Hegel’s plastic individuals are living self-sculpted works of art

Evidence

For these individuals are in fact called ‘plastic’ with direct reference to sculpture: … All of them are out and out artists by nature, ideal artists shaping themselves (ideale Künstler ihrer Selbst), individuals of a single cast, works of art standing there, like immortal and deathless images of the gods, in which there is nothing temporal and doomed. The same plasticity is characteristic of the works of art which victors in the Olympics made of their bodies, and indeed even of the appearance of Phryne, the most beautiful of women, who rose from the sea naked in the eyes of all Greece. — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 1308

Categorization

• DEFINE: Defines one pole of plasticity — the plastic individual as changeless, immortal, deathless self-formation, sculpture-like — directly relevant to Malabou’s core distinction between sculptural plasticity (giving form) and explosive malleability.
• XREF: connects to: Hegel read actual Greek statesmen and thinkers through sculptural plasticity; Hegel’s plasticity joins a capacity to receive form with a capacity to produce form — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 228; Greek plastic individuals were self-made from substantial personality — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel: Plasticity,…, 229

Broader Connections

• Greek plastic individuals were self-made from substantial personality #expands (0.88) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 229
• Hegel read actual Greek statesmen and thinkers through sculptural plasticity #expands (0.85)
• Hegel’s plasticity joins a capacity to receive form with a capacity to produce form #expands (0.82) — Catherine Malabou, The Future of Hegel, 228