Hegel's Aesthetics is the first comprehensive interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of art in English in thirty years. It gives a new analysis of his notorious "end of art" thesis, shows the indispensability of his aesthetics to his philosophy generally, and argues for his theory's relevance today.

Art and the Absolute restores Hegel's aesthetics to a place of central importance in the Hegelian system. In so doing, it brings Hegel into direct relation with the central thrust of contemporary philosophy. The book draws on the astonishing scope and depths of Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, exploring the multifaceted issue of art and the absolute. Why does Hegel ascribe absoluteness to art? What can such absoluteness mean? How does it relate to religion and philosophy? How does Hegel's view of art illuminate the contemporary absence of the absolute? Art and the Absolute argues that these aesthetic questions are not mere theoretical conundrums for abstract analysis. It argues that Hegel's understanding of art can provide an indispensable hermeneutic relevant to current controversies. Art and the Absolute explores the intricacies of Hegel's aesthetic thought, communicating its contemporary relevance. It shows how for Hegel art illuminates the other areas of significant human experience such as history, religion, politics, literature. Against traditional, closed views, the result is a challenge to re-read Hegel's aesthetic philosophy.

Debates over the 'end of art' have tended to obscure Hegel's work on the arts themselves. Benjamin Rutter opens this study with a defence of art's indispensability to Hegel's conception of modernity; he then seeks to reorient discussion toward the distinctive values of painting, poetry, and the novel. Working carefully through Hegel's four lecture series on aesthetics, he identifies the expressive possibilities particular to each medium. Thus, Dutch genre scenes animate the everyday with an appearance of vitality; metaphor frees language from prose; and Goethe's lyrics revive the banal routines of love with imagination and wit. Rutter's important study reconstructs Hegel's view not only of modern art but of modern life and will appeal to philosophers, literary theorists, and art historians alike.

Since Hegel, the idea of an end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. This book analyzes its role and its rhetoric in Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Heidegger in order to account for the topic's enduring persistence. In addition to providing a general overview of the main thinkers of post-Idealist German aesthetics, the book explores the relationship between tradition and modernity. For despite the differences that distinguish one philosopher's end of art from another's, all authors treated here turn the end of art into an occasion to thematize and to reflect on the very thing that modernism cannot or should not be: tradition. As a discourse, the end of art is one of our modern traditions.

This is the first of two volumes of the only English edition of Hegel's Aesthetics, the work in which he gives full expression to his seminal theory of art. The substantial Introduction is his best exposition of his general philosophy of art. In Part I he considers the general nature of art as a spiritual experience, distinguishes the beauty of art and the beauty of nature, and examines artistic genius and originality. Part II surveys the history of art from the ancient world through to the end of the eighteenth century, probing the meaning and significance of major works. Part III (in the second volume) deals individually with architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and literature; a rich array of examples makes vivid his exposition of his theory.

Professor Kaminsky’s lucid exposition is, surprisingly, the first attempt in English to deal extensively and critically with Hegel’s views on art, as outlined in his difficult volumes on that subject. Hegel on Art thus performs a needed service for those interested in either the philosophy or the history of the fine arts. Hegel’s idealistic metaphysics was the last European endeavor to construct a universal philosophical system on the traditional pattern, and to modern readers it can easily appear more imposing than useful. But in his examination of art, according to Professor Kaminsky, the German philosopher became “the most empirical of the empiricists,” and his observations can be valuable to us quite independent of our commitment to his metaphysics. Moreover, as Professor Kaminsky shows, Hegel’s metaphysical framework does give him an advantage not available under the rigorous skepticism of today’s positivist or symbolist: he can recognize that art mirrors the world of action, and so can provide it with objective validity. As the author concludes in Hegel’s defense: “It may well be that only art can be used to communicate the important episodes that happen to us or others....Without art, we lose one of our great sources of information as to who we are and what we ought to do.” “[Kaminsky] succeeds in the difficult task of summarizing Hegel’s aesthetics in a clear, well-balanced text which follows the historical lines set down by the philosopher. His work is the most extensive study of the subject available in English.”—Library Journal

Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics present a systematic and historical overview of the nature and development of art in light of its meaning and philosophical significance. This book considers Hegel's aesthetics from a variety of perspectives. With a strong and clear introduction by William Maker, the individual essays address Hegel's treatment of music, painting, comedy, and architecture, as well as his earlier writings on art, his relations to Schiller and to Schlegel, his treatment of romanticism, the place of aesthetics in the system, and his controversial claims about the overcoming of art. Several perspectives focus specifically on the contemporary relevance of Hegel's aesthetics in light of developments in art since his time, and especially in connection with modernism, postmodernism, and deconstruction.

That aesthetics is central to Hegel's philosophical enterprise is not widely acknowledged, nor has his significant contribution to the discipline been truly appreciated. Some may be familiar with his theory of tragedy and his (supposed) doctrine of the "end of art," but many philosophers and writers on art pay little or no attention to his lectures on aesthetics. The essays in this collection, all but one written specifically for this volume, aim to raise the profile of Hegel's aesthetic theory by showing in detail precisely why that theory is so powerful. Writing from various perspectives and not necessarily aligned with Hegel's position, the contributors demonstrate that Hegel's lectures on aesthetics constitute one of the richest reservoirs of ideas about the arts, their history, and their future that we possess. Addressing a range of important topics, the essays examine the conceptual bases of Hegel's organization of his aesthetics, his treatment of various specific arts (architecture, sculpture, painting, music, and tragedy), and several of the most famous issues in the literature--including the "end of art" thesis, the relation between art and religion, and the vexed relationship between Hegel and the romantics. Together they shed light on the profound reflections on art contained in Hegel's philosophy and also suggest ways in which his aesthetics might resonate well beyond the field of philosophical aesthetics, perhaps beyond philosophy itself.