The End of Art and Awe: Hegel in the Digital Age

From the title, you are perhaps expecting this post to be a depressing, cynical attempt at tearing down our modern notions of art and wonder, and if that's the case, then I have to apologize: this will surely disappoint. To understand what I really mean in saying "the end of art" or "the end of awe," though, we have to have a foundation in German Romanticism and, more specifically, in the art
istic philosophies of Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel.

Hegel is perhaps best known for the eponymous Hegelian dialectic, which suggests that through the recursive struggle and interplay of thesis and antithesis--of action and reaction--mankind has, at various times, been able to arrive a state of synthesis or resolution, wherein he is able to achieve real progress. In his Introduction to The Philosophy of Art, Hegel applies the dialectic to the progression of art, stating essentially that the highest form of art is that in which the sensuous form (the work of art itself) and the spiritual form (the ideas conveyed by the work of art) find harmony or resolution. "[T]he perfection and excellency of art," he writes, "must depend upon the grade of inner harmony and union with which the spiritual idea and the sensuous form interpenetrate" (376). Hegel suggests that in lower forms of art, such as sculpture or architecture, the thesis and antithesis of spiritual and sensuous forms have yet failed to reach an equilibrium. The highest form of art--the end or aim of art in Hegel's view--is in poetry, wherein the art itself is capable of conveying the full import and meaning of the spiritual or philosophical idea. This was not to imply, however, that art had or would come to an end or that poetry represented the final destination of human expression and artistic representation. Rather, poetry was the degree of synthesis to which mankind had climbed up until that point.



At this point, you might be wondering what all this has to do with awe. I speak, by the way, of constructed awe in contrast to natural awe, though the comparison is one that I'll address later on in the post. In any case, the concept of awe as we understand it is a rather vague one, so it should not come as much of a surprise to find that literary theorists have used a number of terms to describe that enigmatic something that makes for good art. Longinus refers to it as sublimity, Walter Benjamin calls it the work's aura, and Hegel himself calls it the geist or animating principle of a work of art. "Whatever is beautiful," Hegel writes (and I might extend this to include whatever invites awe) "is truly beautiful only when it partakes of this higher essence and is produced by it" (373). If, as Hegel suggests, the highest forms of art are those in which the spiritual form finds full expression, we might extract, then, that the highest forms partake of and convey the spiritual to the greatest degree and are thus most capable of producing awe within the individual.

This is especially pertinent in light of digital technology and modern forms of artistic conveyance. Never before in history has mankind witnessed such remarkable tools as are available to him at the present time. Digital media formats are more dynamic and integrative than poetry or music or any previous art form, yet still in modern, we seem to suffer from a sense of artistic and spiritual impoverishment in digital spheres. Though the mediums themselves, by Hegel's logic, should represent the synthesis (in a literal and figurative sense) of the art forms that have preceded them, yet still, as I've discussed previously, we suffer from a seemingly insatiable hunger for genuine awe.

I think the problem lies in the fact that we have not truly reached a synthesis. The digital age has been characterized as an age of disruption, and certainly with the genesis of novel modes of expression and conveyance, humanity is still trying to work out its relationship with these new mediums. If poetry, in its union  of an elevated sensuous form and a boundless spiritual form has "attained a sensuous form adequate to its essence," then digital forms, in their boundless sensuous potential and as of yet limited spiritual content, represent an intermediate stage in the progression of the Hegelian dialectic (376). The sensuous form has, in some sense, overpowered the spiritual and thus, in its emphasis of baser less spiritual modalities, enjoys a diminished potential to invite genuine awe. Hegel proposes, "Art is not genuine art until it has thus liberated itself. It fulfils [sic] its highest task when it has joined the same sphere with religion and philosophy and has become a certain mode of bringing to consciousness and expression the divine meaning of things, the deepest interests of mankind, and the most universal truths of the spirit" (374). This is not to say, then, that digital mediums are incapable of conveying these higher ideas--in fact, they are more capable than any other medium--but as of yet, they have not been utilized for such, or at least not to the degree that would elevate them to a state of full synthesis.

In my research, I've been trying to find solutions the problem of diminished awe within digital realms, and for me, this is really the answer: the mediums will remain as they are so long as we shy away from using them to convey and explore the deepest truths and feelings of mankind. But their proper use, in bringing their spiritual and sensuous forms into unity or synthesis, has the potential to capture geist or awe or sublimity in a way and that no other medium has ever been able to. +Paul Bills is addressing this to some extent in his own research, where he is investigating video games as a powerful artistic medium capable of conveying awe. I think Paul would agree with me in saying that video games in some sense represent our modern "end of art." They, as a medium, are perhaps more capable of producing genuine awe than any other medium heretofore conceived, but they will not attain that level of greatness until they are provided with an adequate spiritual form. Hegel, in fact, held that art has greater potential than even nature to create awe, "[f]or the beauty of art is beauty born--and born again--of the spirit" (373). If this is the case, then the awe that I seek in my research--the lost awe of bygone days--can be reclaimed and surpassed in the dynamic forms of modern media (video games, being of particular note among these). Our potential to create and experience awe is dependent only on our readiness to infuse the mediums of our day with real meaning--to animate them with the highest and most profound feelings and truths--and in so seeking, in so striving for awe, we will at last come to the long-anticipated synthesis.

What do you think, though? Are video games or digital media formats truly "the end of art" for our modern day?

Works Cited

Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich. "Introduction to The Philosophy of Art." The Critical Tradition: Classic Texts and Contemporary Trends, 3rd ed. Ed. David H. Richter. Boston: Bedford/St. Martin's, 2007. 1233- 1249. Print.