity's comprehension of its own essence).
Transcripts
- Vorlesung über Ästhetik. Berlin 1820/21. Eine Nachschrift, ed. H. Schneider. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.
- Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst, ed. A. Gethmann-Siefert. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2003.
- Philosophie der Kunst oder Ästhetik. Nach Hegel. Im Sommer 1826. Mitschrift Friedrich Carl Hermann Victor von Kehler, eds. A. Gethmann-Siefert and B. Collenberg-Plotnikov. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004.
- Philosophie der Kunst. Vorlesung von 1826, eds. A Gethmann-Siefert, J.-I. Kwon and K. Berr. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004.
English Translation
- Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T.M. Knox, 2 vols. Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975.
Further reading
- Adorno, Theodor W.Theodor W. AdornoTheodor W. Adorno was a German sociologist, philosopher, and musicologist known for his critical theory of society....
, 2004, Aesthetic Theory, Continuum International Publishing Group. - Bungay, StephenStephen BungayStephen Bungay is a British management consultant, historian and author who has made a special study of the Battle of Britain.He read Modern Languages at Oxford, where he received an MA with First Class Honours. He subsequently studied for a doctorate in philosophy at Oxford and the University of...
, 1984, Beauty and Truth. A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press. - Danto, Arthur Coleman, 1986. The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art. Columbia University Press.
- Danto, Arthur C., 1998, After the End of Art, Princeton University Press.
- Derrida, JacquesJacques DerridaJacques Derrida was a French philosopher, born in French Algeria. He developed the critical theory known as deconstruction and his work has been labeled as post-structuralism and associated with postmodern philosophy...
, 1987, The Truth in Painting, trans. Geoffrey Bennington & Ian McLeod. Chicago & London: Chicago University Press. - Desmond, William, 1986, Art and the Absolute. A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics. Albany: SUNY Press.
- Gethmann-Siefert, AnnemarieAnnemarie Gethmann-SiefertAnnemarie Gethmann-Siefert is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hagen, Germany.-Biography:Gethmann-Siefert was born in 1945, studied philosophy, art history and theology in Münster, Bonn, Innsbruck and Bochum. She earned her PhD in philosophy 1973 from the Ruhr University Bochum...
, 1984, Die Funktion der Kunst in der Geschichte. Untersuchungen zu Hegels Ästhetik. Bonn: Bouvier (in German language). - Gethmann-Siefert, AnnemarieAnnemarie Gethmann-SiefertAnnemarie Gethmann-Siefert is a professor of philosophy at the University of Hagen, Germany.-Biography:Gethmann-Siefert was born in 1945, studied philosophy, art history and theology in Münster, Bonn, Innsbruck and Bochum. She earned her PhD in philosophy 1973 from the Ruhr University Bochum...
, Einführung in Hegel's Ästhetik, Wilhelm Fink (German). - Geulen, Eva, 2006, The End of Art. Readings in a Rumor after Hegel, trans. J. McFarland. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
- Houlgate, Stephen (ed.), 2007, Hegel and the Arts. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
- Lukács, György, 2002, Hegel's Aesthetics, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 23, Nr 2, 87-124.
- Maker, W. (ed.), 2000. Hegel and Aesthetics. New York.
- Olivier, Alain P., 2003. Hegel et la Musique. Paris (French).
- Pippin, Robert, 2009. "The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics", The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy , New York http://cco.cambridge.org/extract?id=ccol9780521831673_CCOL9780521831673A016.
- Roche, Mark-William, 1998. Tragedy and Comedy. A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel. Albany. New York.
- Wyss, Beat, 1999, Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.
- Winfield, Richard Dien, 1996. Stylistics. Rethinking the Artforms after Hegel. Albany, Suny Press.
External links
- Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics web version of Selections from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, by Bernard BosanquetBernard Bosanquet (philosopher)Bernard Bosanquet was an English philosopher and political theorist, and an influential figure on matters of political and social policy in late 19th and early 20th century Britain...
& W.M. Bryant, "The Journal of Speculative Philosophy", 1886; published by Marxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet ArchiveMarxists Internet Archive is a volunteer based non-profit organization that maintains a multi-lingual Internet archive of Marxist writers and other similar authors...