O Conceito sistemático de gênio em Hegel

Abstract

This dissertation investigates Hegel’s conception of genius as the agent of artistic creation, focusing on textual sources from the Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciencies in Basic Outline and Hotho’s posthumous edition of Hegel’s lectures on Aesthetic. The reconstruction of the notion of genius in modern philosophy, especially in Kant and the Romantics, will provide the context for Hegel’s sparse reflections on the topic. Through a critique of the romantic genius, Hegel aims to show that enthusiasm is insufficient to describe spirit’s creativity, and the power of Phantasie must advance from the interior forms towards the materialization of the work of art in sensible, yet historical, externality. Whereas the genius was taken as an innate faculty that is sufficient to make of someone an artist, Hegel sees the genius as a moment within the artistic creation: a movement stretching from the free play of imagination to the objective realization of the work of art. The challenge is the translation of the phantastic content into external shapes. Hegel describes an authentic genius, as the subject who knows how to master the technical execution of the work of art, by making the best use even of the poorest and most inadequate materials. The real significance of the genius does not lie exclusively in some subjective capacity, but rather in the successful, self-reflective agreement between the forms of subjective spirit and the historical content of objective spirit. Based on exegetical analyses of the Hegelian corpus and the discussion of the recent literature, the present investigation tries to highlight the novelty of Hegel’s conception of genius by working out an hypothesis concerning the complementarity between the spontaneity of phantasy and the reflected contribution of Bildung in the activity of the master-craftsman.