What is expressed in art? Hegel versus Danto
G. W. F. Hegel argues that a central task of art is the expression of the spirit
and the sense of what is highest that is held in common by a nation or people.
There can be merely decorative art, individualist art that is frivolously expres-
sive, and in general art determined by extrinsic purposes.“Art can be used as a
fleeting play, affording recreation and entertainment, decorating our sur-
roundings, [and] giving pleasantness to the externals of our life.”^19 But
Fine art...only fulfils its supreme task when it has placed itself in the same
sphere as religion and philosophy, and when it is simply one way of
bringing to our minds and expressing theDivine, the deepest interests of
mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit. In works of art the
nations have deposited their richest inner intuitions and ideas, and art is
often the key, and in many nations the sole key, to understanding their
philosophy and religion.^20
Hegel’s account of art asculturalexpression of a shared sense of what is
highest has clear advantages. It enables us to see collectively produced,
culturally central works such as Rouen Cathedral (c. 1160–c. 1600) or Angkor
Watt, the Khmer Buddhist temple at Angkor, Cambodia (early twelfth cen-
tury) as expressive objects, without having to specify any individual whose
particular emotions or attitudes such works express.
Hegel’s account further enables us to see how and why expression might
matter as other than an item of an individual maker’s biography. Collectively
produced, culturally central works of art make manifest emotions and atti-
tudes that themselves inform whole cultures. Hegel argues that the emotions
and attitudes toward what is highest that inform any one culture are intern-
ally related to–that is, are variations of–the emotions and attitudes that
inform any culture.“Works of fine art,”he claims, are“the first reconciling
middle term between pure thought and what is merely external, sensuous,
and transient, between nature and finite reality and the infinite freedom of
conceptual thinking.”^21 That is to say, human beings in general can think
and reason, in the sense that they can articulate and respond to arguments
and to what count as good reasons for doing something. They seek to exercise(^19) G. W. F. Hegel,Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox, 2 vols. (Oxford: Clarendon
Press, 1975), vol. I, p. 7.
(^20) Ibid. (^21) Ibid., p. 8.
82 An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art