Why did Hegel, in his lectures on Aesthetics, so treat of tragedy as to
suggest the idea that the kind of tragedy which he personally preferred
(let us for the sake of brevity call it 'ancient') is also the most
adequate embodiment of the idea of tragedy? This question can be
answered, I think, only conjecturally, but some remarks on it may have
an interest for readers of Hegel (they are too brief to be of use to
others).
One answer might be this. Hegel did not really hold that idea. But he
was lecturing, not writing a book. He thought the principle of tragedy
was more clearly and readily visible in ancient works than in modern;
and so, for purposes of exposition, he emphasised the ancient form. And
this fact, with his personal enthusiasm for certain Greek plays, leads
the reader of the _Aesthetik_ to misconstrue him.
Again, we must remember the facts of Hegel's life. He seems first to
have reflected on tragedy at a time when his enthusiasm for the Greeks
and their 'substantial' ethics was combined, not only with a
contemptuous dislike for much modern 'subjectivity' (this he never
ceased to feel), but with a certain hostility to the individualism and
the un-political character of Christian morality. His first view of
tragedy was thus, in effect, a theory of Aeschylean and Sophoclean
tragedy; and it appears in the early essay on _Naturrecht_ and more
fully in the _Phaenomenologie_. Perhaps, then, when he came to deal with
the subject more generally, he insensibly regarded the ancient form as
the typical form, and tended to treat the modern rather as a
modification of this type than as an alternative embodiment of the
general idea of tragedy. The note in the _Rechtsphilosophie_ (p. 196)
perhaps favours this idea.
But, whether it is correct or no, I believe that the impression produced
by the _Aesthetik_ is a true one, and that Hegel did deliberately
consider the ancient form the more satisfactory. It would not follow, of
course, from that opinion that he thought the advantage was all on one
side, or considered this or that ancient poet greater than this or that
modern, or wished that modern poets had tried to write tragedies of the
Greek type. Tragedy would, in his view, be in somewhat the same position
as Sculpture. Renaissance sculpture, he might say, has qualities in
which it is superior to Greek, and Michael Angelo may have been as great
an artist as Pheidias; but all the same for certain reasons Greek
sculpture is, and probably will remain, sculpture _par excellence_. So,
though not to the same extent, with tragedy.
And such a view would cohere with his general view of Art. For he taught
that, in a sense, Classical Art is Art _par excellence_, and that in
Greece beauty held a position such as it never held before and will not
hold again. To explain in a brief note how this position bears upon his
treatment of modern tragedy would be impossible: but if the student of
Hegel will remember in what sense and on what grounds he held it; that
he describes Beauty as the '_sinnliches_ Scheinen der Idee'; that for
him the new idea that distinguished Christianity and Romantic Art from
Greek religion and Classical Art is that '_unendliche_ Subjektivitaet'
which implies a negative, though not merely negative, relation to sense;
and that in Romantic Art this idea is not only exhibited in the
religious sphere, but appears in the position given to personal honour,
love, and loyalty, and indirectly in what Hegel calls 'die formelle
Selbststaendigkeit der individuellen Besonderheiten,' and in the fuller
admission of common and un-beautiful reality into the realm of
Beauty,--he will see how all this is connected with those
characteristics of modern tragedy which Hegel regards as necessary and
yet as, in part, drawbacks. This connection, which Hegel has no occasion
to work out, will be apparent even from consideration of the
introductory chapter on 'die romantische Kunstform,' _Aesthetik_, ii.
120-135.
There is one marked difference, I may add, between ancient and modern
tragedy, which should be considered with reference to this subject, and
which Hegel, I think, does not explicitly point out. Speaking roughly,
we may say that the former includes, while the latter tends to ignore,
the accepted religious ideas of the time. The ultimate reason of this
difference, on Hegel's view, would be that the Olympian gods are
themselves the '_sinnliches_ Scheinen der Idee,' and so are in the same
element as Art, while this is, on the whole, not so with modern
religious ideas. One result would be that Greek tragedy represents the
total Greek mind more fully than modern tragedy can the total modern
mind.