Hegel on Art

An Interpretation on Hegel's Aesthetics

Jack Kaminsky

• Publisher: Muriwai Books
• Year: 2018
• ISBN:
  9781789124323
• Topic: Art
• Subtopic: European Art

Professor Kaminsky's lucid exposition is, surprisingly, the first attempt in English to deal extensively and critically with Hegel's views on art, as outlined in his difficult volumes on that subject. Hegel on Art thus performs a needed service for those interested in either the philosophy or the history of the fine arts.Hegel's idealistic metaphysics was the last European endeavor to construct a universal philosophical system on the traditional pattern, and to modern readers it can easily appear more imposing than useful. But in his examination of art, according to Professor Kaminsky, the German philosopher became "the most empirical of the empiricists," and his observations can be valuable to us quite independent of our commitment to his metaphysics.Moreover, as Professor Kaminsky shows, Hegel's metaphysical framework does give him an advantage not available under the rigorous skepticism of today's positivist or symbolist: he can recognize that art mirrors the world of action, and so can provide it with objective validity. As the author concludes in Hegel's defense: "It may well be that only art can be used to communicate the important episodes that happen to us or others....Without art, we lose one of our great sources of information as to who we are and what we ought to do.""[Kaminsky] succeeds in the difficult task of summarizing Hegel's aesthetics in a clear, well-balanced text which follows the historical lines set down by the philosopher. His work is the most extensive study of the subject available in English."—Library Journal

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{1} Hegel’s Phenomenology of Mind should also be mentioned, although it does not contain the close-knit inquiry into the nature of thought that appears in the logical treatises, especially the Science of Logic.

{2} J. M. E. McTaggart pointed out that Kant was not really even permitted to say that the thing-in-itself is. This is a judgment, “and a judgment involves categories, and we are thus forced to surrender the idea that we can be aware of the existence of anything which is not subject to the laws governing experience” (Studies in the Hegelian Dialectic [2d ed.; Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1922], p. 27). Nor does Paton answer this objection to Kant by maintaining that the noumena are the “condition” of the appearance of phenomena. How can the noumena be the condition of the appearance of phenomena without implying that there is a causal connection between noumena and phenomena? See H. J. Paton, Kant’s Metaphysic of Experience (London: George Allen and Unwin, 1936), I, 62.

{3} Critique of Pure Reason, translated by F. Max Muller (2d ed., rev.; New York: Macmillan Co., 1934), pp. 66 ff.

{4} The nature of these derivations was not clearly presented by Kant, and in most instances the derivations were arbitrary. See N. K. Smith, A Commentary on Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan Co., 1918), pp. 194 ff.

{5} SW, Lasson, IV, 253. See also Science of Logic, translated by Johnston and Struthers (New York: Macmillan Co., 1929), II, 247.

{6} SW, Lasson, V, 69; Encyclopedical Logic, translated by Wallace (2d ed., rev.; Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1892), p. 88.

{7} Generally, Kant’s views seemed to invalidate the possibility of any such deduction. If the categories were derived from some ge...