The current Hegel

In German idealist aesthetics, Hegel occupies a middle position in time and in the range of problems between Kant, Schiller, Schelling, on the one hand, and Schopenhauer, Herbart, Schleiermacher, on the other. Hegel starts from the position of Kant and Solger, for whom aesthetic activity is not theoretical, but practical (something practically realized in its perfection), so that art belongs not to theoretical philosophy, but to practical philosophical thought. Following Schelling and Solger, Hegel finds no place for art in the "Phenomenology" and "Philosophy of Spirit", where the forms of theoretical thinking are analyzed. For Hegel, art is not representative of abstract creations, it represents the concrete concept, a form of realization of the freedom of the spirit - immediate, sensually subjective knowledge. Therefore, artistic fantasy (a concept inherited from Schiller and the Romantics) does not act like the passive, receptive imagination, but seeks the rational in the real (objective) and the inner truth of the object. “The rational in the object,” writes Hegel, “which the artist has chosen must not alone arouse his consciousness: the artist must have well considered the essential and the truth in all their extent and depth.