The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4)
- Language:
- English
- Status:
- Complete work
- Authorship:
- Recorded or compiled by others
- Condition of the text:
- No scanning noise detected (automatic measure over the whole text, not checked by hand)
- Extent:
- ~180,000 words · 873 passages
Cite this work
- APAHegel. (n.d.). The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4). Digital reproduction: SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel/the-philosophy-of-fine-art-volume-3-of-4
- MLAHegel. The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4). Digital reproduction, SigPhi, https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel/the-philosophy-of-fine-art-volume-3-of-4.
- ChicagoHegel. The Philosophy of Fine Art, volume 3 (of 4). Digital reproduction, SigPhi. https://sigphiai.com/en/works/georg-wilhelm-friedrich-hegel/the-philosophy-of-fine-art-volume-3-of-4.
Reference to the edition that SigPhi reproduces: SigPhi is its digital reproduction, not its publisher. The edition's year is not in the metadata (hence "n.d."), and the translator appears only when recorded.
What it is about
The third volume of Hegel's lectures on aesthetics, in English translation.
Context and history
Like all of Hegel's lecture courses, he did not write this text: editors assembled it after his death from his notes and from students' notebooks of different years. The scheme people quote — symbolic, classical and romantic art, and the passage from architecture to poetry — is his, but the particular wording often is not. The most disputed thesis, that of the end of art, does not say that art comes to an end: it says art has ceased to be the highest way in which an age tells itself the truth.
Editorial context, not a citable source: unlike the passages of the work itself, these statements cannot be checked against the corpus.
theogonies effervescent with abstract thoughts and their incomplete elaboration, single objects of sacred association in stone and wood and so forth, and the representation remains unaccommodating, monotonous or confused, stiff and dry. More especially in plastic art the facial expression is insipid with a repose which does not so much express spirituality in its essential penetration as a purely animal emptiness, or conversely is remorseless and exaggerated in its emphasis on characteristic traits. In the same way the bodily forms and their motion are devoid of life, the arms, for example, are glued to the body, the legs are not divided, or are clumsily moved, or in angular and constrained modes; and in other respects such figures are ill-shaped, suffer from narrow compression, or are excessively lank and extended. On the other hand we find that much more devotion and industry is spent upon accessories such as drapery, hair, weapons, and ornaments of a similar nature; the folds of the drapery remain wooden and independent, without being able to accommodate themselves to the limbs, just as we may often see for ourselves in images of the Virgin and saints of early times, where they are in part run together in monotonous regularity, and in part are continually broken up in harsh corners, not flowing freely in their lines, but scattered about with diffuseness over too wide a surface. And in the same way the first attempts at poetry are full of breaks, devoid of connection, monotonous, dominated in an abstract way by one idea or emotion, or elsewhere wild, violent, the particular being obscurely assimilated, and the whole as yet not bound together in a secure and ideal organic unity. It is only, however, after such preparatory work as the above that the style which is the main subject of our present inquiry commences with what is truly genuine fine art.…