L'esthétique du laid, de Hegel à Rosenkranz. Une « esthétique de la résistance » ou de la résignation aux « arts qui ne sont plus beaux » ?

Abstract

At the time of the Enlightenment, the ugly becomes an object of aesthetic concern, due to the influence of Diderot and Lessing, hence announcing the Wirkungsasthetik, an « aesthetics of effect », of the sublime and the pathetic. Nevertheless, in 1797 Schlegel states that there still has been no known attempt at a theory of the ugly. This gap is filled by Hegel’s disciples, who under the influence of Hegelian dialectics make the ugly an integral part of the beautiful, therefore bestowing it with great importance. As well as Christian Hermann Weise, who devotes himself to elaborating the ugly in his System der Asthetik als Wissenschaft von der Idee der Schonheit (1830), Friedrich Theodor Vischer and Arnold Ruge adopt a definite position on the matter of ugliness and Karl Rosenkranz even dedicates an Aesthetics of the Ugly to the question. This aesthetics of the ugly is conceived as an answer to the historical upheavals and failure of revolutionary hope after 1848. We demonstrate especially how Rosenkranz extends and deepens the analysis of the expressive potential of the ugly established by Lessing and Schlegel, but we will particularly ask if he really questions the idealist approach to this aesthetic category and if he gives the ugly a specific value or whether he doesn’t instead instrumentalize the ugly in order to condemn the capitalist order, to denounce the social upheavals between 1830 and 1860 and to express his rejection of realism.