On Hegel's Theory Of Symbolic Form Of Art

Both Hegel's philosophy and aesthetics are prolific with his whole system exemplifying the unification of dialectics, epistemology, and ontology. It's in Hegel that philosophy became a coverall system. However, there has always been more criticism on than recognition of his philosophy, only his dialectics being most recognized. In the field of ideology, Hegel is an idealistic philosopher; in the eye of cultural relativist, he is the very representative of west-centralism; in the context of the mergence of subject and object emphasized by post-modernism, he is the malefactor for the division of subject and object. Many theorists attacked Hegel's philosophy violently, but they all ignored the humanistic content in Hegel's philosophy, whether intentionally or involuntarily. Humanity pervades in Hegel's aesthetics, which inevitably involves the visualized expression of human's consciousness through image. Symbolic form of art as the first phase in the development of art is closely connected to the question how human consciousness is presented with the help of image. Hence, this text tries to interpret the humanistic content in Hegel's theory of symbolic form of art, with his philosophic structure as its background, his aesthetics as its subject, and his theory of symbolic form of art as its core.The introduction first tells about the present reception of Hegel's philosophy, and then gives a comprehensive statement of the research work of Hegel's philosophy both at home and abroad, with an illustration of the positive significance of the research of Hegel's theory of symbolic form of art. At the end of the introduction, the proof of the author's argument, the major points of view and the structure of the text are briefly introduced.Part one sorts out Hegel's philosophical thoughts and aesthetic theories. His philosophy mainly consists of logics, natural philosophy and spiritual philosophy, the main clue of which is the process of "absolute spirit" movement, i.e. its concreting through self negation, and its full realization in the end, or the process of the self recognition, and self realization of "absolute spirit". Hegel's aesthetics belongs to the first phase of absolute spirit, during which beauty visualizes absolute spirit through image, and shows that human is spirit, the spirit of freedom, which is Hegel's prescription of beauty in concept. However, as the final realization of the concept of beauty must come through a process of realization, it enters the sphere of history of artistic development. Since symbolic form of art belongs to the first phase in the history of artistic development, during which human didn't know he himself is the free spirit, and can not find a proper image to present it, therefore art in this period demonstrates the feature of symbolism.Part two addresses the horizontal relation between symbolic form of art as a phase in the history of art development and world history. Hegel posits oriental world as the starting point of world history, with the defining concept of "oriental spirit", the common feature of which is objectiveness and naturalness, and the lack of subjectiveness of spirit, therefore is an unfree spirit. This text reviews the religious and philosophical thoughts of oriental nationalities, and analyzes its feature of objectiveness and naturalness. Since symbolic form of art as a component of history and culture, is closely connected with the religious and philosophical thoughts of oriental nationalities, it shares the common feature in culture—the lack of free will.Part three makes a vertical survey of symbolic form of art. It first tells about Hegel's differentiation between "symbol" and "symbolic form of art", and then gives a thorough illustration of the "idea" in symbolic form of art, in which this author holds that the imperfection and defects of symbolic form of art is due to the lack of human free will. According to the three phases and the different periods in each phase by Hegel, this text makes a thorough study of every part, and points out that the development symbolic form of art accords with the development of human consciousness, and it is the visualized expression of the development of human consciousness from natural consciousness to self-awareness.In the end this text holds that Hegel's theory of symbolic form of art well embodies the principle of the unification of logic and history, and meanwhile it has rich content of humanity. We should pay enough attention to Hegel's emphasis on human free will, which provides a practical example for the construction of oriental aesthetics.