Twelve Aesthetics(1)
第十二章 美学(1)
THE PARADOX OF HEGEL’S AESTHETICS
黑格尔美学的悖论
Of all Hegel’s works, his Lectures on Aesthetics has been the most popular. Both its subject matter and exposition have made it more accessible than his other works. Since it is a composite of lecture notes and student transcripts, the exposition is more informal and fluent than Hegel’s published writings. The text captures some of the liveliness and openness of Hegel’s oral delivery, his attempt to communicate to a wide audience. Not surprisingly, the Aesthetics has also been Hegel’s most influential work.1 Hegel has been a seminal figure in art history, and indeed he has been seen as the father of modern art history.2 Remarkably, though, his influence has been greatest among literary critics and art historians, not among Hegel scholars, who until recently gave the Aesthetics scant attention.3
在黑格尔的所有著作中，《美学讲演录》是最为流行的。无论是它的主题还是它的阐述都使它比他的其他著作更容易理解。由于它是一个课堂讲义和学生笔记的混合体，其阐述比黑格尔正式出版的著作更加不拘形式和通畅可读。文本捕捉到了黑格尔口头讲演的一些生气和率真之处，以及他与广大听众交流的尝试。毫不奇怪，《美学》也是黑格尔最有影响的著作。黑格尔是一个在艺术史上具有开创性的人物，而事实上，他亦被视为现代艺术史之父。有一点极为引人注目，他在文学批评家和艺术史家当中影响巨大，然而直到最近，研究黑格尔的学者仍未予《美学》以足够的关注。
Karl Rosenkranz, Hegel’s first biographer, attests to Hegel’s passionate devotion to the arts.4 It is a myth, he claims, that Hegel’s abstruse thinking blunted his aesthetic sensitivity. Of all the great systematic philosophers, he judged, Hegel was alone in penetrating the entire domain of the arts. We know how much he loved music, drama, poetry, painting and sculpture. Whenever he arrived in a new city during his travels, he would take every opportunity to visit museums, operas, concerts and theaters. He adored some singers and actresses, whom he went to great pains to meet. Many of Hegel’s contemporaries were deeply impressed by his aesthetic sensitivity, powers of interpretation and critical discernment.
黑格尔的第一个传记作者，卡尔·罗森克朗兹（Karl Rosenkranz）证实了黑格尔满怀激情地投入到诸种艺术之中。他声称，说黑格尔深奥的思想削弱了他的审美敏感性，是一个神话（myth）。他认为，在所有伟大的体系哲学家当中，黑格尔是唯一一位深入全部艺术领域的。我们知道，他是多么热爱音乐、戏剧、诗歌、绘画和雕塑。每当他在旅行中到达一个新城市，他都不会放过任何一个机会去参观博物馆、欣赏歌剧、听音乐会和观看戏剧。他爱慕一些歌手和女演员，并煞费苦心地去与他们结识。黑格尔的很多同时代人，都被他的审美敏感性、阐释的力量和批判性的鉴别力所深深打动。
The Aesthetics provides more than ample evidence for Hegel’s devotion to the arts. The sheer size of the work would seem to make it the most important part of Hegel’s system. In most editions of Hegel’s works it comprises three volumes, one more than any other part of the system, including even the Science of Logic. The Aesthetics is even larger than the Encyclopedia, the exposition of the system as a whole. In the Werkausgabe edition it extends to more than 1500 pages, making it more than 200 pages longer than the Encyclopedia. We might attribute the length of the work to the vagaries of Hegel’s editors; but, apart from its size, the content of the work leaves no doubt about Hegel’s extraordinary devotion to, and knowledge of, the arts. The work has an almost astonishing breadth and depth. The first half is a survey of the history of art, which encompasses every culture from the beginning of history; the second half is an intensive discussion of specific arts, a detailed account of poetry, painting, drama, sculpture and music. Without a doubt, the Aesthetics is one of the great works in its field, on at least an equal footing with Kant’s Critique of Judgment and Schiller’s Aesthetic Letters.
《美学》不仅仅为黑格尔对艺术的热爱提供了充足的证据，单是这部著作的部头似乎就足以使它成为黑格尔体系中最重要的部分。在黑格尔著作的绝大部分版本中，它占据了三卷，比体系的任何其他部分——甚至包括《逻辑学》在内——都要多。《美学》甚至比作为体系之整体阐述的《哲学全书》部头还要大。在编辑著作集（Werkausgabe）之时，它扩展到超过1500页，比《哲学全书》还长200页。我们可以把这部著作的长度归咎于黑格尔著作编者的变幻无常；但是，除了它的部头，著作的内容也毫无疑问地表明了黑格尔对艺术的非凡热爱和关于它的渊博知识。这部著作有着惊人的广度和深度。前半部分是对艺术史的一个考察，它涵盖了有史以来的每一种文化；后半部分是对各门具体艺术的深入讨论，详细解释了诗歌、绘画、戏剧、雕塑和音乐。毫无疑问，《美学》是该领域中一本最伟大的著作，至少可以与康德的《判断力批判》和席勒的《美育书简》平起平坐。
But if Hegel’s devotion to the arts is incontestable, it is also very puzzling. Any reader of the Aesthetics eventually has to come to terms with a remarkable fact: Hegel’s pervasive and persistent effort to diminish the significance of the arts. Such, at any rate, is the unmistakable purport of two of Hegel’s central theses. First, Hegel contends that art as a medium of knowledge is inferior to philosophy; what art glimpses through the obscure medium of the senses philosophy captures through the transparent medium of thought. Second, Hegel holds that art has no future, that it has lost its traditional importance and has no role to play in modern culture. Once he ponders these theses, the reader confronts a paradox: Why does Hegel devote so much space and effort to the arts if he is so intent on diminishing them? Why indeed write a three-volume work on them if they are inferior to philosophy and doomed to obsolescence? Of course, this paradox is not unique in the history of philosophy. Plato banished the artists from his state in the Republic only to praise beauty in the Phaedrus; Rousseau attacked the arts in his First Discourse and Letter to D’Alembert, though he was a famous composer and wrote one of the most beautiful novels of the eighteenth century, The New Heloise. Still, to put Hegel in such company does not diminish the paradox; it shows only that it applies to him as much as to the others.
但是，如果黑格尔对艺术的热衷是毋庸置辩的，它同样也是令人困惑不解的。《美学》的任何读者最终都不得不忍受这样一个不同寻常的事实：黑格尔一有机会就极力贬低艺术的重要性，这种尝试自始至终、坚持不懈。无论如何，这是黑格尔两个核心论题明确无误的要旨。首先，黑格尔认为，作为知识的一种中介，艺术低于哲学；艺术通过模糊的感官中介瞥见之物，哲学则通过透明的思想中介把握之。第二，黑格尔认为艺术没有未来，它已经失去了传统上的重要性，在现代文化中不再有用武之地。一旦他沉思这些论题，读者就面临一个悖论：既然黑格尔如此热衷于贬低艺术，他为何还要为之投入如此多的篇幅和努力？既然艺术低于哲学并且注定是要过时的，为何他还要写一部三卷本的著作来讨论艺术？当然，这种悖论在哲学史上并非独一无二。柏拉图在《理想国》（Republic）里把艺术家从他的城邦中驱逐出去，却在《斐德若》（Phaedrus）中唱响美的赞歌；卢梭在他的《第一论文》（First Discourse）和《给达朗贝尔的信》（Letter to D'Alembert）中对艺术极尽攻击之能事，纵然他是一位著名的作曲家，并且写了18世纪最优美的一部小说《新爱洛依丝》（The New Heloise）。然而，将黑格尔置于这样的行列中并未取消这个悖论：它只是表明这个悖论对他和别人同样适用。
One strategy to resolve the paradox is to focus on the polemical intent and context behind the Aesthetics. In his later Berlin years Hegel’s anti-romantic animus only grew in intensity. He targeted Friedrich Savigny in several places of the Philosophy of Right.5 He had a famous quarrel with Schleiermacher, with whom he would often engage in heated polemics.6 Hegel never liked Friedrich Schlegel, and his aversion grew into a deep loathing over the years, so that he would sometimes go out of his way to criticize him.7 All this animus came to a climax in the Aesthetics, which was a subtle and sustained polemic against the romantics. The anti-romantic aspects of the Aesthetics are profound and pervasive. Both Hegel’s theses are directed against the romantic faith in the supremacy of the arts. The first targets the romantic claim that art stands above philosophy as a medium of truth; the second strikes against the romantic doctrine that artists should replace priests and philosophers in forming the ideology of modern culture. Apart from these theses, the whole structure of the first half of the work seems slanted against the romantics. The structure revolves around Hegel’s classification of the epochs of art history, which seems specifically designed to prove two anti-romantic points: first, that the height of artistic achievement was in classical Greece; second, that modern romantic art amounts to the dissolution of art. According to this explanation, then, Hegel’s devotion to the arts in the Aesthetics is really only apparent; it was only his anti-romantic animus that made him spend so much time and energy on art.
解决这个悖论的一个策略是，关注《美学》背后的论战性的意图和语境。在他晚年的柏林岁月，黑格尔反对浪漫派的敌意（animus）愈演愈烈。他在《法哲学》的好几个地方抨击弗里德里希·萨维尼（Friedrich Savigny）。他与施莱尔马赫（Schleiermacher）有一场著名的争吵，并经常跟他发生激烈的论战。黑格尔从来都不喜欢弗里德里希·施莱格尔（Friedrich Schlegel），他对后者的嫌恶（aversion）多年来发展成一种深深的憎恨（loathing），以至于会不厌其烦地批评他。所有这些敌意在《美学》——这一针对浪漫派的难以捉摸和坚持不懈的论战中臻于极致。《美学》中反浪漫派的方面是广大深远和无处不在的。黑格尔的两个论题都直接针对浪漫派艺术至上的信念。第一个论题是抨击浪漫派的如下主张，艺术作为真理之一种中介高于哲学；第二个论题抨击浪漫派的这种学说，即艺术家在形成现代文化的意识形态方面应该取代牧师和哲学家。除了这些论题，整部作品前半部分的整体结构似乎也有意反对浪漫派。这个结构以黑格尔对艺术史时代之划分为中心，而这种划分似乎是为证明两个反浪漫派的观点而专门设计的。这两个观点是：第一，艺术的最高成就在古希腊；第二，现代浪漫艺术意味着艺术的解体。那么，根据这个解释，黑格尔在《美学》中对艺术的热情投入实际上只是表面的；只是由于他反浪漫派的敌意才使他在艺术上耗费如此多的时间和精力。
Though this explanation has some truth, it is not entirely correct. There were not only negative but also positive reasons for Hegel’s preoccupation with the arts. Ultimately, his attitude toward the arts was ambivalent: if he heartily despised the inflated claims made in their behalf, he deeply admired the activity behind them. The arts had indeed a crucial place in the system. Art, religion and philosophy were the three modes of absolute knowledge, one of the three media by which spirit attains its self-awareness. Although art was the lowest of the hierarchy, it was surely significant that it was on the hierarchy at all, and indeed at the very base of the pyramid where it would support religion and philosophy. Art was the first medium in which spirit came to its self-awareness, the first level in which it transcended the spheres of nature and history and returned into itself. For all his polemics against the romantics, Hegel accepted the common romantic doctrine that artists were the first teachers of mankind, and that poetry was the mother tongue of the human race. In general, Hegel grants great significance to works of art as media of cultural self-awareness, as manifestations and expressions of the spirit of an entire age. Here we only need to remind ourselves of the crucial role he assigned to literary works in the Phenomenology: to Sophocles’ Antigone for revealing the Greek Volksgeist and to Diderot’s Rameau’s Nephew for disclosing the mentality of pre-revolutionary France.
尽管这个解释有些道理，但并不完全正确。黑格尔长时期地关注艺术并不只有消极的原因，也有积极的原因。归根结底，他对艺术的态度是矛盾的：他既衷心鄙视那些以艺术的名义提出的过甚其辞的主张，又深深地钦佩艺术背后的活动。艺术确实在其体系中占有一个关键地位。艺术、宗教和哲学是绝对知识的三种中介，凭藉每一种中介，精神都可以获得自我意识。尽管艺术处在这个等级体系（hierarchy）的最底部，但毫无疑问，重要的是它处在这个等级体系中。尽管它位于金字塔的最底层，但是在那里，它可以支撑宗教和哲学。艺术是精神达到其自我意识的第一个中介，是精神超越自然和历史的领域并回到自身的第一个层面。尽管与浪漫派有诸多论战，黑格尔还是接受了浪漫派共同的观点，即艺术家是人类的第一任教师，而诗歌是人类的母语。总的来说，黑格尔赋予了作为文化自我意识之中介、作为一个时代之精神的展示和表达的艺术作品以极大的重要性。这里我们只需要提及他在《精神现象学》中分派给文学作品的关键角色就够了：用索福克勒斯的《安提戈涅》（Antigone）揭示希腊的民族精神（Volksgeist），以及借狄德罗《拉摩的侄儿》（Rameau's Nephew）披露法国革命前的精神状态。
If we were to explain in a few words the historical significance of the Aesthetics, we would have to stress Hegel’s role in reviving the legacy of Winckelmann in a post-Kantian and post-romantic age.8 Throughout the Aesthetics the influence of Winckelmann is evident: in Hegel’s uncompromising classicism, in his belief in the metaphysical significance of art, and in his attempt to situate art in its cultural context. When we read Hegel’s description of classical beauty we can hear clear echoes of Winckelmann.9 Although he was by no means uncritical of Winckelmann,10 Hegel also paid handsome tribute to him. It was Winckelmann, he said, who had created a completely new organ for seeing art, a totally new perspective from which to understand it (W, XIII, 92/63). It was Hegel’s mission to reaffirm Winckelmann’s legacy against Kant and the romantics, who had attacked it in the 1790s. Against the romantics, Hegel reasserted Winckelmann’s classicism, which the romantics had rejected as inappropriate for the modern age. While Hegel agreed with the romantics against Winckelmann that classical values could not be restored in the modern age, he still believed with Winckelmann against the romantics that classicism was the epitome of artistic achievement; Hegel’s end of art thesis was simply Winckelmann’s classicism without his doctrine of imitation. Against Kant, Hegel reinstated Winckelmann’s method of placing art in its cultural context, a method that Kant had undermined by placing aesthetic experience in a transcendental realm beyond society and history.
如果我们要用几句话解释《美学》的历史意义，我们就必须强调在一个后康德和后浪漫主义时代，黑格尔在复兴温克尔曼（Winckelmann）遗产的过程中所起的作用。纵观《美学》全书，温克尔曼的影响是显而易见的：在黑格尔毫不妥协的古典主义中，在他对艺术之形而上学意义的信念中，以及在他把艺术置于其文化语境的尝试中，这一点显而易见。在我们阅读黑格尔对古典美的描述时，我们能清楚地听到温克尔曼的回声。尽管黑格尔对温克尔曼并非毫无批判，他还是对他赞赏有加。他说，正是温克尔曼发明了一种全新地看待艺术的工具（organ）、一种理解艺术的全新的视角（W，XIII, 92/63）。黑格尔的使命就是重申温克尔曼的遗产以反对康德和浪漫派，后者在18世纪90年代对前者加以攻击。与浪漫派背道而驰，黑格尔重新肯定了那被浪漫派认为不适用于现时代从而拒绝了的温克尔曼的古典主义。尽管黑格尔与浪漫派一道，反对温克尔曼认为古典价值在现时代已经无法恢复的观点，但他却与温克尔曼一起，反对浪漫派而相信古典主义是艺术最高成就的化身（epitome）；黑格尔关于艺术终结的命题不过就是温克尔曼的古典主义，只是不包括后者的摹仿说。不同于康德，黑格尔恢复了温克尔曼将艺术置于其文化语境中的方法，而康德通过将审美经验置于一种超越社会和历史的先验领域而削弱了这种方法。
THE SUBORDINATION THESIS
从属论
One of the most controversial aspects of Hegel’s aesthetics is his subordination thesis, his doctrine that art is inferior to religion and philosophy as a medium of truth. This doctrine has been attacked chiefly on the grounds that it is unduly reductionist, showing a lack of appreciation for the sui generis stature of the arts. It has seemed to many as if Hegel wants to reduce poetry down to prose, as if everything that can be said in the media of art could be better said in philosophy.11 The doctrine has therefore been condemned as a giant step backward in aesthetics, a relapse from Kant’s thesis of the autonomy of art, which seems to provide a better basis for the understanding of modern art.12 It has seemed to some as if Hegel wants to take aesthetics back to bad old pre-Baumgartian days, where aesthetic experience amounted to nothing more than ‘a confused representation of understanding’.13 One might defend Hegel by pointing out that he too explicitly affirmed the Kantian principle of autonomy; but this has not helped him against his critics, who claim that this principle is incompatible with the subordination thesis. After all, they argue, how is art autonomous if it is explicable in the terms of religion and philosophy? Hegel’s affirmation of the subordination thesis and the principle of autonomy has been regarded as one of the fundamental tensions of his aesthetics.14
黑格尔美学中最有争议的一个方面是他的从属论，即他认为艺术作为真理的中介低于宗教和哲学。这个学说主要因其过于具有还原论色彩而受到攻击，显示出对艺术独具一格的地位缺乏欣赏。对于很多人来说，似乎黑格尔想把诗歌还原为散文，似乎任何以艺术为中介而说出的东西都可以用哲学更好地说出。这种学说因而被谴责为在美学方面巨大的退步，从康德的艺术自律论的一种倒退，而后者似乎为理解现代艺术提供了一个更好的基础。对一些人来说，黑格尔似乎想把美学带回糟糕过时的前鲍姆伽通（pre-Baumgartian）时代，在那里，审美体验仅仅等同于“一种混乱不堪的知性表象”。也有人可能想通过指出黑格尔也明确肯定康德的自律原则来为之进行辩护；但是这并不能帮他反对他的批评者，后者声称这个理论与从属论势同水火。他们争辩道，毕竟，如果艺术只有依据宗教和哲学才是可解释的，那么它如何自律呢？黑格尔对从属论和自律原则的同时肯认被视为他的美学理论中的一种根本的张力。
Whether these objections are well founded can only be determined by a closer examination of Hegel’s subordination thesis. We have already examined this thesis in the case of religion (pp. 146–52). It is now necessary to consider it in the case of art, which poses its own special problems.
这些异议是否根基稳固，只能通过对黑格尔从属论做一个详尽的考察才能确定。我们已经在讨论宗教时考察过这一论题（第146~152页）。现在有必要在艺术的情况中考虑它，后者提出了它自己特殊的难题。
Hegel’s official account of the place of art in his system appears in several dense and obscure paragraphs of the 1830 Encyclopedia (§§556–63). Art, religion and philosophy are the three stages of absolute spirit, the three forms of its self-awareness. These stages should be understood primarily as conceptual, as an epistemological classification of levels of self-knowledge. However, Hegel complicates matters by also conceiving these stages in historical terms, so that each stage represents a specific historical epoch. Hence the age of art is classical Greece; the age of religion is the Middle Ages; and the age of philosophy is modernity. This mixture of the conceptual and historical has been regarded as a confusion.15 But the objection only begs the question, given that Hegel would never have accepted a strict distinction between epistemology and history.
黑格尔对艺术在其体系中地位的正式论述出现在1830年《哲学全书》的几个晦暗不明、难以索解的段落中（§ § 556–63）。艺术、宗教和哲学是绝对精神的三个阶段，是其自我意识的三种形式。这些阶段应该主要被理解为概念的，理解为一种自我认识层面的认识论分类。然而，黑格尔也通过用历史的术语构想这些阶段而使事情复杂化了，因此每个阶段都能代表一个特定的历史时代。艺术的时代是古希腊，宗教的时代是中世纪，哲学的时代是现代性。这种概念物和历史物的混合被看作一种混淆（confusion）。但是鉴于黑格尔绝不会接受认识论与历史之间的严格区分，所以这种反驳只是回避了问题。
If we follow the Encyclopedia account, Hegel thinks that art is subordinate to religion and philosophy because it stands on a lower level of self-consciousness. So we now must ask: Why is art a lower form of self-consciousness than religion and philosophy? Hegel’s explanation in the Aesthetics follows his general theory of spirit.16 According to that theory, spirit comes to its self-awareness first through externalization, from going outside itself and into its other, and then through reinternalization, going back inside itself from its other (pp. 114–15). Hegel explains that art belongs to the first stage of self-externalization, primarily because its medium appears to the senses, and secondly because its object exists outside the artist. Although the object is external to the artist, it also embodies his creative activity, and so the artist sees himself in his object, which therefore marks a stage of self-consciousness. Religion and philosophy, however, belong to the later stage of re-internalization because their media are universal and owe their existence to the activity of thinking alone. When the spirit deals with such media it is within a realm entirely created by itself, and so it enjoys greater independence and a higher level of selfconsciousness. Part of Hegel’s argument here is that aesthetic experience does not involve the structure of identity-in-difference characteristic of spirit. That structure requires that self and its other, subject and object, have the same status; but in the case of art the object is something dead and external, and so not on the same footing as the subject itself. Hence Hegel explains how the artist can distance himself from his object, ridiculing and even destroying it (VPR XVI, 137). Turning the romantic concept of irony against itself, he suggests that if the artist can alienate himself from his work, he cannot attain perfect self-awareness through it.
如果我们遵循《哲学全书》的论述，那么，黑格尔认为，艺术因为处在一个自我意识的更低的层面而从属于宗教和哲学。因此，我们现在必须问：为什么与宗教和哲学相比，艺术是自我意识的一种更低的形式？黑格尔在《美学》中的解释遵循了他的一般的精神理论。根据这个理论，精神达到它的自我意识，首先是通过外化，即越出自身并进入他者之中；然后通过再次内化，即从它的他者返回到自身（第114~115页）。黑格尔解释说，艺术属于自我外化的第一步，主要是因为它的中介向诸感官显现，其次是因为它的对象存在于艺术家之外。尽管对象外在于艺术家，但是它也体现了他的创造性活动，而且因此艺术家在其对象中看到了自己，对象由此而标志着自我意识的一个阶段。宗教和哲学由于它们的中介是普遍的，并且将其实存只归功于思想活动，因而属于后一阶段的再—内在化（re-internalization）。当精神与这样的中介打交道的时候，它是在一个完全由自己所创造的领域内，因而享受更大的独立性和更高层次的自我意识。黑格尔在此所做的的部分论证是，审美经验并不涉及精神的有差异的同一（identity-in-difference）的特征。那种结构的前提是，自我和他者、主体和对象具有相同的地位；但是在艺术的情况中，对象是某种僵死的和外在的东西，因而并不能与主体等量齐观（on the same footing）。因此，黑格尔解释了艺术家何以能够疏离他的对象，嘲弄甚至毁灭对象（VPR XVI, 137）。通过使浪漫派的反讽概念反对它自身，他提出，如果艺术家能够和他的作品相外化，他就不能通过作品获得完美的自我意识。
Hegel’s best account of the systematic place of art in his system appears not in the dense and obscure exposition of the Encyclopedia but in his 1827 and 1831 lectures on the philosophy of religion.17 Here the distinction between art, religion and philosophy is not in terms of self-consciousness but in terms of kinds of knowledge or degrees of comprehension. Hegel now explains that art, religion and philosophy all have the same object, the absolute or truth itself; but they consist in different forms of knowledge of it. Art presents the absolute in the form of immediate intuition (Anschauung); religion presents it in the form of representation (Vorstellung); and philosophy presents it in the form of concepts (Begriffe).
黑格尔对艺术在其体系中的体系性地位的最好论述，似乎并不在《哲学全书》那浓缩而晦涩的阐述中，而是在他1827年和1831年关于宗教哲学的讲座中。在这里，艺术、宗教和哲学的区别并不是就自我意识而言，而是就知识的种类或理解的程度而言。现在黑格尔认为艺术、宗教和哲学全都具有相同的对象，即绝对或真理自身；但是它们呈现为不同的知识形式。艺术以直接直观（Anschauung）的形式呈现绝对；宗教以表象（Vorstellung）的形式呈现它；哲学以概念（Begriffe）的形式呈现它。
Each form of consciousness requires explication (pp. 147–8). In choosing the term ‘intuition’ to describe the stage of art, Hegel was only keeping with the usage of the romantics, who referred to aesthetic experience as an intuition. Like Kant and the romantics, Hegel understands intuition as the direct or immediate representation of a particular in sense experience; it is contrasted to a concept which is a mediate representation of a particular because it is a universal representation of many individual representations. Since intuition is a form of sense perception, and as such involved in all acts of seeing, hearing or touching, its medium of expression will be an image, some concrete shape or form in the sensible world. Hence the medium of the arts will be images; in the case of music these will be sounds, in the case of sculpture they will be shapes, and in the case of painting they will be colours and shapes, and so on. Unlike the intuitions of art, whose objects are particular, the representations of religion are already universal, and so they involve a primitive form of abstraction. In religion we already begin to express the divine in determinate terms that exclude their opposites; for example, we refer to the divine as the infinite as opposed to the finite. Finally, the concepts of philosophy are not only universal but also concrete; they are not abstract like the representations of religion because they do not simply distinguish one thing from another but also involve knowing how each thing depends on another in a complete system.
意识的每种形式都要求阐释（第147~148页）。在选择“直观”这个术语描述艺术阶段之时，黑格尔只是遵循了浪漫派的用法，后者认为审美经验是一种直观。与康德和浪漫派相同，黑格尔将直观理解为一种在感觉经验中关于特殊的直接（direct）或当前的（immediate）表象；这种表象与作为关于特殊的间接表象的概念形成对照，因为概念是一个关于许多个体表象的普遍表象。由于直观是一种感知觉（sense perception）的形式，因此涉及到所有视、听、触的行为，其表达的中介将会是图像、可感世界的某种具体的形状或形式。因而艺术的中介将会是各种图像；在音乐中将会是声音、在雕塑中将会是形状、在绘画中则是颜色和形状，如此等等。艺术直观的对象是特殊的，与此不同，宗教的表象已经是普遍的，它们涉及到一种原始的抽象形式。在宗教中，我们已经开始以排除了它们的对立物的有规定的术语来表达神圣。例如，我们把神圣称为与有限对立的无限。最后，哲学的概念不仅是普遍的，而且也是具体的；它们不像宗教的表象一样是抽象的，因为它们不仅仅将一物与他物区别开，而且涉及到认识每一物在一个完整的体系中如何依赖于他物。
It is important to see that art, religion and philosophy are all forms of concrete universality. In other words, they know their object as a whole or unity that precedes its parts; and they are therefore unlike the purely intellectual activity of the understanding (Verstand), which analyzes the whole into independent parts. They differ from one another, however, in the degree of their comprehension of this whole or unity. Intuition sees its object as a whole or unity; but it does not have an articulate grasp of the whole because it does not distinctly see each of its parts. Representation sees the parts of the whole distinctly; when it forms a universal it abstracts some aspect or feature of the whole; however, it has a dim grasp of how all these parts together form the whole. Philosophy stands higher than both art and religion because it grasps the whole within each of its parts; it sees not only the whole but how each individual part depends on it. Hence Hegel’s hierarchy reflects perfectly the three stages of the concept: universality, particularity and individuality.18
重要的是看到，艺术、宗教和哲学全都是具体普遍性的形式。换句话说，它们认识到，它们的对象作为一个整体或统一体先于它的部分；因而它们不同于知性（Verstand）的纯粹理智的活动，后者将整体析解为彼此独立的部分。然而，在对这个整体或统一体领会的程度上，它们彼此不同。直观将它的对象看作一个整体或统一体；但是它并没有对整体的一种清晰而连贯的（articulate）把握，因为它没有确定无疑地看到它的每一部分。表象清楚地看到了整体的各部分；但当它形成一个普遍物时，它将整体的一些方面或特征抽象掉了；然而，对于所有这些部分如何形成一个整体，它只有一种模糊的把握。哲学由于在整体的每一部分中把握整体而高于艺术和宗教；它不仅看到了整体，而且看到了每一个个别部分如何依赖于它。因此，黑格尔的等级制度（hierarchy）完美地反映了概念的三个阶段：普遍性、特殊性和个别性。
Once we understand the hierarchy in these terms, it should be clear that the charge of reductivism against Hegel begs the question. For Hegel maintains that the conceptual comprehension of philosophy does not analyze but reconstitutes the whole of aesthetic intuition. It is not a form of abstract understanding, which attempts to reduce the whole into its separate parts; rather, it is an attempt to explain more distinctly each part of the whole, and how each part depends on the whole, forming an indivisible unity. The crucial point to see here is that Hegel’s form of conceptual comprehension should respect – not reduce – the integrity and individuality of the aesthetic whole. Whether Hegel’s own interpretative practice conforms to this ideal is another question; but in principle we cannot accuse Hegel of wanting to destroy or reduce the unity of aesthetic experience. Those who complain about Hegel’s excessively intellectualist and rationalist view of art fail to observe his distinction between abstract and concrete universality.
一旦我们以这些术语理解等级制度，我们就会清楚地发现对黑格尔还原主义的指控是在回避问题。由于黑格尔认为哲学的概念领会并非分析而是重构审美直观的整体。因此，它不是那种将整体还原为分离的各个部分的抽象理解形式；毋宁说，它是一种尝试，尝试着更确定无疑地解释整体的各个部分、各个部分如何依赖于整体以及如何形成一个不可分割的统一体。这里的关键是看到，黑格尔的概念领会形式应该尊重——而非还原——审美整体的完整性和个体性。黑格尔自己的阐释实践是否与这个理念相符合是另一个问题；但是原则上，我们不能指责黑格尔想要破坏或还原审美经验的统一性。那些抱怨黑格尔以过于理智主义和理性主义的观点看待艺术的人，都没有能够观察到他在抽象的和具体的普遍之间的区分。
Whether we understand Hegel’s hierarchy in terms of selfawareness or degrees of comprehension, it should be clear that it is compatible with his affirmation of the principle of autonomy, at least as he understands it. As Hegel explains this principle in the Aesthetic, it means two things. First, that art should not serve ends outside itself. Hence Hegel rejects the old thesis of Gottsched that the purpose of art is moral instruction (XIII, 75–7/50–1). Second, that the media of the various arts have their own intrinsic qualities, which should be enjoyed for their own sake. Thus Hegel warns us against making the message of a poem or play so explicit or direct that the medium becomes superfluous (XIII, 77/51). Hegel’s subordination thesis is really about the content of a work of art, which it claims can be reconstructed in conceptual terms. It does not claim that the work of art should serve extrinsic ends, still less that its form or medium does not have its own intrinsic qualities. That each artistic medium has its own unique qualities was a point that Hegel would stress time and again in his treatment of the specific arts.
不管我们是就自我意识还是就领会的程度来理解黑格尔的等级制，以下一点应该是清楚的，即至少就他所理解的层级制来说，后者与他对自律原则的肯定相一致。正如黑格尔在《美学》中对这个原则的解释，它意味着两件事情。首先，艺术不应服务于它自身之外的目的。因此，黑格尔拒绝戈特舍德（Gottsched）认为艺术意在道德说教的陈旧理论（XIII, 75–7/50–1）。第二，各种各样的艺术中介有它们自身内在的特质，而这些特质应该由于其本身而被欣赏。因此，黑格尔警告我们不要把一首诗或一个戏剧的寓意弄得过于露骨或者过于直白，以防中介变得肤浅（XIII, 77/51）。黑格尔的从属论实际上是关于艺术作品的内容（content）的，后者要求能用概念的术语进行重构。它并不主张艺术作品应该服务于外在目的，更没有说它的形式或中介不具有其自身内在的特质。每种艺术中介都具有自身独特的特点，这是黑格尔在处理具体的艺术之时一再强调的。
Although, as stated so far, the objections to Hegel’s subordination thesis are rather weak, they could be reformulated in stronger terms. Their chief target is Hegel’s assumption that art, religion and philosophy all have the same object; it is only on these grounds that Hegel can grade them in a hierarchy. But one could question this assumption by claiming that each form of consciousness has a distinct object. If art involves unity of form and content, how indeed can we separate the content from its form? Hegel himself admits this very possibility (EPW §3), and it is not clear how he tries to avoid it. He even claims that the different stages of art involve completely different conceptions of their object, leaving the question how they are conceptions of the same thing (XIII, 105/74). So, it seems that one could reject the subordination thesis – and still hold that art is a form of cognition – simply by stressing that each art has its own object that it knows in its own distinct way.
尽管到目前为止，对黑格尔从属论的诸种异议都不堪一击，但它们可能会以强化版的形式重新出现（reformulated）。其主要的靶子是黑格尔关于艺术、宗教和哲学都具有相同的对象的假设；只是出于这些理由，黑格尔才能够将它们依次置于一个等级制中。但是人们可以通过主张每种意识形式都有其特殊的对象来质疑这个假设。确实，如果艺术包含形式和内容的统一，那么，我们如何能够将内容与其形式分离开来呢？黑格尔自己承认这种十足的可能性（EPW§ 3），并且不太清楚他如何设法避免这种可能性。他甚至主张，艺术的不同阶段涉及完全不同的关于其对象的概念，罔顾它们如何成为同一事物的概念的问题（XIII, 105/74）。因此，看起来我们仅仅通过强调每种艺术都具有自己的对象，并且须以自身特殊的方式认识它，就可以拒绝从属论——但仍然坚持艺术是一种认知形式。
Yet this is still not the end of the matter. For Hegel could defend his subordination thesis with his rationalist doctrine that intuition and representation are simply subconscious and inchoate forms of thinking. We have already seen how Hegel gave this old Leibnizian doctrine a new powerful rationale through Kant’s epistemology (pp. 150–1).19 Whether this doctrine is really true, however, is a thorny issue that we cannot pursue here.
但是，这仍然并非问题的终结。因为黑格尔可以以其理性主义学说为他的从属论辩护，即直观和表象只是潜意识的和不成熟的思想形式。我们已经看到黑格尔是如何通过康德的认识论，赋予这种陈旧的莱布尼茨学说以一种新的强有力的理论说明（页150-151）。然而，这种学说是否正确，是一个我们在此处无法继续追寻的棘手问题。
