Jackson
Pollock Number 8 (1949)
Oil, enamel, and
aluminum paint on canvas (86.6 x 180.9 cm.)
Neuberger
Museum, State University of New York
It should be well noted at the outset that the
interpretive problems associated with the Lectures
are so extraordinarily complex that we simply cannot be sure about the precise
relationship between the Knox translation and Hegel’s own thought. Besides the difficulties common to any
translation of a complex philosophical work, the text from which Knox worked
consists of a heavily edited edition of Hegel’s lecture notes rather than a
treatise, and therefore reflects the process of Hegel’s thought working itself
out rather than a finished, polished facet of his system. That in turn has been filtered through the
perceptions and concerns of the note takers and the editor. “We know from
Hegel’s correspondences that although he hoped to publish a work on the
philosophy of art he “was” not yet ready to do so. Gethmann-Siefert has urged that we should see
his aesthetics as ‘a work in progress,’ subject to continual rewriting over the
different lecture series” (Gaiger, 2006:162):
“Heinrich
Gustav Hotho (1802–1873) published the three-volume Ästhetik (1835) four years after the death of Hegel. From archive
research it has become clear that in the ‘compilation’ of his Hegelian Ästhetik
Hotho employed mainly his own lectures of 1823. This has led to the view that Hothos’s 1823 lectures
taken all together actually constitute Hegelian aesthetics. [Weiss’] article
seeks to challenge this notion. Hegel gave four series of lectures on
aesthetics in Berlin in 1820/21, 1823, 1826, and 1828/29. Since he never wrote
his own work on aesthetics, one might consider the edition of four series of
lectures to be the ‘real’ Hegelian Ästhetik.”[1]
[1]. János Weiss, “Auf den
Spuren der richtigen Hegelschen Ästhetik” (abstract) from Knihovna Akademie věd Česká republika http://dlib.lib.cas.cz/2745/ (accessed
10/15/08)
