“The
beauty of nature is beautiful only for
another, i.e. for us, for it is the
mind which
apprehends beauty.” – Hegel[1]
[1] G.W.F. Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Arts, [Fine Arts] Vol. 1, translated by T. M. Knox, (Oxford: Oxford University
Press, 1998) pg. 123.
Ever existing within a hierarchical structure, for Hegel, beauty “begins as the beauty of nature.”[1] But what does it mean for beauty to begin in nature? For Hegel, the Concept is thrust completely and objectively into the brute material world. “The Concept immediately sinks itself so completely in objectivity that it does not itself appear as subjective ideal unity; on the contrary, it has altogether passed over soullessly into the material world perceived by the senses.” In this way, it is best to understand Hegel’s understanding of nature as the bottom level of Ideality, the material and complete objectivity of Idea. Here we can understand Hegel’s panlogism as the sinking of the Logos into nature. As Schwegler writes, “Nature is a Bacchantic God, uncontrolled by, and unconscious of, himself. It offers, then, no example of an intelligibly articulated, continuously ascendant gradation. On the contrary, it everywhere mingles and confounds the essential limits by intermediate and spurious products which perpetually furnishes instances in contradiction of every fixed classification.”[2]
On the extreme bottom level of this brute materiality we find purely mechanical and physical bodies which lack the complete articulation of the Concept. One particular characteristic of these bodies is their lack of animation and, similarly, their lack of parts. Hegel notes, “A metal, for example, is in itself a manifold of mechanical and physical qualities; but every tiny part of it possesses them in the same way.”[3] Moving upward along the natural hierarchy of bodies, Hegel places those higher natural objects which exist completely independently, yet come together into a system. Here Hegel has in mind the example of the solar system, with the sun existing entirely with itself, yet in relation to other bodies forming a complete system. “The sun, comets, moons, and planets appear, on the one hand, as heavenly bodies independent and different from one another; but on the other hand, they are what they are only because of the determinate place they occupy in a total system of bodies.”[4] Finally, third, we see the most Ideal form of natural existence, namely that of life. “Dead, inorganic nature is not adequate to the Idea, and only the living organism is an actuality of the Idea.”[5] Moreover, Hegel gives three qualifications for how this ought to be understood. First, in organic unity that is living, the Concept is manifested as something real; second, there is a negation of the real in it being subject to the Concept; and third, there is an infinite form which has the ability and power to maintain itself in organic content.[6]
The best and most ideal manifestation is found in human life. In the human person, the idea of the body and the idea of the soul are unified and indentified in a deep and negated manner. The body is animated by the soul in a manner where the body and its members exist as the systematic articulation of the Concept. In the body, the universal and the particular are articulated in unity. Hegel writes, “…so life too is to be known only as the unity of soul with its body. The subjective as well as the substantial unity of the soul within the body itself is displayed…”[7] In the human person, the singular self is articulated in unity with the body. Hegel presents an interesting argument for this mediation by appealing to the natural ability to feel or be touched. “It [physical feeling] permeates every member, is all over the organism in hundreds and hundreds of places, and yet in the same organism there are not many thousands of feelers; there is only one self that feels.”[8] This is an interesting insight into the unity that is found in the human person. It demonstrates, for Hegel, the unity that is found in the body and the soul. Hence, the Concept clearly manifests itself in a more perfect manner in the human than can be found in lower natural objects.
It is here, in Hegel’s appreciation of the unity of the human person that we begin to discover his role for natural aesthetics. Hegel writes, “…life in nature is beautiful because truth, the Idea in its earliest natural form as life, is immediately present there in an individual and adequate actuality.”[9] This is interesting because in this passage Hegel explicitly ties together the idea of the beautiful to the notion of truth. Hegel argues that beauty in nature is understood in relation to a mind which can apprehend beauty. In this sense, beauty is something apprehended by a mind which can appreciate the appearance of the beautiful. “The beauty of nature is beautiful only for another, i.e. for us, for the mind which apprehends beauty.”[10] Nevertheless, this type of beauty, because it is material, (and not a creation for Hegel) is not produced to be beautiful, but merely appears beautiful to the mind. He writes, “Yet, because of this purely sensuous immediacy, the living beauty of nature is produced neither for nor out of itself as beautiful and for the sake of a beautiful appearance.”[11] In this regard, natural beauty, for Hegel, will never raise to the aesthetical value we find in fine art, which has its sole existence as dependent upon its creation to be beautiful.
Similar to beauty requiring a relation to a mind, Hegel argues that from this perspective, at least for natural things, beauty is not within the natural object itself, but merely the subjective consideration of the object. In this way, Hegel envisions the apprehension of the beautiful in nature as the cognitive consideration of the object as beautiful. Hence, we see Hegel trying to avoid two polar opposites. In arguing that beauty in natural objects is found in the mind’s apprehension, that is, it’s guiding thought of an object, he avoids presenting an aesthetics which is purely perception based.[12] A perception based aesthetics would have to admit either an intrinsic beauty to the natural object (which would violate Hegel’s view of nature as brute objective materiality) or he would have to admit beauty was unrelated to ideality, but mere sense appreciation (which would violate Hegel’s idealism as well as his notion of the human person as united soul and body). Hegel explains that nature displays “…the Concept and the Idea, [which] is to be called beautiful; this is because when we look at natural forms that accord with the Concept, such a correspondence with the Concept is foreshadowed; and when we examine them with our senses the inner necessity and the harmony of the whole articulation is revealed to them at the same time. The perception of nature as beautiful goes no further than this foreshadowing of the Concept.” [13]This is the best nature can provide for aesthetics. In holding natural objects up against the idea of the beautiful, the mind is able to appreciate nature as beautiful.
Nevertheless, what accounts for even this appreciation of the beautiful? Here Hegel articulates the beautiful as that which is harmonious. Hegel writes, “The form of natural beauty as an abstract form…regulates the external manifold in accordance with this its determinacy and unity which, however, does not become imposed on the external. This sort of form is what is called regularity and symmetry, then conformity to law, and finally harmony.”[14] It is not important for our discussion to go into detail over regularity, symmetry, or conformity to law, however it will prove helpful to uncover more about how Hegel understands harmony.
Hegel defines harmony as “…a relation of qualitative differences, and indeed of a totality of such differences, a totality grounded in the essence of the thing itself.”[15] In other words, Hegel argues that the qualitative differences of a particular sensuous material assert themselves as a “congruous unity” which demonstrates itself in all its particularity, yet united into a congruous whole. It is this congruity which is harmony. The united whole of all the particularities of the natural object present a pleasing whole which compliments each other. Here Hegel gives the example of the human person, in the “case with harmony of the human figure, its position, rest, movement etc. Here no difference may come forward one-sidedly by itself, or otherwise the harmony is disturbed.”[16] It is in the interplay between the particularity of a natural object’s qualitative differences and the essence of the thing itself which accounts for harmony.
Finally, it is necessary to conclude with an analysis of what Hegel understands to be the deficiency of natural beauty. Hegel problematizes such deficiency aptly in his question, “why is nature necessarily imperfect in its beauty, and what is the origin of this imperfection?”[17] Ultimately the answer to this question will include the fact that the beauty of art is a reality more adequate to the Idea of beauty, but why?
Hegel argues that the Idea is always instantiated into a complete subjective individuality.[18] In the natural world this is realized through what he calls, immediate natural objects, that is, particularized objects of life. Hegel argues that humans represent the highest spiritual form of immediate natural objects, as the human person has an inner life which is projected through their physical manifestation.[19] Nevertheless, even in the human person there are three reasons for why there is a deficiency within natural beauty that is reconciled in the aesthetics of art. First, Hegel argues that nature is limited by its very materiality, more specifically, through an individual necessarily participating in its species. Hegel notes, “Every single animal belongs to a determinate and therefore restricted and fixed species, beyond the limits of which it cannot step.”[20] Here Hegel seemingly argues that the limitedness of belonging to a species somehow limits the “vision of independence” that is a requisite for genuine beauty. Yet, it must be said that this argument, as presented in its specific form, leaves much to be desired. One might ask, why does the existence of species have an inverse relationship on freedom? It would seem the only manner in which such an inverse relationship could occur would be within a view of freedom which is libertarian based, a view seemingly at odds with other comments Hegel makes on freedom.
The second argument for why natural beauty is less than the genuine beauty found in art is based on the physicality of the human person. Within the human person, Hegel notes that humans present their negative and impoverished feelings manifest in a very physical manner as they age and go through life’s unpleasant experiences. Hegel writes, “So there are worn faces on which all the passions have left the imprint of their destructive fiery; others afford only the impression of their inner coldness and superficiality; others again are so singular that the general type of features has almost entirely disappeared.”[21] The major thrust of Hegel’s argument here seems to be that these negative effects of the passions onto the human person reflect an “inherently unfree particularity.” Similar to the above argument, it is hard to make logical sense of Hegel’s argument, nor is it that convincing. One might ask again, why does the mere fact that the passions intertwine with the human person’s materiality speak to limitedness in freedom? Especially given that, as he argues, all ideality is particularized and that it is actually spiritually good that there is a substantial unity between body and soul.
The third argument Hegel puts forward is based on the finiteness of life. Hegel writes, “For the Concept, and, more concretely still, the Idea, is inherently infinite and free.”[22] Here the juxtaposition is between animality which is finite, and Idea which is infinity and freedom. This argument, I think, best articulates the driving force behind the critique that runs through all his arguments. For Hegel, the finiteness of human life or of life in general, is by definition a limiting force on spirit. The Concept is manifested in the natural world, but in a very limited and unfree manner. The limitedness of space and temporality shackles the infinite and free desire for the spirit, and hence no natural object can ever live up to the beauty we find in a subjective creation such as fine art. For Hegel, fine art represents freedom and infiniteness in its best and truest form. It owes its existence purely for the sake of beauty. It is a physical or musical representation of the inter-subjectivity of the self, disclosing spirit out of the limitedness of the person. In its creation, it presents itself juxtaposed to natural objects as rising above them, expressing a more primordial freedom in which the spirit finds its more natural home. For Hegel, this could never occur in the realm of natural objects, they are too restricted in their materiality, and lack the inter-subjective play shown in the creation of art.
[1] Hegel,
Fine Arts, pg. 116.
[2] Albert
Schwegler, A History of Philosophy,
translated by Julius Seelye, (Stockton, CA: University Press of the Pacific,
2010) pg. 332. Also see: Edward Douglas Fawcett, “From Berkeley to Hegel,” The Monist 7 (October, 1896): 41-81.
[19] “The
skin is not hidden by plant-like unloving coverings; the pulsating of the blood
shows itself over the entire surface; the beating heart of life is as it were
present everywhere over the body and comes out into appearance externally as
the body’s own animation, as turgor vitae,
as this swelling life.” Ibid, pg. 146.
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