Aesthetics in Modern and Postmodern period
It is not easy to define what is exactly modern and Postmodernism. By the terms "Modern Postmodern world", we mean to include all post Renaissance, post scientific revolution western history. It may be more or less inclusive. In its broadest interpretation, modernism signifies the world as perceived by Western individualist culture and Postmodern signifies the rejection of the tendency of totalization, universalization (metanarratives) and the promotion of the particulars and individuals (mininarratives) in the field of knowledge, culture, science, and development at large.
We will define the "modern world" for our purposes as the Western world from the Renaissance to the end of World War I. This period shaped aesthetics. No clear historical line need be drawn between classical aesthetics and the modern world. The medieval world still operated with essentially classical assumptions about beauty, harmony, and order. The Renaissance declared itself a rebirth of classical values out of a medieval "darkness." Certainly the visual arts exploded into new forms and new aesthetic attitudes.
As far as aesthetics is concerned the decisive change began with the late seventeenth and eighteenth century’s acknowledgment of sense as the basis of judgment and appreciation. We acknowledge that "modern" culture and philosophy emerges gradually from the medieval and Renaissance world. Aesthetics should be no different. Modern art and modern aesthetics were marked by a sense of optimism, of progress, of new developments and new movement. Feeling gained a legitimacy that made art and aesthetics central to philosophy in a new way.
Between the Sixteenth and Seventeenth Centuries, The new aristocracy and the rising middle-class had money to spend, leisure time, and a high level of literacy. New art forms appeared. The invention of printing created an audience and an insatiable demand for writers to supply new tastes not just for poetry and fiction, but also for comment and criticism. Literature, in particular, saw the rise of a new form of fiction, the novel, in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries.
The rise of the new science (the science of Kepler, Galileo, Descartes, and Newton) created a different standard, empirical evidence, and a new focus of attention, the individual experience of an observer. In philosophy, both the empiricist, led by John Lock, and the rationalist, led by Gottfried Leibniz and Rene Descartes, agreed in turning inward to the individual mind as the arbiter of knowledge.
Modern aesthetics is, first of all, aesthetics of individual experiences of discrete objects. Observers have experiences through their senses. So thinkers such as Anthony Ashley Cooper, the third Earl of Shaftesbury, turned to an aesthetic sense as the source of aesthetic experience. The five ordinary senses were supplemented by the postulation of a sense of beauty and a moral sense that responds to aesthetics and moral qualities in what is observed.
The model for aesthetic sense is not the eye, as usually was the case in the classic world, but the tongue. Taste was transformed into an aesthetic term; foremost among the reasons for this shift is the analogy that taste offers for the diversity, privacy, and immediacy of the kinds of experience that art and beauty produce. When I taste something, I experience that taste without having to think about it. It is my taste in a way that cannot be denied. If something tastes salty to me, no one can make me believe that it doesn’t. Yet someone else may have a different experience. Taste that one person finds pleasant may not please another, and nothing that I can say or do will change that situation. The experience of art and beauty seemed to many early modern philosophers and critics to be exactly like that of taste.
Modern writers on aesthetics struggled to overcome the evident subjectivity of their starting point. For example, we say of Descartes’ “I think therefore, I exist.” Aesthetic response is the most variable form of experience. It is difficult to judge the rightness or wrongness of art; for, experiences of art and beauty are personal and matters of taste.
In addition to taste itself, the problems of aesthetics were multiplied by the chaos of new forms, which created new demands in art and literature during this period. In the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries, many new consumers of art expressed their preferences and taste, and they did not think alike. Artists and writers struggled to find rules that would guide their practice, but many of the most successful artists were the ones who broke the rules. Creativity eventually became a value in itself.
Beauty was a function of the order and harmony of the cosmos in classical and medieval theories. Nature could exemplify beauty because it reflected the greater cosmological order. When modern writers spoke of natural beauty, they began to associate it with sensual experiences of nature. Those experiences could be enhanced by arrangement and by associations with art.
Theories of taste gradually merged into theories of an aesthetic attitude. Taste tended toward a passive response on the model of perception laid down by Locke. The properties of the object were thought of as acting upon the sensory organs; by analogy, natural beauty and works of art were thought to act on a complex inner sense to produce the characteristic experiences of aesthetic taste. But once authority was ceded to the observer and beauty was no longer conceived of as a property of the organism of the cosmos or of transcendent forms, thinkers began to suggest that the observer could convert external sensory data into aesthetic forms by modifying the way the world is perceived. At that point, the analogy of taste was abandoned and was replaced with an active mind whose imaginative powers transform and express what is perceived and its own powers. The aesthetic became, in a phase common to a number of later eighteenth century thinkers, an expression of the powers of the mind itself.
Two characteristics mark the shift to modern aesthetics. The first is the idea of aesthetic experience itself. Aesthetic experience is different and valuable for its own sake. Art and nature alike can supply the means, and the audience participates in converting them to the right "kind" of experience. The second characteristic identifies aesthetic experience with a particular emotion, pleasure. Modern aesthetics becomes fundamentally hedonistic, separating emotional response from the intellect. A number of thinkers, including Immanuel Kant, tried to reunite the intellect and aesthetic judgment. At the end, we can say that the central achievement of early modern aesthetics was to give a philosophical form to aesthetics as a discipline within philosophy.
4.1. Renaissance Art
Renaissance art, such as painting, sculpture, architecture, music and literature are produced during the 14th, 15th, and 16th centuries in Europe under the combined influences of an increased awareness of nature, a revival of classical learning, and a more individualistic view of man. Renaissance did not abruptly break away from medieval values. The French word, ‘renaissance’ literally meant as ‘rebirth’ does not say that it is entirely a new beginning of art, because historical sources suggest that interest in nature, humanistic learning, and individualism which were the hallmarks of renaissance art, were already present in the late medieval period. Renaissance art is parallel with the development that occurred in philosophy, literature, music and science. It had the foundation of classical antiquity and it applied contemporary scientific knowledge into art. Renaissance art marks the transition of Europe from medieval period to early modern age.
In Italy, the renaissance art was influenced by Franciscan radicalism. What is that Franciscan radicalism? It means that St. Francis had rejected the formal scholasticism in theology (armchair theology) and gone out among the poor praising the beauties and spiritual value of nature. His example inspired Italian artists and poets to take pleasure in the world around them. In his canticle of brother sun and sister moon, he calls the things in the nature as brothers and sisters.
The middle ages in the grip of biblical ideas brought out a highly ascetic form of aesthetic theory that they identified in the order, the Divine Order. The role of art and artists got diverted in this approach and in this period. Since the domination of Greek thought in the theories of art has not been done away with in Medieval period, the Renaissance movement too followed the Greeks in terms of its own art. Even though Renaissance period rose against the Scholastic thought, yet it had its own problem. Some of the Renaissance Thinkers especially with regard to Aesthetic thought were Durer, Fracastoro, Ramus, Castelvetro and others. Renaissance Thinkers were engaged in solving the problems like, what is the objective of art? Does art promote morality? What are the primary features of art? What is an end of art? Is art in nature or is it deceptive?
The Renaissance movement basically re-looked into the theory of imitation in the background of the nature of mind. They emphasized the faculty of imagination of the mind as the means of artistic production. With an attempt to get rid of the religious implication of God and philosophical implication of Soul, the Renaissance thinkers brought in the concept of artistic and poetic implications. They argued that mind serves as the mirror that has the capacity to reflect the external nature which was termed as the artistic imagination. Durer points out that this power of imagination is a gift of God and hence he developed the concept of genius. Further, the artistic imagination itself was defined as confined with the power of choice and determination which selects the “beautiful” parts of the nature and reproduces. This concept echoes the ‘selective imitation’ of Socrates. The artistic pleasure derived from various art forms was seen as the achievement of overcoming pain and since pain is lost, the spectator joyously appreciates the artist.
4.2. Edmund Burke (1729-1797)
On Taste
Edmund Burke’s A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), talks about an examination of how sensation, imagination, and judgment are interrelated in the experience of art. Burke explains how sensation, imagination, and judgment determine the experience of pleasure and pain, and how pleasure and pain are represented by the aesthetic concepts of beauty and sublimity.
In his introductory discourse On Taste, Burke begins with the proposition that the standard of both reason and taste is the same in all human creatures. He gives the reason that if some standard principles of judgment were not common in all, then sufficient reason cannot be maintained in the correspondence of life. But, the sense of taste does not have a uniform principle. He further notes that this faculty of human seems not to be within the range of regulation of any standard.
He explains the difficulty in assigning the principles to determine the taste. He claims that the term taste is not extremely accurate and does not attempt to define it the real sense. However, Burke explains that taste could be understood as, “I mean by the word Taste no more than that faculty or those faculties of the mind, which are affected with, or which form a judgment of, the works of imagination and the elegant arts.
He engages in an enquiry to find whether there are any principles by which the imagination is affected which is so common. But he notes on the diversity of taste both in kind and degree that marks its indeterminate position. In this order of enquiry, Burke first categorizes the natural powers of human, as the senses, imagination and judgment.
Senses
Based on the analysis of the sense he draws certain ideas:
· Taste cannot be disputed (it only means that the kind of pleasure or pain experienced through taste of a particular thing cannot be disputed).
· There is a general agreement with the notion of naturally pleasing or disagreeable to the sense.
· There is a difference between natural taste and acquired relish.
· There is in all men a sufficient remembrance of the original natural causes of pleasure, to enable them to bring all things offered to their senses to that standard, and to regulate their feelings and opinions by it.
· To judge a new thing one finds that there is the affection in a natural manner and on the common principles.
· The pleasure of all senses is the same in all (or different to a very small degree)
Imagination
Next, our taste is influenced by our imagination, which for Burke is limited by the information it receives from the senses. He defines it as a kind of some creative power to represent at pleasure the images either in order as received by the senses, or by combining the images in a different order in a new manner.
The products of the imagination please us in the way that they imitate and resemble objects in reality. The imagination creates new images by finding similarities and correspondences between things. For example, we might compare our beloved to a rose. Burke agrees with John Locke that the imagination is more concerned with finding resemblances, whereas the judgment is more about finding differences.
The imagination is greatly affected by two things: 1. knowledge and 2. sensibility (feeling).
First of all, we can have knowledge about both art (e.g., an understanding of the artist’s techniques, forms, genres, etc.) and nature (what reality is like). This knowledge about art and nature affect our taste. An increase in knowledge regarding the above-mentioned two areas, helps to tell whether the objects of the imagination accurately resemble and imitate reality.
Burke says that despite our different levels of expertise, each person can have the following aesthetic experiences:
Pleasure in seeing a natural object imitated
Pleasure in seeing something beautiful, agreeable, or sublime
A feeling of sympathy.
Clearly, these three reactions have much more to do with feeling or sensibility. But he does little to explain how our knowledge and feeling relate to each other, or which is more important. Thus, for Burke the imagination creates resemblances to reality and we find them tasteful or not based on our knowledge and our sensibility. If we lack taste it is because we don’t know much or because our natural feelings are dulled.
Judgment
In the analysis of the ‘judgment’, Burkes shows that works of imagination are not confined to the representation of sensible objects, nor to efforts upon the passions, but extend themselves to the manners, the characters, the actions, and designs, their relations, their virtues, and vices etc. These come within the province of the judgment, which is improved by attention, and by the habit of reasoning. All these make a very considerable part of what are considered as the objects of taste.
Further from the above ideas on sense, imagination and judgment, Burke tries to redefine taste as that which is partly made up of a perception of the primary pleasures of sense, of the secondary pleasures of imagination, and of the conclusions of the reasoning faculty concerning various relations, passions, manners or customs.
When the judgment makes a mistake in taste it is generally due to ignorance, inattention, prejudice, rashness, levity, obstinacy, in short, all those passions, and all those vices, which pervert the judgment. An increase in knowledge regarding art can help us make qualitative judgment of art. Unfortunately, an increase in knowledge often has a negative impact on our enjoyment of a work of art. An unsophisticated person might find great pleasure in a crummy painting, whereas a critic may not. It seems that knowledge and sensibility stand in an inverse relationship to each other. A person with poor judgment may have a stronger emotional reaction to a work of art. They may not know why it is great or beautiful, but they have a strong sensibility.
While Burke discusses the importance of knowledge in relation to both the imagination and the judgment, he associates knowledge especially with the latter. Burke notes that the judgment often gets in the way of our imagination. Our judgments have much more to do with knowledge than feeling. In fact, when we do experience pleasure in understanding, it is often because we are feeling proud of our discernment.
Burke concludes that taste is improved exactly as one improves the judgment, by expansion of knowledge, steady attention to objects and by frequent exercise. However, he determines that there is no proof that taste is a distinct faculty.
Pain, Pleasure and Sublime
Burke says that, in order to understand the origin of our ideas of the sublime and beautiful, we must examine the experience of pain and pleasure. Pain is not simply the removal of pleasure, and pleasure is not simply the removal of pain. Pain may be caused by the removal of pleasure, but pain may also arise in and of itself. Similarly, pleasure may be caused by the removal of pain, but pleasure may arise in and of itself.
Burke declares that the ideas of pain, pleasure, and indifference are clear ideas. These clear ideas may be independent of each other. They are not relations of ideas, or ideas existing only in relation to each other. They each have their own reality.
According to Burke, pain may be a more powerful emotion than pleasure, and may have a much stronger influence on the imagination. However, the idea of pain, or of danger, when the individual is not actually in pain or in danger, may yield a pleasurable form of fear, which is described as delight. This delight is caused by the sublime.
Burke describes the sublime as being the cause of the strongest emotions which the individual is capable of feeling. The sublime may therefore produce pain, fear, or terror. The sublime in its lesser degree may cause admiration, reverence, or respect (Part II, Section I). The sublime in its highest degree may cause total astonishment.
According to Burke, clarity is not the most important quality for great works of art. Obscurity may have a more powerful effect on the imagination than clarity. The sublime may be expressed by this obscurity.
If the sublime is regarded as an obscure source of danger, it may cause a greater degree of fear than if it is regarded as a clear source of danger. This is because a source of danger may seem to be more fearful if it is obscure. Fear and terror can also be caused by a sense of sublime power, or by a dread of something indefinite or unknown which threatens the individual with pain, injury, or annihilation.
Burke argues that the sublime may be caused by deprivation, darkness, solitude, silence, or vacuity. The sublime may also be caused by immensity or infinity. The sublime may also be caused by magnitude, grandeur, or elegance.
The sublime is that which causes astonishment because it is found to have an unimagined eloquence, greatness, significance, or power. However, both pain and pleasure are caused by the sublime, because it causes the most powerful emotions which can be experienced by the individual, including awe, wonder, dread, fear, and terror.
Burke defines beauty as any quality which inspires the individual to feel affection toward that which is perceived as beautiful. Beauty has a positive social quality; in that it inspires love or affection toward whomever is perceived as beautiful.
According to Burke, beauty is not caused by symmetry, or by balanced proportion. Objects which differ in their degree of symmetry may be perceived as being equally beautiful. Objects which differ in their proportions may be perceived as being equally beautiful. Disproportion is not the opposite of beauty. Ugliness is the opposite of beauty.
Burke also says that beauty is not caused by perfection, because imperfect qualities may be perceived as beautiful. Indeed, qualities may sometimes be perceived as more beautiful because they are imperfect. Beauty may be perfect or imperfect.
According to Burke, qualities which reveal beauty include lightness, mildness, clearness, smoothness, gracefulness, and gradual variation. Burke concludes here bringing out the difference between the sublime and beautiful.
Sublime Beautiful
· Vast dimensions Small objects
· Rugged and negligent smooth and polished
· Dark and gloomy not obscure
· Solid and massive light and delicate
Thus, Burke opines the difference between the sublime and the beautiful. A conclusion to be drawn from this theory is that the reason why a great work of art is so inspiring is because it is not merely beautiful, but sublime. While the beauty of a work of art may inspire love or admiration, the sublimity of a work of art may inspire awe or astonishment at its mystery and power.
Conclusion
Burke is confident that the taste can be trained by “extending our knowledge, by a steady attention to our object, and by frequent exercise.” Nevertheless, his arguments raise as many questions as answers. As you reflect on his perspective, here are some tensions that Burke struggles to resolve:
It seems that as we move from the senses to judgment, we experience an increase in knowledge, but at the risk of losing our natural sensibility. The Romantic poets struggled with this loss of spontaneous delight and innocent pleasure. Is there any way to resolve this problem?
It’s one thing to increase your knowledge, but can you exercise or train feelings?
To what extent is virtue a matter of taste? Are good and evil aesthetic categories?
Everyone is capable of making correct aesthetic judgments, but if this requires knowledge and training, how common is good taste?
Burke will often claim that our experiences of the sublime and the beautiful are intuitive and unreasoned. In this view he anticipates the Romantic emphasis on immediate aesthetic experiences. If this is the direction he’s heading in, why does he talk so much about knowledge and judgment? Does taste always require thoughtful consideration and reasoned reflection?
If knowledge of reality is important for assessing the quality of an artist’s imitation, does this privilege realism in art? What if the painter did not want to paint a shoe accurately?
4.3. Immanuel Kant (1724-1804)
Analytic of the Beautiful
Kant first discusses about the nature of judgment of taste. He clarifies the term taste as the faculty of estimating the beautiful and what is required for calling an object beautiful is termed as judgment of taste.
He categorizes the first moment of judgment of taste as moment of Quality from which he derives that the judgment of taste is aesthetic. In other words, we can say that any qualitative judgment can be the judgment of aesthetics. In this sense, since judgment of taste a qualitative judgment, it is rightly called aesthetic judgment.
He rules out the possibility of judgment of taste as cognitive judgment or logical judgment. He confirms that it is aesthetic – that is its determining ground is subjective.
He shows that both pleasure and displeasure from an object is the affection in the subject. This belongs to a separate faculty of discriminating and estimating, and it does not contribute anything to knowledge.
Kant then states that the delight or pleasure which determines the judgment of taste is independent of all interest. He defines ‘interest’ as the delight which is connected with the representation of the real existence of an object. This is why he says that in the case of artistic representation, he considers that interest is not the determinant for judgment of taste. He goes a step further and says a judgment on the beautiful which is tinged with the slightest interest is partial and not a pure judgment of taste.
Kant then enumerates the factors which arouse delight or desire that are coupled with interest. Those are: 1. delight in the agreeable and 2. delight in the good, both of which he says involve a reference to the faculty of desire. Delight in agreeable depends on sensation; delight in good depends on a definite concept.
He draws third factor that also arouse delight but it is not interest-oriented, i.e., 3. delight in the beautiful. All these three factors (agreeable, the beautiful and the good) have corresponding feelings in the satisfaction they give. Agreeable is gratifies a person; the beautiful simply pleases one; and the good is esteemed or approved. Of these three kinds of delight, Kant shows that the taste in the beautiful alone is disinterested and free delight.
So far we have seen that “Taste is the faculty of estimating an object or a mode of representation by means of a delight or aversion apart from any interest. The object of such a delight is called beautiful.”
Kant then begins with his proposition that the beautiful is the object of a universal delight. He argues further that in the judgment of taste the universality of delight is only represented as subjective. He divides the agreeable judgment of taste as taste of sense and the judgment of taste in beauty as taste of reflection.
He classifies aesthetic judgment into empirical and pure. The empirical aesthetic judgment is judgment by agreeableness and disagreeableness and is judgment of sense material; whereas the pure aesthetic judgment is that by which beauty is predicated of an object and it is judgment of taste proper.
He asserts therefore that the judgment of taste is pure only when it is not tainted by empirical delight. Kant cautions that there is always chance for charm or emotion to have a share in the judgment by which something is to be described as beautiful.
In this line of argument, Kant identifies two forms of beauty: 1) one is free beauty and 2) another is beauty which is merely dependent. Free beauty is described as that which is self-subsisting beauty which is not confined to any object defined with respect to its end, but pleases freely on its own account. For instance, the beauty of flowers, birds etc., Kant classifies under free beauty. The estimate of the free beauty is by pure judgment of taste. In cases where there is a presupposition of a concept of the end that defines a thing and consequently a concept of its perfection, is known as dependent beauty. Like beauty of a man, woman, child, building etc. Here, the judgment of taste is not pure.
In determining the ideal of beauty, Kant observes that there can be no objective rule of taste by which you can say that something is beautiful. If there is objective rule, the beautiful may be defined by means of concepts. But the determining ground is the feeling of the subject (taste) and not any concept of object.
In arriving at a principle of taste a universal criterion of the beautiful is to be validated by definite concepts. Kant establishes the taste must be an original faculty. He says that the ideal of taste cannot be represented by means of concepts, but only in an individual presentation. Only this is appropriately called the ideal of the beautiful.
Analytic of the Sublime
Kant analyzes sublime, because we also make judgment on what is sublime and we also take (the fourth type of delight) delight in what is sublime. The Sublime can be, for example, “nature considered in an aesthetic judgment as might that has no dominion over us”. The sublime can be an object that can create a fearfulness without making us afraid of it. The sublime can cause fear without actually threatening. He brings out similarities between the beautiful and the sublime. To mention a few, both are pleasing on their own account and both presuppose reflection. But there are striking differences between them:
Beautiful
· The object of enquiry is in the form of the object and this consists in limitation.
· It is a presentation of an indeterminate concept of understanding
· Delight is coupled with the representation of quality
· Directly attended with the feelings of life, thus compatible with charm and playful imagination
· Objects of nature as beautiful is an expression more perfect
· The pleasure is of mere reflection
Sublime
· Is found even in object devoid of form but involves representation of limitlessness
· It is a presentation of an indeterminate concept of reason
· Delight is coupled with the representation of quantity
· It is a pleasure that arises only indirectly with no emotion or imagination, does not much involve positive pleasure as admiration or respect
· Objects of nature as sublime is an inaccurate expression
· The pleasure is one of rationalizing contemplation
Kant says that the objects lend itself to the mind to discover the sublimity. Sublime, he says strictly cannot be contained in any sensuous form but only in ideas of reason. Even though an adequate presentation of reason is not possible, this inadequacy itself that admits sensuous presentation forms the basis for reason. In sublime, the mind is incited to give up sensibility and employ itself on ideas involving higher finality.
He observes that the nature excites the ideas of the sublime chiefly by the signs of magnitude and power. Kant adds that the beautiful in nature requires an external ground, but in sublime it is the self with the attitude of the mind that introduces sublimity into the representation of nature.
Kant defines sublime:
· Sublime is the name given to what is absolutely great.
· That is sublime in comparison with which all else is small
· Sublime is the mere capacity of thinking beyond every standard of sense.
In order to distinguish the judgment of taste from all other cognitive judgments Kant illustrates and brings out the characteristic properties of taste:
· The judgment of taste determines its object in respect of delight (as a thing of beauty) with a claim to the agreement of every one, just as if it were objective.
· Proofs are of no avail whatever for determining the judgment of taste, and in this connection that judgment remains simply subjective.
· An objective principle of taste is not possible.
· The principle of taste is the subjective principle of the general power of judgment.
So, aesthetic judgment does not have the necessity of justifying the objectivity of the concept of beauty. Beauty is not a concept of the object, and the judgment of taste is not a cognitive judgment.
4.4. G.W.F Hegel (1770-1831)
Hegel argues his position regarding art, rather Fine Art, recorded as ‘Lectures on Aesthetic’. In the very beginning he rejects the use of the very word ‘Aesthetic’ in the field of Fine Art. For Aesthetics, he says, stands for the science of sensation, of feeling that does not accurately reveal the science of the beautiful but it caters simply to the beauty of art. It can be seen as a new science or a branch of Philosophical discipline. Pointing out to such a drawback, Hegel prefers to set aside the word Aesthetic and he identifies his concept with regard to Art as the Philosophy of Art, and he says more definitely, the Philosophy of Fine Art.
Aesthetics confined to Beauty of Art
Let us briefly survey the contents of Philosophy of Art as found in the work of Hegel titled ‘Lectures on Aesthetic’. At the outset he shows that by the use of the terms ‘Philosophy of Fine Art’, the beauty of Nature is excluded. Hegel takes what we may call as an ‘aesthetic leap’ and states ‘artistic beauty stands higher than nature’. He justifies this stand with his logic that beauty of art is twice-born.
The elements in nature are not considered for their own sake and hence not beautiful but the same when processed through the human mind is perceived as beautiful. Hegel tries to show that since the elements of nature is seen beautiful through the human mind, the beautiful which is the art is placed higher than the nature.
In this analysis, he arrives that the sense of beauty in nature reveals itself only as a reflection of the beauty which actually belongs to the mind. His main argument is that the realm of nature has not been arrayed or estimated under the aspect of beauty by the thinkers so far. Hegel’s starting point thus is the beauty of art excluding beauty of nature.
Regarding Fine Art
Initially, Hegel suggests that since a work of art is a product of human activity it might be something that can be known and expounded, and learnt and pursued by other. He further tells us that these works of art, produced as result of certain rules, can only be something formally regular and mechanical for which a purely empty exercise of will and dexterity is required.
However, he rejects this first view and then he goes to spiritual nature of art. He claims that the work of art is a product of talent and genius and emphasizes on the natural element in talent and genius. And he finds that this one is limited in its applicability. He says that even if the talent and genius of the artist has in it a natural element, yet this element essentially requires development by thought, reflection on the mode of its productivity, and practice and skill in producing. For, he says that the work of art is mechanical, and therefore, art needs to be developed through practice rather than inspiration. So, his concern is that Art cannot be produced either through gross manipulation of material, nor through pure spiritual abstraction, but must combine elements of both, that means, the object is skillfully manipulated in the art.
Ontology of Fine Art
Firstly, he clarifies his position on Art as which is free in its end as in its means. Art is capable of serving other aims even though it is not real. Hegel identifies fine art as a mode of revealing to Consciousness and leading to Divine Nature and thus places fine art in par with Religion and Philosophy. He argues that fine art is the key to the understanding of wisdom of other nations. He considers mind as key element which generates work of art reconciling the finite actuality in nature and the infinite freedom of the mind.
Secondly, Hegel deals with question of his predecessors that art is unworthy being only an appearance and hence deceptive. He rejects the very idea of art as appearance and counter-argues thus, “Art liberates the real import of appearances from the semblance and deception of this bad and fleeting world, and imparts to phenomenal semblances a higher reality, born of mind. The appearances of art, therefore, far from being mere semblances, have the higher reality and the more genuine existence in comparison with the realities of common life.”
In this line of argument, Hegel finds the ontology of art. But he carefully then restates that art is either in content or in form is not the highest mode in bringing the mind’s genuine interests into consciousness. He admits that only a certain grade of truth can be represented in the medium of art. He thereby distinguishes a deeper form of truth that is not available to be expressed through the medium of art.
The Understanding of Beauty
Art, for Hegel, also gives expression to spirit's understanding of itself. The self-understanding of the spirit is not to be understood from religion perspective, but from an ontological perspective. This spirit understands itself in and through objects that have been specifically made for this purpose by human beings. Such objects - conjured out of stone, wood, color, sound or words—render the freedom of spirit visible or audible to an audience. In Hegel's view, this sensuous expression of free spirit constitutes beauty. The purpose of art, for Hegel, is thus the creation of beautiful objects in which the true character of freedom of the spirit is given sensuous expression.
The principal aim of art is not, therefore, to imitate nature, to decorate our surroundings, to prompt us to engage in moral or political action, or to shock us out of our complacency. It is to allow us to contemplate and enjoy created images of our own spiritual freedom—images that are beautiful precisely because they give expression of our freedom. Art's purpose, in other words, is to enable us to bring to mind the truth about ourselves, and so to become aware of who we truly are. Art is there not just for art's sake, but for beauty's sake, that is, for the sake of a distinctively sensuous form of human self-expression and self-understanding.
Three phases of historical development of art:
1. Symbolic stage: In this stage, Hegel connects art to religion. In this stage, the Idea is still in a rather obscure form. The spiritual Idea takes an alien material form, and so there is no real correlation between form and content. Due to the fact that the spiritual idea cannot form an appropriate material form, natural phenomena are exaggerated in order to elevate them to a spiritual level. In such a situation, there is an idea ascribed to a material form, where the symbol may not be of the same stature as the Idea. Here even a stone can represent God.
2. Classical stage: Hegel then goes on to discuss Greek religion and art, where gods are given idealized human forms. Classical art brings the spirit in front of us through the sensuousness of the body through techniques like anthropomorphism and personification. As the spirit has been given a human form it ceases to be boundless, and limits the spirit to a human form.
3. Romantic stage: The spirit is allowed to transcend the form. The meaning does not lie in the external appearance of the art work. Everything has to do with perception. Thus, Hegel firmly establishes the relation between the Absolute and the form to achieve it, hence he gives us an insight into the achievement of beauty by a work of art.
4.5. Benedetto Croce (1866-1952)
He points out the defects of the previous philosophical thinkers. He presents his thesis in a series of articles in journal La Aesthetica (Italian) or Aesthetics as Science of Expression. He wrote ‘Philosophy of the Spirit’ in three volumes consists of the first on Aesthetic, second related to Logic and the third the Philosophy of the Practical. In Aesthetic he gives his line of argument by re-defining aesthetic in art revealing that which was overlooked by his predecessors.
Croce begins with the classification of human knowledge into two – intuitive knowledge and logical knowledge. Intuitive knowledge is independent of logical or intellectual knowledge. He shows that the result of work of art is an intuition. He arrives at the following by a series of argumentative analysis:
Intuitive knowledge is expressive knowledge - It is independent and autonomous in respect to intellectual function - Intuition is representation – It is different from what is felt and suffered – It is different from the flux of sensation – It is different from psychic material - Intuition is expression - Intuition is nothing but to express.
Croce declares that there is only one intuition that is Aesthetic, which is the science of intuitive or expressive knowledge.
Croce states that Art is an expression of impressions and not the expression of expressions. He explicates artist as one who have a greater aptitude, a more frequent inclination to fully express certain complex states of the soul. Art for Croce is the achievement of very complicated and difficult expressions. The function of art he says is liberating and purifying function based on the character of its activity. He categorizes an artist as both sensible or passionate and serene.
He identifies will that is able to act as a distinct moment of the aesthetic activity. He says that one cannot will or not will the aesthetic activity, however one can will or not will to externalize it, or better, to preserve and communicate, or not to others.
For him, art is independent with an intrinsic value with an existence. Croce then warns that the moment the intuition is expressed externally then it is to be confined with the concept of utility and morality. That is, there is the concept of selection, of interesting, of morality, of an educational end, of popularity etc.
Croce also discusses about aesthetics in another work called, Essence of Aesthetic (an inaugural lecture by Croce). He first takes up the question ‘What is Art?’ He defines art as vision or intuition. He then shows those factors that are denied by such a definition.
a) It denies that art is a physical fact because physical facts do not possess reality and is supremely real. Physical facts, Croce identifies as construction of the intellect for the purpose of science. He derives that art cannot be constructed physically.
b) Art cannot be a utilitarian act since utilitarian act aims always at obtaining a pleasure and therefore keeping off a pain. Art, says Croce, has nothing to do with the useful, pleasure or pain. He refutes the hedonistic aesthetic.
c) Art cannot be a moral act. Art does not arise as an act of will and hence escapes all moral discrimination.
d) Art is not of the character of conceptual knowledge. Conceptual knowledge aims at establishing reality against unreality and on the other hand, intuition is non-distinction of reality and unreality.
e) The concept of art as intuition excludes the conception of art as the production of classes, types, species etc.
f) Croce reiterates that the above definition negates art as philosophy, religion, history, science or mathematics.
g) Art as intuition - art as a work of imagination or expression.
Thus, Croce marks the beginning of Expressionism, the 20th century phrase, in the Philosophy of Art by proving that Aesthetic is the science of expressive activity.