446 INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF SOCIAL SCIENCE, INNOVATION AND EDUCATIONAL TECHNOLOGIES (ONLINE) - ISSN: 2717-7130 Vol:1, Issue: 4 pp: 446-451 JEL Codes: Y9, Z00 SHAO, S. (2020). “The Transcendence of Artistic Beauty over Natural Beauty”, Vol: 1 Issue: 4 pp: 446-451 Keywords: the beauty of nature; artistic beauty, subjectivity. Article Type Review Article The Transcendence of Artistic Beauty over Natural Beauty Arrived Date 17.07.2020 Accepted Date 21.07.2020 Published Date 31.10.2020 Siyu*Shao* ABSTRACT In terms of aesthetic experience, natural beauty and artistic beauty are the most important concepts in people's aesthetic activities.According to the differences of aesthetic objects themselves, natural beauty is a natural thing, while artistic beauty is integrated into human activities. The reason why the artistic beauty transcends the natural beauty is that the natural beauty only has the perceptual form but does not have the idea, while the artistic beauty embodies the subject status of human beings in the content and form. INTRODUCTION Whether the natural beauty or the artistic beauty has higher aesthetic value has always been a question debated by many scholars since ancient times. Art recognizes and displays human ideas in a perceptual way, reconciling concepts and external images into a unified whole. Art is presented by the idea of filling in the objective world perceptual materials, but the limitations of the objective world cannot embody the concept of absolute limitlessness. Philosophy is the logical system, consciousness of perceptual intuition is a necessary source of logical concept, according to the views of Hegel, absolute concept has experienced three stages, art, religion and philosophy respectively through the perceptual representation, and the way of concept to show the concept from perceptual to rational development trend. Art belongs to the product of human consciousness. To recognize the view that artistic beauty surpasses natural beauty is to recognize the subject status of human beings in aesthetic experience. LITERATURE Inspiration of natural beauty to artistic beauty The process of conscious creation shows how the human idea makes itself an objective thing and integrates essence and phenomenon into a whole. In the process of discussing such a combination of universality and particularity, the primary form of the idea of beauty is first placed on the natural beauty, then the idea transcends the natural beauty and then reaches the artistic beauty. From the perspective of aesthetic object, the beauty of nature is the externalization of human ideas, and the beauty of art is the result of the transformation of nature by human ideas. The discussion on the relationship between artistic beauty and natural beauty in the field of Western aesthetics can be traced back to the ancient Greek period. Hegel's exposition of natural beauty is a gradual evolution from the lower natural objects to the higher natural objects, and finally falls to the human society to analyze gradually. Nature is the first object of human observation, but the in-itself cannot prove the existence of the absolute idea. In Hegel's exposition of natural beauty, it is deduced from the evolution * Changchun Institute of Technology, 304744297@qq.com, JiLin/CHINA Volume: 1, Issue: 4, October 2020 issjournal.com https://orcid.org/0000-0002-5162-5364 447 and development of nature that natural beauty also presents several levels rising from low to high. According to Hegel, "this level of beauty has an intrinsic necessity and is a progressive process consistent with reason. The natural stage is only a preliminary stage in the development of the absolute idea. Natural beauty is the result of the idea in its latent stage externalizing itself. "The most superficial objective existence of the idea is nature, and the first kind of beauty is natural beauty (Guangqian,1997). [ Hegel's "aesthetics", the first volume, zhu guangqian, the commercial press, second edition in November 1996, on page 149] Therefore, natural beauty is only the initial stage, and it will inevitably ascend to a higher level of beauty with the development of ideas. German classical aesthetics generally believes that beauty exists in human experience, while artistic beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas, it does not deny the role played by external images in the formation of aesthetic experience. In modern aesthetics, although the transition from the noumenon of "I think" to the noumenon of "will" has not been established in Hegel's period, the author thinks that this tendency has already appeared in Hegel's theory. For a long time, since the creation of Baumgarten in 1750, the concept of "beauty" was considered to be only about sensibility. From Kant's analysis of beauty, the perception of beauty is the opposition to logical thinking, until Croce's "intuition theory", beauty is only the sensory experience of perceptual image. Hegel pointed out that "a work of art is not merely an object of sensibility, but is appealed only to the grasp of sensibility. On the one hand, it is perceptual; on the other hand, it is basically appealed to the mind, which is also moved by it and gets some satisfaction from it." (Zhongyuan,2016). [ Hegel's "aesthetics", the first volume, zhu guangqian, the commercial press, second edition in November 1996, on page 44] That is to say, the mind will be touched by art, which shows that thought plays an important role in artistic creation, and artistic works should be the unity of sensibility and rationality. The outward manifestation is either the manifestation of the material sensibility or the formation of the reason by the inner idea. But why nature is beautiful is not because of itself or because it was created to be beautiful. The beauty of nature is endowed by the aesthetic consciousness of human beings, and the beauty is the experience obtained by human senses. It can only exist in human consciousness. However, natural objects cannot actively convey the information of beauty to people, so it needs the active exploration of human perception. It is possible for the human emotion to combine the parts of nature into a whole in consciousness, but it is not at first recognized by the emotional expression of the soul. In other words, from Hegel's point of view, the beauty and non- beauty of natural objects only exist in people's consciousness, and nature itself does not have the ability to manifest ideas. Natural beauty is reflected in the human mind in the process of understanding natural objects. As mentioned above, the beauty displayed by natural objects exists for aesthetic consciousness, while living natural objects are only beautiful for other objects. Because its beauty is endowed by the human idea, the image of beauty needs to be perceived by the human consciousness, and the aesthetic experience needs to be under the control of the human idea. Therefore, there is no beauty or unbeauty in simple natural objects. Only when people's consciousness judges them, the beauty of nature can be revealed. In Hegel's view, nature is beautiful, is because people, the understanding of the practice of human beings in understanding and reforming nature, its philosophy gives natural things, people think that nature is the essence of beauty is the human spirit to mapping of natural things, so people in observing natural plants, the natural thing in the world and the human mind will resonate, and feeling of aesthetic pleasure from natural objects. The beauty of nature lies in gives the idea of people to the natural thing in the world, originated in human understanding of nature of aesthetic practice, the existence of most things in nature is comfortable, humans also exists in nature, but is the existence, human can change the appearance of natural objects through practice, and the practical ability to improve natural thing in the world can be transformed into and consistent state of mind activity. That is to say, man injects his mind into nature through practice. It is only when a man has an idea of his environment that he feels comfortable in it. The two are integrated by a common idea, rather than the existence of natural objects and people in relative isolation. Natural thing in the world to meet human practice provides a material basis, but the natural thing in the world is not completely in accordance with the will of the human growth, human also need to learn a skill to the natural barrier in plants, according to their own will to transform natural thing in the world to make it fully satisfy human Volume: 1, Issue: 4, October 2020 issjournal.com 448 needs, from this perspective, the product of the mind is higher than the natural thing in the World (Xingyun, 2006). Art is the Transformation of Nature by Ideas Art is the first way for human beings to express their perceptual knowledge. It can depict objective things or externalize ideas into perceptual images. Therefore, art can not only contain perceptual elements, but also show rational thinking. It can reconcile the finite objective world with the infinite spiritual world. The greatest value of art lies in its ability to show abstract ideas as concrete images. However, if art is to occur in an objective form, it must be completed under the guidance of the idea. Only the idea can organically unify the subject and object. Hegel pointed out that "in nature, the concept is derived from reality and thus becomes the idea in several ways. First, the concept is directly submerged in the objective existence, so that the conceptual unity of the subject cannot be seen, and is completely transformed into the sensible material thing without soul." (Linlin, 2009). The first in the existing way of the concept of material only reflect rather than from the literature, it exists in the form of its own internal cause in accordance with established, completely don't reflect the content of spirit, it couldn't see the soul. Secondly, the higher level of natural objects can make the concept present a free state, which is embodied in the fact that each difference surface of the existence mode of natural objects can exist independently. Although it is absorbed in the whole, it does not need to be restricted by other difference surface. In other words, in the natural objects of this stage, the different aspects of the concept show a dialectical unity. All the different aspects of the concept exist independently and are dominated by the same system. The actual existence mode of the idea should be the organic natural things that can move like every celestial body, while the dead inorganic natural things cannot show the idea, and obviously the dead inorganic things cannot prove themselves to have the idea. (Yuegui, 2017). Therefore, the manifestation mode of the idea in natural objects is a mode with activity ability, and life is the objective existence form of the idea in nature. In ancient Greece, art was understood as a collection of various skills, and the development of art level can reveal whether a nation's spiritual world is noble or not. During the Renaissance, when art flourished, artistic works began to express the realistic spirit of human beings and became the force to push forward human history and civilization. In the field of philosophy, Kant made a systematic exposition of aesthetic judgment for the first time. And Kant's views on aesthetics, such as taste, genius legislating for art, natural beauty and artistic beauty, have exerted great influence on the development of aesthetics in later generations. What artistic beauty shows is the truth, which is contained in the individual and the representation. Although it may be covered by the external image, artistic creation will pull out the inner essence of the truth and then show it to the world in the form of sensibility after people's soul summary and sublimation. Artistic creation is to extract the characteristics of natural things in the objective world and sublimate them in the spiritual world. In artistic creation, the objects of the objective world are reproduced in artistic images and show a unified form with the spirit of the creator. Artists in the creation of activities, their perceptual knowledge of the objective form of things, to the artistic image reproduced in the works of art. Admittedly, reproduction should reflect the elements contained in natural things, but the reproduction of artistic creation is by no means a completely mechanical copy, but should be re-processed through the artist's perceptual understanding of natural things, reproduced in accordance with the concept of art creators, and reproduced in the way of artists' creative labor. Starting from the primitive art, the expression technique of art usually abandons the things defiled by chance and external shape, and only transmits the most ideal form of things, which is still continuing today. In order to achieve the ideal form of a work of art, it is necessary to extract a concept that can truly express its own essence, while the external image of chance cannot achieve true harmony with the idea. Art is the spiritual activity of unity of opposites between perceptual image and idea. The idea is still in the primary stage in the symbolic art, which shows a very vague form. The idea expressed in symbolic art is very abstract, and the idea is only embodied as the symbol or symbol of objective things. The referential relationship between this art form and natural things is a simplified form extracted from the perceptual knowledge of natural things. Therefore, symbolic art cannot fully show the concept. Volume: 1, Issue: 4, October 2020 issjournal.com 449 With the continuous development of art, it will further develop to the classical art. The concept of classical art and the perceptual form have reached a high degree of unity. The absolute idea must exist within the mind itself, and too clear a picture of the external world limits the extent to which the idea can be expressed. Therefore, the development of art also needs to abandon the referential relationship between content and form and return to the spiritual realm from the external form. Romantic art overcomes the deficiency of classical art in concept development by breaking the unity of form and content. In romantic art, the idea reflects its own independence and no longer permeates into the external perceptual form. Although art is the perceptual manifestation of the idea, romantic art mainly reflects the inner spiritual activity, and the perceptual image cannot fully show the content produced by the mind. The classification of art is to grasp the relationship between art and idea, and the basis of the classification of art types is the relationship between idea and the image it shows. This type is known as the symbolic art type. In this type, the idea is only attached to perceptual materials, and the artistic works are not produced in accordance with what the idea wants to express. In this type of artwork, there is a negative relationship between ideas and art. Works of art only express ideas in an abstract way, and ideas do not dominate the creation of artistic works. Therefore, artistic works cannot fully conform to ideas. The second type of art is classical art, which overcomes the defects of symbolic art. In classical art, ideas are represented in images in a free and appropriate way. The third type of art is romantic art. Hegel thought that the romantic art appeared the defect of the symbolic art in the higher stage. It destroys the mode of unity of idea and image established by classical art, because the limitation of art itself cannot express the infinity of idea. Romantic art can be understood as the unity of spirit and essence in the mind. Although the idea is capable of uniting sensibility and reason, Hegel believes that the idea of art transcends its perceptual form and that art is not the most perfect form of expression of the idea. Art must adhere to the limited form, while the infinite of the idea needs a more free carrier. In the aspect of the idea, the content and meaning of art are the same as religion and philosophy, and they are both ways of knowing and expressing themselves. However, the difference between the three lies in the degree of manifestation of ideas. Among them, art is the lowest, which only has the form of sensibility. While philosophy is the highest, it can think freely in the spiritual world. Art and religion are united in philosophy. Hegel developed the idea from the perceptual objective world and finally returned to his own spiritual world. At this time, the absolute idea is the most real. The idea is the product of the spiritual realm. It can exist independently in the spiritual world and negate and transcend its perceptual form. The idea of beauty is only the most superficial stage of the development of the absolute idea. Compared with religion and philosophy, it needs further exploration in the spiritual world to truly find the connotation of the absolute idea. The Idea is the Cornerstone of Art Art, because of its freedom, can become a stage in the development of the absolute idea. Art is a form of representation of ideas, which can realize self-knowledge and act on objective things. Artistic creation can reconcile the limited objective things with the unlimited freedom of the spiritual world, its highest pursuit is to reveal the truth of the soul. The idea is the soul of art, and the most important role of art for the idea lies in the manifestation. If the idea is to be transformed from the mind into an objective thing, artistic creation needs to be carried out under the guidance of the mind, so that the artwork can show the freedom of the mind through the guidance of the idea. The essence of beauty is the unity of spirit and nature. Nature transformed by spirit is beauty or artistic beauty. That is to say, what is revealed through art is the essence of beauty. Artistic beauty is to endue the ideal to reality, art is the perceptual form of the idea, the idea is the rational inner art, although there are differences in the form of the two, but they are a unified whole. Ideal is usually born in the reality, it is the most perfect form of reality that human beings expect. The whole world derives from the idea of man, and it is all-encompassing. The absolute idea constitutes the essence of the real world and is also the core of Hegel's philosophy system. But the idea Volume: 1, Issue: 4, October 2020 issjournal.com 450 cannot directly manifest itself, it must be indirectly manifested through a medium, and beauty can be used as the carrier to make the idea in an intuitive state. Although art is manifested in the form of sensibility, the foundation of artistic creation is rational. The artist's understanding of beauty is based on sensibility, while the grasp of perceptual materials requires the control of rationality. Only through the rational grasp of the universal concept, artistic creation has the idea of the perceptual form of the starting point. The idea determines the specific content of the art, and the concreteness of the perceptual image limits the idea within the specific scope. From the perspective of idea and art, art has developed from symbolic art to romantic art, while with the development of art, the idea has gradually surpassed the status of perceptual image from the vague form at the beginning. From the perspective of the absolute idea, although the idea in romantic art has a high degree of perfection, the limitation of perceptual image is not enough to fully meet the needs of the idea. At this time, the idea must withdraw from the perceptual world and turn to seek higher forms such as religion and philosophy to understand itself. The concept of art can be understood as the connotation that the artist wants to express in his works, while the perceptual exterior is the form that the works of art are presented to people for appreciation. However, the content to be expressed by artistic works is the existence mode of ideas, which needs the works endowed by creators. Natural beauty does not reveal its ideas, but only its perceptual exterior. And the idea of artistic beauty is in harmony with the human mind can make the content and form into a unified whole. In Hegel's historical period, there is a clear referential relationship between artistic works and natural objects, so he believes that the contents of artworks must be presented in the form of the unity of subjectivity and objectivity. A work of art should present a specific and corresponding perceptual form, which must be single, complete and independent, rather than a common characteristic of a class of things. From this point of view Hegel acknowledges that art can represent abstract content. Art is able to express the true content, not because it happens to have a similar external form, but because the concrete content already contains the element of perceptual representation. What art presents to people is the perceptual thing, which is essentially the content of the spiritual activity of the artist. When the artistic image is regarded as representing the inner activity, the artistic image and the content can be completely consistent. Pure natural things do not exist for the purpose of expressing content. Since the beauty of natural things is not recognized by people, it can still exist independently, while artistic works cannot exist independently. It echoes with the heart. A work of art is the external representation of the heart, and the idea of the heart is the content of the work of art, which is a coordinated and unified whole. When nature and art want to show their own beauty, the former product needs to internalize the perceptual knowledge into consciousness, while the latter needs to externalize the product of the mind into the objective world. The reason why the beauty of art is higher than that of nature is that Hegel believes that the mind and its products are higher than that of nature and its products. From the perspective of the development process of the concept of beauty, people's understanding of natural beauty is earlier than that of art. Natural beauty is presented to people in a perceptual and intuitive way, while artistic beauty is involved in the activities of the human mind. Art can fully show the idea, which is the advanced stage of the development of the idea. The thing of nature has no complete self- consciousness, its beauty is in itself, while the beauty of art is for itself. Since art reflects the activity of the mind, beauty can only exist in the mind of human beings. Unrecognized nature does not matter whether there is natural beauty or not. Artistic creation is to convey the idea of beauty and produce it according to the idea of beauty, so artistic beauty is closer to the idea than nature. However, from the perspective of the development stage of the idea, art is higher than nature in the evolution stage of the idea. It is the product of the mind and more suitable to show the idea than nature. Art is bound to have the idea and understanding of the creator, the beauty of art in human society, than the natural beauty to convey the role of beauty. But Hegel does not believe that art is the best form to show the idea. In Hegel's philosophical system, the perceptual form of human consciousness is formed in the process of art, which is a perceptual expression at an earlier stage. The further development of the idea into a higher form depends on religion, for the religion of the mind can understand the form of the idea in a higher way of thinking. But religion is only a transitional stage, and philosophy is the most perfect form to interpret the ultimate idea. [8]Thus it can be seen that art is not the most suitable way for the Volume: 1, Issue: 4, October 2020 issjournal.com 451 soul to express ideas in perceptual forms. Therefore, art is only the initial stage of the development of ideas, while religion and philosophy are higher than art. CONCLUSIONS AND RECOMMENDATIONS Although the idea can unify the sensibility and rationality, the idea of art transcends its perceptual form, and art is not the most perfect form of expression of the idea. Art must adhere to the limited form, while the infinite of the idea needs a more free carrier. In the aspect of the idea, the content and meaning of art are the same as religion and philosophy, and they are both ways of knowing and expressing themselves. Art and religion are united in philosophy. Hegel developed the idea from the perceptual objective world and finally returned to his own spiritual world. At this time, the absolute idea is the most real. The idea of beauty is only the most superficial stage of the development of the absolute idea. Compared with the natural beauty, it further plays a dominant role in the field of aesthetic appreciation. ACKNOWLEDGEMENT Suppoted by Changchun Institute of Technology Theme fund “Study of the double modernity of western modern art”. 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