What is the theme of Hegel's aesthetics?

Hegel's aesthetic thought is mainly reflected in his book "Lecture Notes on Aesthetics", which is an integral part of his whole philosophical system and a concrete expression of his philosophical system in the fields of aesthetics and art. Hegel believes that the origin of the world is a spiritual concept, and the whole world is nothing more than a process of self-knowledge and self-realization of an absolute concept. Therefore, history is no longer a bunch of accidental phenomena, but a legal and rational development. Art, religion and philosophy, this is the highest stage of the development of absolute concept in the spiritual stage. The fundamental feature of art is that ideas express themselves and know themselves through perceptual images. "Beauty is the perceptual expression of ideas" has become the core of Hegel's aesthetic thought. "Beauty is the perceptual expression of ideas" affirms that beauty is an idea. But the idea of beauty is different from the general idea. The general idea is abstract and conceptual, but the idea of beauty must have a definite form. Combined with the specific characteristics of reality, only concrete ideas can be expressed as perceptual images. For example, when a painter paints an apple, he can't paint it as an abstract concept, but must combine color and shape to paint it as a concrete image. The concept of beauty should be expressed through perceptual images, because when the concept develops to the spiritual stage, people's freedom and rationality will take the inner world and the outer world as objects and rise to the consciousness of the mind. In order to know oneself from these objects, that is, people should know and observe themselves through perceptual images, so as to reproduce themselves. Perceptual images are revealed by the concept itself, and have no natural material existence, while spiritual things are expressed through perceptual forms. The apple painted by the painter is only a perceptual form, not a real apple, and has no material utility relationship with people. (3) Since perceptual images are the self-expression of concepts, the unification of them is inevitable. The debates on rationality and sensibility, content and form, generality and particularity in the history of western aesthetics are unified from the perspective of idealism through "beauty is the perceptual manifestation of ideas" In Hegel's view, the concept of natural appearance is inadequate and imperfect, and it is not true beauty. Only artistic beauty is the product of the soul. Only by putting every point of Hua Song's eyes or soul on the visible appearance of each image can it show its soul. Only artistic beauty is true beauty. The scope of aesthetic research is art, and the proper name of aesthetics is philosophy of art, or rather the philosophy of beauty.