Abstract
The Hegelian notion of the end of art presupposes his totalizing account of world history. Hegel’s historical vision is inadequate because it fails to recognize that cultures have had different specific goals for art, and that they have not all aimed at the transparent realism that Hegel admires. His relegation of art to a less prominent role than hitherto also amounts to a demotion of beauty from its earlier spiritual role, through art, of guiding humanity to greater collective self-awareness. Hegel underemphasizes another spiritual function of beauty, its role in furthering our sense of life and enabling us to take joy in our own vitality. A recognition of this function of beauty is better able to reflect diverse cultural conceptions of beauty and spirituality than does Hegel’s account. It also suggests a partial explanation of the widespread phenomenon of turning to beauty in contexts of loss and mourning.
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Notes
- 1.
We should note that Geist, rendered as “Spirit” in most translations of Hegel, means “mind” as well as “spirit.” The intellectual cast of Hegel’s Geist is thus completely in keeping with the denotations of the term he uses. In English, however, “spirit” and “mind” are not so clearly linked. “Mind” is sometimes used with the meaning of the “thinking” faculty devoid of affect (as if there were such a thing), while “spirit” tends to have affective connotations, even if they tend to be a bit rarified and “pure.” “Mind” can also be used to refer to the psyche, or soul, as a whole. This latter usage is closer to Hegel’s Geist than the former.
- 2.
One might argue that David Hume comes much closer to Indian theory than Aristotle, with his notion of a peculiarly aesthetic emotion. (See Hume 1963). Hume does differentiate the emotion prompted by beautiful art from that occurring in other contexts; however, his aesthetic emotion is quite different from the Indian rasa, which occurs as a result of a transformed spiritual state in the audience member. Hume’s aesthetic emotion by contrast seems to be an everyday emotional state, albeit one that occurs in the particular context of enjoying an artwork. Nothing about it seems to involve or require the competent audience member’s achievement of an inner transformation as a consequence of experiencing aesthetic emotion.
- 3.
Abhinava acknowledges (and is our major source of knowledge about) the aesthetic views of other important aesthetic theorists with whom he disagreed. Bhaṭṭa Lollaṭa, for example, claimed that rasa was only an intensified experience of a durable bhāva.
- 4.
We should note, however, that Indian theorists did not all agree on the importance of dhvani. Bhaṭṭanāyaka, for example, endeavored to undermine the notion.
- 5.
Armstrong is not alone in regarding the term “art” as problematic. See, for example, Shiner 2001. One certainly can use the term in an ethnocentric way, and we should be vigilant in trying to avoid insisting that one’s own culture sets the standard in this or any other type of human practice. Nevertheless, I think that widespread parallels among human practices justify use of generic terms in reference to them, so long as one acknowledges an array of differences in specific cultural attitudes and implementations. Ellen Dissanayake offers one interesting account of the common denominator of artistic practices, broadly understood. See Dissanayake 2000.
- 6.
This suggests that when attempting to generalize beyond a given culture, philosophers should not insist on analytic precision since this will typically make their terms less serviceable.
- 7.
For a thoughtful discussion of refined emotional responses, which may occur in connection with art, see Nico H. Frijda and Louise Sundararajan (2007).
- 8.
Pater is actually talking about philosophy as well as art, but he seems particularly to have in mind a broad philosophical approach to life and what surrounds us:
The service of philosophy, of speculative culture, towards the human spirit, is to rouse, to startle it to a life of constant and eager observation. Every moment some form grows perfect in hand or face; some tone on the hills or the sea is choicer than the rest; some mood of passion or insight or intellectual excitement is irresistibly real and attractive to us, —for that moment only. Not the fruit of experience, but experience itself, is the end. A counted number of pulses only is given to us of a variegated, dramatic life. How may we see in them all that is to be seen in them by the finest senses? How shall we pass most swiftly from point to point, and be present always at the focus where the greatest number of vital forces unite in their purest energy? To burn always with this hard, gemlike flame, to maintain this ecstasy, is success in life.
I am arguing that beauty, more directly than abstract speculation, provokes eager observation and awareness of vital forces united in the manner Pater describes, although the experience of beauty can be calm in a way that Pater’s term “quickened” does not capture.
- 9.
While the sense of life is quickened by beauty, the pulse is not necessarily sped up, not, at least, for a sustained amount of time. Experiences of the beautiful include those in which it is steadied into a kind of repose.
- 10.
At least not to the same high degree, though I grant that my description of typical features of this sense are shaped by my cultural background.
- 11.
My thanks to Anjolie Ela Menon for pointing out to me the “unbeautiful” character of certain cultures’ funerary ceremonies.
- 12.
This point that is somewhat akin to the reasoning of Abhinavagupta. See Abhinavagupta 1990, 1.5, 115.
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Higgins, K.M. (2017). Beauty and the Sense of Life. In: Higgins, K., Maira, S., Sikka, S. (eds) Artistic Visions and the Promise of Beauty. Sophia Studies in Cross-cultural Philosophy of Traditions and Cultures, vol 16. Springer, Cham. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-43893-1_11
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