The notion of past of art and the spirituality of the artistic doing in Hegel

Abstract

This text aims to analyze the understanding of the "past of art" in Hegel's aesthetics, based on the main aspects this aesthetics identifies throughout the history of art and its diverse manifestations in the realm of artistic productions. Initially, we give a contextualization by Hegel's conception of the general system of the arts and their three distinct stages, each of them witnessing to differentiated moments of the Absolute Spirit's manifestation. In a second moment, the approach moves specifically onto what the German philosopher defines as symbolic art, with its process of sensory intuition, which is strongly marked by an attempt to visibly express the essence of an invisible spiritual foundation. The third moment of the proposed analysis has its focus on classical art, which according to Hegel, achieves significant maturation and promising advancement as compared to symbolic art, since it manages to bring together matter and form in a condition that is closer to divine truth. Next, this work looks to examine romantic art, which marks the culmination of art's history as it attains the very peak of spiritual subjectivity, intensifying a more direct relationship with the Spirit. Finally, as a conclusion, the historical process of art is analyzed by weighing the most relevant aspects of Hegel's conception of the death of art, where the philosopher seeks to demonstrate that art transforms into philosophy and, for this reason, ultimately loses its essence and its very sense of being.