A atividade do artista no contexto da estética hegeliana: Para uma consideração do trabalho como teleologia interna

Abstract

Our purpose in this study is to discuss how the concept of work—particularly as it relates to artistic activity within the context of modernity—is considered by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel (1770–1831) from an aesthetic perspective. Our entire discussion is grounded in the understanding that, for this philosopher, the artist’s labour must be viewed through the lens of an immanent teleology, made explicit in art through the mediation of Spirit with itself, within the phantasy of the one who produces the work of art. We argue that although this internal dimension of the artist’s purpose has been present from the very outset in the consideration of art and its production, it gradually assumes increasingly broader dimensions throughout the historical development of artistic forms and the particular arts that embody them—reaching its highest and most transparent expression in the poetry of the late romantic period. We aim to show that, distinctively, it is modern lyric poetry that most reflectively underscores the infinite nature of artistic labour, insofar as it most clearly conveys the artist’s subjectivity in the spiritual vitality of his production, guided by poetic phantasy, which—through its return to itself—ideally unites the agent, his activity, his means, and the work of art.