(Originally Written Feb. 28, 2008 in the Journal)
Baumgarten (the founder of aesthetics) states the object of logical knowledge is truth and the object of aesthetic or sensual knowledge is beauty.
"Beauty is the perfect recognized through the senses; truth is the perfect perceived through reason; goodness is the perfect reached by moral will" (Maude, 92).
Baumgarten sees beauty as a correspondence of the relations of the parts to the parts and of the parts to the whole.
The aim of beauty he states, is to excite a desire.
Baumgarten's followers did nothing more than separate the pleasant from the beautiful.
Sulzer, Mendelssohn and Moritz claimed that the aim of art is not beauty, but goodness.
Johann Georg Sulzer held that which contains goodness can be called beautiful. He contended that the aim of humanity was welfare in social life. He intended to achieve this through moral education; and art, serves this purpose only.
Moses Mendelssohn held that art is the development of beauty until it becomes true and good. He held that the end of art is therefore, moral perfection.
While Baumgarten was concerned with the Perfect or the Absolute, Mendelssohn and Sulzer divided into three forms: truth, goodness and beauty. Beauty then merges back into both the good and the true.
Johann Winckelmann (a German art historian) said that only external beauty is the aim of art. Winckelmann separated beauty from goodness and divided it into three categories:
1. Beauty of form
2. Beauty of idea
3. Beauty of expression
He claimed that beauty of expression could only happen after both beauty of form and beauty of idea had first been accomplished. Winckelmann held that beauty of expression is the highest aim of art. He claimed that it was attained in antique art and therefore, modern art should be aimed at imitating ancient art.
The German aestheticians like Lessing, Herder, and Goethe understood beauty in the way of Winckelmann until Immanuel Kant changed it all.
Aesthetic theories arose in England, France, Italy and Holland that were also equally cloudy and contradictory The started their theories with a conception of the beautiful as existing absolutely and somehow it intermingled with goodness or at least had the same roots as it.
Shaftsbury held that which is beautiful is harmonious and proportionable, that which is harmonious and proportionable is true, and what is beautiful and true is agreeable and good. Shaftsbury held that beauty is only recognized by the mind. He held that God is the fundamental beauty and that beauty and goodness proceed from the same fount.
Hutchenson held that the aim of art is beauty. Beauty's essence consists in evoking a perception of uniformity and variety in us. Hutchenson held we are guided by an internal sense to what art is. He also held that in this internal sense one could contradict the ethical sense and that beauty does not always correspond with goodness and could actually run contrary to it.
Lord Kanes held that beauty is what is pleasant. Therefore, for him, beauty rests solely in taste.
Burke held that the sublime and the beautiful were the aim of art and have their origin in self-preservation and society. He also claimed that art is a means for the maintenance of the race through the individual. The first self-preservation (and the preservation of the individual) is through 1) nourishment, 2) defense, and 3) war. The second self-preservation (the preservation of the society) is achieved through 1) sex and 2) propagation. Self-defense and war are the source of the sublime. Sociability and the sex instinct are the source of beauty.
Yves Marie André held that there are three types of beauty:
1. Divine
2. Natural
3. Artificial
Charles Batteux held that art consists in imitating the beauty of nature. The end of art is enjoyment.
The French and the English held that taste decides what is beautiful. They also hold that the laws of taste cannot be determined.
Pagano held that art consists of uniting the beauties dispersed in nature. He held that the capacity to perceive these beauties is taste and the capacity to bring them together is artistic genius. He held that beauty is goodness made visible and that goodness is inner beauty.
Muratori stated that art is an egotistical sensation founded on the desire for the preservation of self and society.
Hemsterhuis, the Dutch writer, influenced the Germans, particularly Goethe. He held that beauty is that which gives the most pleasure. He held that enjoyment of the beautiful is the highest form of cognition to which men can attain.
Kant held that:
1. Man has a knowledge of nature outside him and himself in nature.
2. He seeks truth outside himself. He seeks goodness inside himself.
3. Seeking truth is pure reason. Seeking goodness is practical reason.
4. Aesthetic feeling is a judging capacity without reason and produces pleasure without desire.
5. Beauty is in subjective meaning. It is that which without reasoning and without practical advantages, nonetheless pleases.
Schiller held that the aim of art is beauty, which is the source of pleasure without practical advantage.
Fichte held that the perception of the beautiful proceeds from nature. Nature has two sides; 1) the sum of our limitations and 2) the sum of our free idealistic activity. In the sum of our limitations we see deformity. In the sum of our free idealistic activity we see beauty. He held that beauty therefore does not exist in the world, but in the beautiful soul (Schöner Geist). He also held that art is the manifestation of this beautiful soul and that the aim of art is the education of the whole man.
Schlegel held that beauty is understood too incompletely. He held that beauty is in art, nature and love. The truly beautiful is expressed by the union of art, nature and love.
Adam Müller held that there are two types of beauty:
1. General beauty which attracts people as the sun attracts the planets
2. Individual beauty which consists in the observer becoming like the sun and attracting beauty.
Thus, a world which harmonizes all contradictions is the highest beauty. He held that art is a reproduction of this universal harmony and that the highest art is the art of life.
Schelling held "art is the production or result of that conception of things by which the subject becomes its own object, or the object its own subject" (Maude, 99). He held that beauty is the perception of the infinite in the finite. The chief characteristic of works of art is unconscious infinity. Art unites the subjective and the objective, nature with reason and the unconscious with the conscious. He held that because of this, art is the highest means of knowledge. "Beauty is the contemplation of things in themselves as they exist in the prototype" (Maude, 99). The artist does not produce the beautiful by knowledge or skill, but by the beauty inside himself.
Krause held that positive beauty is the manifestation of the idea in an individual form; art is the actualization of the beauty existent in man's free spirit.
Hegel held that God manifests himself in nature and art as beauty. God manifests himself in two ways: on the object in nature and in the subject in spirit. Only the soul and what pertains to it is truly beautiful. The beauty of nature is only the reflection of a spiritual content. The sensuous manifestation of spirit is only appearance and this is the only reality of the beautiful. Art, religion and philosophy are means of being and expressing to the consciousness the deepest problems of humanity and the highest truths of the spirit. Hegel held that truth and beauty are one and the same. The idea as itself is truth. The idea, manifested externally, is beauty.
Weisse held that art is the introduction of the absolute spiritual reality of beauty into the external, dead, indifferent matter. Weisse held that the idea of truth entails a contradiction between the subjective and the objective and then the individual ego discerns the universal. Beauty is a reconciled truth.
In addition to Hegelian aesthetic theories there were contemporary and contradictory German theories like Herbart's and Schopenhauer's.
Hebart denied that there can be such a thing as beauty in itself. He held that there are certain relations we call beautiful and that art consists of finding these relations.
Schopenhauer held that the will objectifies itself in the world on various planes. The highest plane has the highest beauty but, each plane contains its own beauty.
Hartmann held that beauty lies in the seeming or "schien" produced by the artist. "The thing in itself is not beautiful, but it is transformed into beauty by the artist".
Schnaase held that there is no beauty in the world. Art gives what nature cannot. Beauty is disclosed then in art.
Kirchmann held there are six realms of history:
1. Knowledge
2. Wealth
3. Morality
4. Faith
5. Politics
6. Beauty - this is art.
Helmholtz held that beauty is manifested by the artist unconsciously and therefore cannot be analyzed.
Bergmann denied defining beauty objectively is possible. He held that beauty is held subjectively and therefore the job of aesthetics is to define what pleases whom.
Jungmann held that:
1. Beauty is a suprasensible quality of things.
2. Beauty produces pleasure by contemplation
3. Beauty is the foundation of love.
Cousin held beauty always has a moral foundation.
Jouffrey held that the visible world is the clothing by means of which we see beauty.
Lévêque held that beauty was a force behind nature and revealed itself in ordered energy.
Ravaisson held that beauty was the ultimate aim and purpose of the world.
Showing posts with label Schelling. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Schelling. Show all posts
Thursday, February 28, 2008
Saturday, April 22, 2006
Hegel - Raymond Plant
(Originally written April 22, 2006 in Book 1)
Hegel
Raymond Plant
1999
The importance of Hegel:
Hegel is still influential in philosophy, political and social theory, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theology and the philosophy of religion (which is this particular book's focus).
Karl Löwith states that Hegel is the philosopher of the bourgeois Christian world.
Hegel saw his work as systematic, thus concentrating on a single field without recognizing it as a part of the whole would misconstrue his philosophy.
Life & Development:
Born in 1770, in Stuttgart. Educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium, then at Tübinger Stift (a famous Swabian theological seminary). He wanted to be a Lutheran pastor or an honorationen.
Supported the French Revolution from Tübinger. Lived with Hölderlin (a poet) and Schelling (a philosopher) while at Tübinger.
Concerned himself with fragmentation and brokenness of man's relationship to God, to nature and to society.
Instead of following his aspirations he took up a tutoring position in Bern. He left Bern to move to Frankfurt with Hölderlin then took a position at the University of Jena with Schelling.
Napoleon closed Jena and Hegel took an editor job at the Bamberg Gazette, a Catholic paper.
Hegel left the position at the paper to become the Rector of the Grammar School in Nuremberg, where he was charged with the job of shifting education away from the Catholic based teachings to a humanistic approach.
Hegel left the school to become the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816. In 1818 he moved to the University of Berlin to be its chair of philosophy and perform the same reform as he did at Nuremberg.
He died suddenly in 1831.
Fears of Fragmentation:
Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling developed a fear of "division and fragmentation in modern life and in particular the bifurcation between man and God; between man and society, between man and nature and indeed the division within the individual's own personality" (Plant, 11) while at the Tübinger Shift.
The rediscovery of Greek culture by the Germans in the 18th century and its concept of all life being unified set the stage for Hegel's fear of fragmentation.
Hegel was inspired by the Greek unified life. He saw it as how man could fully reach his potential and become a whole man.
Hegel saw Christianity as being a polar opposite to Greek life. Greek life embraced this world; whereas a Christian's true home was in heaven, not on earth.
"Our religion [Chrisitanity] wishes to educate men to be citizens of heaven who always look on high and this makes them strangers to human feeling" (Plant, 13-14).
He saw Christianity as a private religion, unconcerned with social and moral unity in a community.
Hegel saw the modern world could not return to the Greek way of life because of Christianity and the rise of individualism. Hegel wished to reinterpret Christianity as a folk religion so it could provide a basis for common life.
Jesus' ministry was a failure in Hegel's view because the disciples understood God in too Jewish of a context. "Instead of following Jesus in teaching a general message about the reconciliation of the divine and the human in all life, this reconciliation was understood to be achieved in Jesus alone" (Plant, 17).
Towards Philosophy:
Hegel sought to rework Christianity by combining rationality and mythology.
"Bifurcation is the source of the need for philosophy" (Plant, 21).
Philosophy provides the interpretation of human experience and existence.
The self must be understood in relation to family, economics, politics, art, religion and philosophy. If it is not the theory of mind will be overly rationalistic and unlivable.
A theory of mind must be a unification of self and its relationship with activities the individuals engage in.
Hegel believed philosophy must be systematic.
Philosophy must provide the basis for all modes of social life and show how they are interconnected.
Hegel's view of philosophy being a 'meta-narrative' that provides an interpretation of all the forms of human experience is opposed by post-modern philosophers who celebrate fragmentation.
Hegel's view is troubling to the analytic tradition. Analytic philosophers believe that logic is relative to the facet of life it is being used to. Thus, fragmentation is not only desirable, but necessary.
Hegel also believed that philosophy must be historical.
The historical development was teleological for Hegel. It was a rational process that leads to the ultimate goal of attaining Absolute Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge occurs when all the shapes of human life, in terms of their historical development and their connections are understood.
History, for Hegel, was not a series of discontinuous contingent events. It was the structure of development. This development is what Hegel called the dialectic.
The dialectic was the "process in which an account of how forms of life develop is embodied. Forms of social life, whether religious, political, artistic or social have organizing principles or forms of ethos. The process of dialectical development shows how in human history one form turns into another because contradictions are revealed in previous forms. Previous forms are not lost... rather what is true in them... is carried over into a richer and deeper form of life (Plant, 25).
Humans often do not realize Absolute Knowledge because they merely understand thing in and of themselves and disregard their connections. The level of understanding (Absolute Knowledge) must be used to reach the level of reason (the dialectic). This level of understanding is the Vorstellung. This level of Reason is the Begriff.
History is not accidental in Hegel's account.
The organizing principle of human existence becomes concrete in nature, in history, in human society, in art, in religion and in philosophy through the actions of God being united with human life. This is what Hegel called the "Absolute Idea".
When the absolute idea is embodied in the interconnections of human life it becomes Spirit. When the Spirit is fully comprehended it becomes Absolute Spirit.
"God as he is in himself before the foundation of the world is transformed by Hegel into the Absolute Idea" (Plant, 27).
"The philosophical understanding of the rationality of human experience and history is equivalent to the incarnate life of God, or the embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Absolute Knowledge is the transcription of the religious idea of the role of the Holy Spirit when we have a comprehensive understanding of the indwelling of God in this process."
For Hegel, religion became a rational system of understanding human existence based on reason, not faith. Religion is one stepping stone on the path to Absolute Knowledge.
Hegel claimed that his philosophy was a true transcription of Christianity.
Religion:
Religion was a vital part of Hegel's philosophy. Christianity was Hegel's religion, albeit a highly interpreted form of it.
The Concept of God:
Hegel did not believe it was impossible for man to state something true about the nature of God because of man's finitude and God's infinitude. (Contra to Kant, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher). He rejects this belief because it makes God hollow and all one can then know is that God is.
"God is" is an abstraction of a supreme being, but when God is cognized we have a representation with content.
Hegel rejects the view of God's nature being unknowable for:
-Hegel's view of consciousness (consciousness is the level of awareness that this view gives us of the knowledge that God is) requires interaction with other beings. Therefore, if we are conscious of God it is because man's consciousness and God's consciousness have come into contact.
-Hegel sees the study of history and of the physical world as the study of the very nature of God.
"God is not to be considered in abstraction, for that is not possible" (Plant, 34)
Creation:
Hegel rejects the concept that God is complete in and of himself. He rejects this view because it leads to the belief that God created the world on a mere whimsical notion. Hegel's notion of consciousness being necessarily connected with other consciousness naturally leads him to this concept of creation.
Hegel views the world as the self-disclosure of love by God and the embodiment of freedom.
Incarnation:
The Incarnation of Hegel, is a "representation in religious form of the conceptual truth about the nature of God as consciousness and subjectivity" (Plant, 37).
It is the necessity of God to externalize Himself and manifest His consciousness in the world. The Incarnation was a necessity because "only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order it [this divine human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God has to appear in the world in the flesh" (Plant, 38).
A quote from Hans Küng: "Jesus is the revelation of that God man which is the hidden, true nature of ever person" (Plant, 40). Hegel embraced this concept.
The Fall
Adam is the representation of all men. The Fall is a myth based on the reality of where man is now.
Redemption is not the return to innocence because that is impossible. Instead it is a midway point between innocence and fallenness.
The consciousness is the vehicle to redemption because it is the starting point of both evil and good.
Religion and Philosophy:
Religion and philosophy are both modes of Absolute Knowledge. Religion transcends philosophy. Philosophy transcends religion. Philosophy and religion have the same goal: eternal truth, which is God and nothing else.
"Philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts. The content remains always the same" (Plant, 49).
Philosophy is the Gottes Dienst (the service of God)
Conclusion
Hegel's theology is panentheism, distinguished from deism, pantheism and orthodox theism.
Panentheism is a combination of three Greek words:
Pan - All
en- in
theos - God
"God is immanent in the world, but is more than the sum of the parts of the world" (Plant, 52).
Hegel
Raymond Plant
1999
The importance of Hegel:
Hegel is still influential in philosophy, political and social theory, aesthetics, philosophy of history, theology and the philosophy of religion (which is this particular book's focus).
Karl Löwith states that Hegel is the philosopher of the bourgeois Christian world.
Hegel saw his work as systematic, thus concentrating on a single field without recognizing it as a part of the whole would misconstrue his philosophy.
Life & Development:
Born in 1770, in Stuttgart. Educated at the Stuttgart Gymnasium, then at Tübinger Stift (a famous Swabian theological seminary). He wanted to be a Lutheran pastor or an honorationen.
Supported the French Revolution from Tübinger. Lived with Hölderlin (a poet) and Schelling (a philosopher) while at Tübinger.
Concerned himself with fragmentation and brokenness of man's relationship to God, to nature and to society.
Instead of following his aspirations he took up a tutoring position in Bern. He left Bern to move to Frankfurt with Hölderlin then took a position at the University of Jena with Schelling.
Napoleon closed Jena and Hegel took an editor job at the Bamberg Gazette, a Catholic paper.
Hegel left the position at the paper to become the Rector of the Grammar School in Nuremberg, where he was charged with the job of shifting education away from the Catholic based teachings to a humanistic approach.
Hegel left the school to become the chair of philosophy at Heidelberg in 1816. In 1818 he moved to the University of Berlin to be its chair of philosophy and perform the same reform as he did at Nuremberg.
He died suddenly in 1831.
Fears of Fragmentation:
Hegel, Hölderlin and Schelling developed a fear of "division and fragmentation in modern life and in particular the bifurcation between man and God; between man and society, between man and nature and indeed the division within the individual's own personality" (Plant, 11) while at the Tübinger Shift.
The rediscovery of Greek culture by the Germans in the 18th century and its concept of all life being unified set the stage for Hegel's fear of fragmentation.
Hegel was inspired by the Greek unified life. He saw it as how man could fully reach his potential and become a whole man.
Hegel saw Christianity as being a polar opposite to Greek life. Greek life embraced this world; whereas a Christian's true home was in heaven, not on earth.
"Our religion [Chrisitanity] wishes to educate men to be citizens of heaven who always look on high and this makes them strangers to human feeling" (Plant, 13-14).
He saw Christianity as a private religion, unconcerned with social and moral unity in a community.
Hegel saw the modern world could not return to the Greek way of life because of Christianity and the rise of individualism. Hegel wished to reinterpret Christianity as a folk religion so it could provide a basis for common life.
Jesus' ministry was a failure in Hegel's view because the disciples understood God in too Jewish of a context. "Instead of following Jesus in teaching a general message about the reconciliation of the divine and the human in all life, this reconciliation was understood to be achieved in Jesus alone" (Plant, 17).
Towards Philosophy:
Hegel sought to rework Christianity by combining rationality and mythology.
"Bifurcation is the source of the need for philosophy" (Plant, 21).
Philosophy provides the interpretation of human experience and existence.
The self must be understood in relation to family, economics, politics, art, religion and philosophy. If it is not the theory of mind will be overly rationalistic and unlivable.
A theory of mind must be a unification of self and its relationship with activities the individuals engage in.
Hegel believed philosophy must be systematic.
Philosophy must provide the basis for all modes of social life and show how they are interconnected.
Hegel's view of philosophy being a 'meta-narrative' that provides an interpretation of all the forms of human experience is opposed by post-modern philosophers who celebrate fragmentation.
Hegel's view is troubling to the analytic tradition. Analytic philosophers believe that logic is relative to the facet of life it is being used to. Thus, fragmentation is not only desirable, but necessary.
Hegel also believed that philosophy must be historical.
The historical development was teleological for Hegel. It was a rational process that leads to the ultimate goal of attaining Absolute Knowledge.
Absolute Knowledge occurs when all the shapes of human life, in terms of their historical development and their connections are understood.
History, for Hegel, was not a series of discontinuous contingent events. It was the structure of development. This development is what Hegel called the dialectic.
The dialectic was the "process in which an account of how forms of life develop is embodied. Forms of social life, whether religious, political, artistic or social have organizing principles or forms of ethos. The process of dialectical development shows how in human history one form turns into another because contradictions are revealed in previous forms. Previous forms are not lost... rather what is true in them... is carried over into a richer and deeper form of life (Plant, 25).
Humans often do not realize Absolute Knowledge because they merely understand thing in and of themselves and disregard their connections. The level of understanding (Absolute Knowledge) must be used to reach the level of reason (the dialectic). This level of understanding is the Vorstellung. This level of Reason is the Begriff.
History is not accidental in Hegel's account.
The organizing principle of human existence becomes concrete in nature, in history, in human society, in art, in religion and in philosophy through the actions of God being united with human life. This is what Hegel called the "Absolute Idea".
When the absolute idea is embodied in the interconnections of human life it becomes Spirit. When the Spirit is fully comprehended it becomes Absolute Spirit.
"God as he is in himself before the foundation of the world is transformed by Hegel into the Absolute Idea" (Plant, 27).
"The philosophical understanding of the rationality of human experience and history is equivalent to the incarnate life of God, or the embodiment of the Absolute Idea. Absolute Knowledge is the transcription of the religious idea of the role of the Holy Spirit when we have a comprehensive understanding of the indwelling of God in this process."
For Hegel, religion became a rational system of understanding human existence based on reason, not faith. Religion is one stepping stone on the path to Absolute Knowledge.
Hegel claimed that his philosophy was a true transcription of Christianity.
Religion:
Religion was a vital part of Hegel's philosophy. Christianity was Hegel's religion, albeit a highly interpreted form of it.
The Concept of God:
Hegel did not believe it was impossible for man to state something true about the nature of God because of man's finitude and God's infinitude. (Contra to Kant, Jacobi, and Schleiermacher). He rejects this belief because it makes God hollow and all one can then know is that God is.
"God is" is an abstraction of a supreme being, but when God is cognized we have a representation with content.
Hegel rejects the view of God's nature being unknowable for:
-Hegel's view of consciousness (consciousness is the level of awareness that this view gives us of the knowledge that God is) requires interaction with other beings. Therefore, if we are conscious of God it is because man's consciousness and God's consciousness have come into contact.
-Hegel sees the study of history and of the physical world as the study of the very nature of God.
"God is not to be considered in abstraction, for that is not possible" (Plant, 34)
Creation:
Hegel rejects the concept that God is complete in and of himself. He rejects this view because it leads to the belief that God created the world on a mere whimsical notion. Hegel's notion of consciousness being necessarily connected with other consciousness naturally leads him to this concept of creation.
Hegel views the world as the self-disclosure of love by God and the embodiment of freedom.
Incarnation:
The Incarnation of Hegel, is a "representation in religious form of the conceptual truth about the nature of God as consciousness and subjectivity" (Plant, 37).
It is the necessity of God to externalize Himself and manifest His consciousness in the world. The Incarnation was a necessity because "only what exists in an immediate way, in inner or outer intuition, that is certain. In order it [this divine human unity] to become a certainty for humanity, God has to appear in the world in the flesh" (Plant, 38).
A quote from Hans Küng: "Jesus is the revelation of that God man which is the hidden, true nature of ever person" (Plant, 40). Hegel embraced this concept.
The Fall
Adam is the representation of all men. The Fall is a myth based on the reality of where man is now.
Redemption is not the return to innocence because that is impossible. Instead it is a midway point between innocence and fallenness.
The consciousness is the vehicle to redemption because it is the starting point of both evil and good.
Religion and Philosophy:
Religion and philosophy are both modes of Absolute Knowledge. Religion transcends philosophy. Philosophy transcends religion. Philosophy and religion have the same goal: eternal truth, which is God and nothing else.
"Philosophy does nothing but transform our representations into concepts. The content remains always the same" (Plant, 49).
Philosophy is the Gottes Dienst (the service of God)
Conclusion
Hegel's theology is panentheism, distinguished from deism, pantheism and orthodox theism.
Panentheism is a combination of three Greek words:
Pan - All
en- in
theos - God
"God is immanent in the world, but is more than the sum of the parts of the world" (Plant, 52).
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