Philosophy of Art

becomes for itself. The highest expression of philosophy is absolute truth, that of art is absolute beauty. If art is also to be the real actual/objective representation of the Absolute in the real, then we have the same powers here as in philosophy as a science. Just as here the Absolute is in itself in the ideal, so there the Absolute is as beauty: the truth to which no other is adequate. Just as the Absolute becomes objective in philosophy, so we shall also represent beauty in finite forms that correspond to the ideas, [and] history in mythology. Just as the ideas are productive, in the real and the ideal, through which the individual and the individuals are first set: so individual beauties only emerge in the fine arts and the arts of speech. The fine arts correspond to the real [series], the arts of speech to the ideal series. Just as the ideal and real series are themselves identical, so this [identity] also returns in each of these series. The fine arts have an ideal, a real, and a side where both are identical, [namely] music, painting, sculpture—so too the arts of speech [have] lyre, epic, drama.