Gustavo de Azevedo Torrecilha

By proposing the construction of a system of arts, Hegel seeks to apprehend them both in their singularity and in their universality as art. The system of arts is the third part of his aesthetics, presented after the parts dedicated to the beautiful ideal and to the artforms, and corresponds to the investigation of the realization of art in the effectiveness, of spirituality in materiality, in the form of the individual arts. The systematic proposed by Hegel, which comprehends the universality of art articulated with the singularity of the individual arts, reflects a logical aspect that permeates all of his philosophical thought, although there are also inherently aesthetic issues that determine the conceptual understanding of art and the arts. The constitution of a system of arts corresponds to a point that had been constantly discussed by German philosophers in the periods of idealism and romanticism, fundamentally based on the understanding of formal and expressive points of each art, while Hegel will highlight the content within this scope. In order to do so, the Hegelian aesthetic establishes a typical content of each art, which reflects the spiritual context of the artforms, and each art will demand different ways in order to realize the spirit in materiality, with the symbolic content linked to the art of architecture, the classical content to the art of sculpture and the romantic content to the arts of painting, music and poetry. Due to the historical content of the arts, a dynamic system is constituted, also making it possible to reflect on the context after Hegel based on his thought and to discuss the different tensions between form and content in modern art.