The volume edited by Stefan Bird-Pollan and Vladimir Marchenkov presents a collection of eleven essays that address issues related to the relationship between artistic and socio-political dimensions in Hegel's thought.
The editors’ Introduction offers a general contextualization of the topic. Over the centuries, there have been two opposing perspectives on art: the ‘moralist’ view places ‘moral concerns over and above all others in judgment about art’, while the ‘aesthetic’ view ‘treats artistic expression not only as having its own intrinsic value but also as entirely independent and separate from morality’ (1). Whereas the former conception of art dominates in antiquity, the latter, while always present, becomes increasingly visible during the Renaissance and Baroque, and then emerges strongly in the 18th and 19th centuries. The ‘aesthetic-ethical conundrum’ (2) finds a possible answer in Hegel's philosophy of art, which stands apart from both Enlightenment-driven moralism and the Romantic-style aesthetic perspective. However influential, the debate did not take a dialectically Hegelian turn, and the clash between didactic moralism and formalist aestheticism was perpetuated. Therefore, it makes sense to return to examining the German philosopher's perspective as a key to understanding the issue and exploring solutions that may also apply to the current debate.
The volume consists of three interconnected parts: the first, ‘Art's Contribution to Modern Ethical Life’, contains essays that analyse Hegel's position with respect to the role of art in modern society; the second, ‘Art's Persistence and Authority’, deals with the relevance of art throughout history from the Hegelian perspective; and the third, ‘Thinking beyond Hegel's Views on Art and Society’, brings together contributions that more explicitly refer to our contemporary times.
In the opening of Part I, we find Mark Alznauer's essay, ‘Hegel on Aesthetic Reconciliation’, which discusses Hegel's thesis that the proper aim of art is to recompose contradictions caused by the opposition between nature and spirit. The author focuses on criticisms from the ‘left-Hegelian’ line (e.g., Raymond Geuss, Robert Pippin), which does not believe that art can or should have this power in the modern context that still demonstrates its irrationality. He argues that this view is based on a misunderstanding that mistakes social reconciliation for aesthetic reconciliation. The opposition that the latter resolves is not caused by a contingent political condition but is part of the ontological structure of spiritual activity; the truth that art reveals does not have to do with social reality but with the ideal that it embodies. Such reconciliation does not bring about change in the community but produces bliss (Seligkeit), which makes us overcome even the inescapable sufferings of life.
David Ciavatta, in ‘Hegel on the Aesthetic Basis of State Sovereignty’, inquires whether the appreciation of beauty plays a role in Hegel's conception of the modern state. If art was pivotal in Greek society, the prosaic nature of modern life seems to leave no room for the ‘beautiful individuality’ of heroes and characters, who in antiquity operated at their best because they were stateless or within institutions still in their early stages (Achilles, Odysseus, Antigone). However, the modern state is not something abstract, but must appear in concreteness and thus does not seem to be completely alien to the sensuous intuition. This becomes evident in the dramatic, exceptional moments, such as war or crisis, when the state reasserts its sovereignty. There, the necessity of the unity of the particularity of the state and its universality emerges. Art produces precisely the experience of making ideality concretely present and in this sense it can still make a relevant contribution even in modernity.
‘“Bildung” and the Novel in Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics’ by Timothy L. Brownlee proposes an original reading of the Hegelian conception of the novel. The author points out how interpreters have overestimated the elements that describe the novel as epos and notes that this view is not the only and most significant one to be examined. Relying mainly on student manuscripts and showing how Hegel's view has several points in common with Mikhail Bakhtin's, the author argues for examining the discussion of novels in Hegelian thought from the broader perspective of the role of art in prosaic life. From this perspective, the novel—he has in mind especially Johann Wolfgang von Goethe's Wilhelm Meister—closely traces the development and task of Bildung in society and can contribute to this by expanding our awareness of freedom.
Philip T. Grier in ‘On Art, Religion, and Recognitive Communities’ deals with the relationship between art and religion, emphasizing the development of art in Hegel's philosophy from its religious function throughout much of its history. Through an analysis of lectures on both the philosophy of religion (especially the part on ‘Determinate Religion’) and aesthetics, Grier follows the not always perfectly overlapping developments between the two spheres in the transition from nature to spirit, from immediacy to universality, and in the realization of freedom in a mutually recognitive community. It would be with the Protestant Reformation and romantic art that art would become separated from religion, no longer finding itself able to portray the infinite and deviating onto the representation of the everyday.
Part II opens with John Russon's contribution, ‘Hegel on Romantic Art and Modernity’. Within the relationship among the forms of the absolute spirit, it is precisely through the historical development of the Christian religion and its understanding of art—along with the emergence of romantic art and the awareness of its insufficiency in portraying the absolute—that it becomes possible and necessary, for the first time in history, to distinguish art and religion as autonomous spheres. This is precisely how the modern secular world comes into being, which is represented, for example, by the Dutch masters. The rise of philosophy as the rationality proper to the modern subject is the direct consequence of this development.
‘“A View from an Apartment”: Hegel on Home and Homelessness in Romantic Art’ by Shannon Hoff addresses the relationship between objective spirit and absolute spirit. Whereas the former expresses our ability to make a specific place our home, the latter represents our ability to feel at home anywhere. She then examines the absolute spirit, art, and, specifically, romantic art, which is understood from a two-sided standpoint: it shows how modern subjectivity withdraws from the world with which it is at odds and, at the same time, understands that that world is the only place where it can exist as such, reconciling the tension between inwardness and externality, between being homeless and being at home. The author shows this through an analysis of Jeff Wall's photograph A View from an Apartment.
‘Hegel's Symbol and Symbolic Art: Revisiting Ambiguity?’ by Olga Lyanda-Geller tackles the problematic relationship between the symbol as historically determined within the symbolic art form and the symbol conceived more generally, relating to the understanding of the beautiful arising from the famous, albeit problematic, definition of sinnliches Scheinen der Idee. Taking into consideration the perspective of the subject who performs the symbolic act as homo admirans, the author argues that, in Hegel's thought, there are the elements of an overall theory of the symbol, which, however, remains largely unexpressed and instead develops into later theories. The author then focuses on Russian philosopher Aleksei Losev's proposal and analyses the example of the Prometheus myth.
Stefan Bird-Pollan's ‘Hegel, Danto, Cavell, and the End of Art’ identifies two tendencies present as tensions in Hegel's discussion of art's understanding of the objective spirit: on the one hand, art simply supplements the relationship with social institutions because in modernity, it is now superseded by the other forms of the absolute spirit; on the other hand, art continues to play a central role as a systematic element equivalent to the other forms of absolute spirit and is not at an end. After discussing Arthur C. Danto's and Karsten Harries's ‘supplemental interpretation’ and the ‘dialectical interpretation’ by Theodor W. Adorno, Gregg Horowitz and T. J. Clark, Bird-Pollan dwells on Stanley Cavell's view, emphasizing how films can be seen as a cooperation between objective and absolute spirit in a way similar to what Hegel calls philosophy and how they increase awareness of the actualization of our freedom.
The first essay in Part III is by Eliza Starbuck Little and is entitled ‘Greek Tragedy and Self-Authorship in Hegel's “Phenomenology of Spirit”’. It aims to reconsider the role of tragedy and to understand it as a particular epistemological structure of self-recollection and self-recognition. Relying on Christoph Menke's interpretation of Sophocles’ Oedipus Tyrannus, the author shows how Hegel's treatments of the tragedy are to be understood in a coherent way: first, Spirit is represented as a character in its action of recollection in the ‘Spirit’ section, and then it recognizes itself as the author of its own recollection in the subsequent ‘Absolute Religion’ section. The reconciliation of these two perspectives provides Spirit with the standpoint of the ‘Absolute Knowing’.
Georg W. Bertram in ‘Rethinking Hegel's Modern Conception of Art’ shows how modern art (and not Greek art) is, for Hegel, the paradigmatic practice of art in general. Reinterpreting romantic art as a dialectical sublation of symbolic and classical art, he proposes a systematic reading of the thesis on the end of art as the true beginning of art. In modern society, which is not as homogeneous as ancient society, the function of art is not self-evident and is no longer taken for granted. Art becomes a plural practice in which artworks struggle for their fulfilment and the development of specific artistic expressions. This makes modern art constitutively linked to the conceptual approaches of interpretation and art criticism, which enable us to understand the value of artworks in their task of reflecting and comprehending aspects of human beings.
The final chapter ‘Hegel contra Moralism: Hegel's Aesthetics as an Argument against the Moralist Approach to Art’ by Vladimir Marchenkov discusses the potential of Hegel's aesthetics as an antidote against what the author identifies as pervasive moralism in today's debate. He does so through an analysis of the relationship between art and religion, finding this distinction in Hegel insufficiently consistent. What the author notes as missing is the ludic aspect of art, the elements of which, while present, would remain undeveloped in Hegelian thought. Integrating this feature into the aesthetic dimension and identifying religion (and not art) as the transition from the practical sphere to absolute spirit would provide a more coherent framework that would overcome the limitations of Hegel's view, making the latter a viable alternative to moralism.
This volume in toto is particularly interesting because it offers a number of relevant contributions that border different areas of Hegel's philosophy (especially philosophy of art, practical philosophy, and philosophy of religion), analysing topics that are constitutively interdisciplinary. Noteworthy are the originality and variety of approaches of the individual authors, who are successfully put together not to construct a univocal interpretation, but to present the multiple voices of an engaging debate. What emerges is a discussion that confronts, questions, and even goes beyond the Hegelian perspective. Through the volume, the topic of the relationship between art and the socio-political context therefore arises once again and with renewed vitality as one of the most stimulating to show the contemporary relevance of the German author's philosophy.
