The Discontinuity of the Expression of the Hegelian Divine Command in Modern Sculpture

Hegel is one of the few thinkers who has thought about the art of sculpture. He has spoken concisely in his book Phenomenology of Spirit and extensively in his Lectures on Fine Art about sculpture. The common feature of these two texts is that the Absolute, which is synonymous with the Divine, in both, has been able to express self-conscious through Sculpture to the extent of the power and capacity of art. Hegel considers art to be over after the Romantic and believes that art can no longer represent the need of the Spirit because art is no longer an urgent need of the spirit. Modern sculpture is fundamentally different from Hegel's conception of this art. However, this new conception of sculpture can also be found in the heart of Hegel's thought. Hegel considers the art of sculpture as expressing and representing the divine order in different stages of history (including the history of religion and the history of art). In the art of modernism, the human body as a sanctuary and temple of the spirit has disintegrated, and the art of sculpture can no longer express the divine. In fact, the foundation of modern sculpture is humanism, and human individual and social affairs replace the divine. In this article, an attempt has been made to reflect on the relationship between the divine order and the announcement of the end of art by Hegel. Then the discontinuity of the expression of the divine command in modern sculpture is investigated. The results suggest that a secular conception of modern Sculpting can be extracted from the heart of Hegel's thought.