Hegel’s Aesthetics and Its Young Hegelian Critiques

Abstract

Listen

Translate article

ABSTRACT The Young Hegelians developed at least three different critiques of Hegel’s aesthetics. The first critique begins with Feuerbach’s writings in the 1841–1843 and emphasizes the sensuous origin and the finiteness of art. The second is focused primarily on the role of art in history and the category of the comedy. In his Die historische Komödie in unserer Zeit (1843), Arnold Ruge considers Hegel unable to recognize the emancipatory role of the comedy. The third developed by Bruno Bauer in his Posaune des jüngsten Gericht über Hegel den Atheisten und Antichristen (1841) and in Hegel’s Lehre von Religion und Kunst aus Standpunkt des Glaubens aus beurteilt (1842) centres upon Hegel’s views on aesthetics and modernity. This article is to examine these critiques and explain why they are in fact not able to overcome Hegel’s aesthetics. As a matter of fact, Hegel did not reject the sensuous origin of art and its finiteness. Furthermore, he did acknowledge comedy’s crucial role, and saw romantic art as the phase in which beauty loses its prominence in favour of not-beauty and humour. Finally, Bauer criticized the relationship between religion and art in the Absolute Spirit.