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August 27, 2007
the pre-eminent power of art
Man can frame to himself ideas of things that are not actual as though they were actual. Hence it is all the same to our feelings whether external reality or only the semblance of it is the means of bringing in contact with us a situation, a relation, or the import of a life. Either mode suffices to awaken our response to its burden, in grief and in rejoicing, in pathos and in horror, and in traversing the emotions and the passions of wrath, hatred, compassion, of anxiety, fear, love, reverence, and admiration, or of the desire of honor and of fame.
This awakening of all feelings in us, the dragging of the heart through the whole significance of life, the realization of all such inner movements by means of a presented exterior consisting merely in deception – all this was what, from the point of view which we have been considering, constituted the peculiar and pre-eminent power of art.
Hegel - Lectures on Aesthetics
Posted by amin at August 27, 2007 1:06 PM