humanshape–effectivelypresented human lifeasa locusoffreedom, meaning,
and value, but only in visual images and in connection with freedom made
available only for a few. In its images, it presents“implicitlythe unity of the
divine nature with the human.”^29 Modern art, or what Hegel calls Romantic art,
represents a cultural world of achieved freedom as a nonactual object of inner
longing and feeling, hence as something to be achieved through real cultural
practice, guided by religion and philosophy. Romantic art–first in Christian
paintings of the Crucifixion, and then in modern literature and music–“has
won a content which goes beyond and above the classical form of art and its
mode of expression...Inwardness celebrates its triumph over the external
world and manifests its victory in and on the external itself, whereby what is
apparent to the senses alone sinks into worthlessness.”^30 Romantic art
expresses feeling in relation to the thought that present culture can and should
be recast soas toachieve freedom, butitthereby fails tosome extenttocelebrate
actual concrete life. The substantive achievement of freedom within concrete
life is better grasped and presented first in religion and then in philosophy,
whichare better able todwell onmodernlife’s institutional complexitiesthanis
art, with its focus on concrete individuals.
While Hegel’s theory offers a clear account of the expressive meaning and
function of a number of collectively produced, culturally central works of
art–including especially temples, cathedrals, altarpieces, and other forms of
religious liturgical and monumental art–it is easy to doubt that it is
satisfactory as a theory of art in general. It is not clear that all human beings
and all cultures in fact have exactly the same problem of the achievement of
freedom, nor is it clear that that problem is solvable. Perhaps oppositions
between values cannot wholly be worked through, culturally and politically.
The idea that they might be strikes many nowadays as an implausible
theodicy: Hegel’s last-ditch and failed effort to posit comprehensive, God-
centered meaning at work in the world. Even if one reads Hegel’s remarks
about God and freedom as requiring no external agency beyond the doings of
human beings themselves (as Hegel surely intends), the claim that oppos-
itions between ways of life and consequent value commitments can be
wholly mediated seems implausible. Not only are there oppositions between
different cultures with different conceptions of what is highest, cultures are
themselves mongrelized, in being composed of individuals with divergent
(^29) Ibid., p. 79. (^30) Ibid., pp. 79, 81.
Expression 85