Hegel and the "End" of Art l

Stephen Houlgate
University of Warwick

-1-

Hegel is often said to have claimed that art comes to an end or "dies" in
the modern world. This is maintained, for example, by Dieter Henrich, as
well as by Arthur Danto. 2 As Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert points out, however, Hegel never actually makes such a claim. 3 He declares that the modern
world witnesses the end or "dissolution" of the Romantic form of art, and
he notes that the epic has died out to be replaced by the novel and the short
story;4 but nowhere does he ever say that art as such comes to an end in the
modern era. Nor does he ever advance the related claim, attributed to him
by Danto, that "art is and remains for us a thing of the past.,,5 The claim
Hegel actually makes is similar to this, but more nuanced. It is that "art,
considered in its highest vocation (nach der Seite ihrer hochsten
Bestimmung), is and remains for us a thing of the past" (Werke, 13: 25; A,
1: 11 [my italics]). Unlike the claim attributed to Hegel, by Danto, this claim
does not in any way imply that art no longer has historical significance in
the modern world or that we moderns no longer look to art to tell us about
ourselves and our world. It simply states that for us art can now no longer
fulfill the highest calling of which it is capable. The highest vocation of art,
Hegel tells us, is to express and bring to consciousness, not just particular,
contingent truths about ourselves and our world, but that which we regard

The Owl of Minerva 29: 1 (Fall 1997)

as absolutely fundamental and universal-"the Divine, the deepest interests

of mankind, and the most comprehensive truths of the spirit" (Werke, 13:
21; A, 1: 7). Art was able to fulfill this vocation magnificently in "the beautiful days of Greek art" and "the golden age of the later Middle Ages,"
according to Hegel, but those days are now long gone (Werke, 13: 24; A, 1:
10). We now belong to a different world with a different understanding of
the role of art. Art remains an enduring human need in the modern world
and will always remain such a need; indeed, Hegel says that "we may well
hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection." But in the
modern world, "art no longer affords that satisfaction of spiritual needs which
earlier ages and nations sought in it" (Werke, 13: 142,24; A, 1: 103, 10).
The aim of this article is to explain why, in Hegel's view, art's history
brings it to the point at which it can no longer afford the highest satisfaction of our spiritual needs and so fulfill its own highest calling, and why,
nevertheless, we moderns still need art and still need it to create beauty. I
will argue that Hegel advocates a modern art of beauty, not out of any aesthetic conservatism, but because he believes that what has to be given aesthetic
expression in the modern world is concrete human freedom and life (rather
than the abstract, subjective freedom of Romantic irony) and that the
aesthetic expression of such concrete human freedom entails beauty. I will
also argue that from a Hegelian point of view many modern movements in
the arts, which today are often regarded as progressive or even revolutionary
due to their so-called "emancipation" from beauty, are actually far less
progressive than they seem, because they represent a turn back to abstract,
symbolic forms of aesthetic expression which are no longer appropriate for
the modern spirit of freedom.

-IIThe primary reason why art now no longer affords us the highest spiritual satisfaction is that in the Western tradition it has gradually severed its
link with religion. 6 In religion we are directly conscious, through inner feeling, belief and representation (Vorstellung), of the Absolute or Divine itself.
We feel and believe the Divine, within our own hearts and souls, to be a real
presence in the world (Werke, 13: 142-43; A, 1: 103-04). In aesthetic experience, by contrast, we encounter an individual, human creation-the
artwork-in which the nature of the Divine (or of human life) is given expression. The medium of expression may be purely sensuous (such as stone,

Hegel and the "End" of Art

color or sound), or, as in the case of poetry, it may also take the form of
images or Vorstellungen. In either case, however, what is important about
the artwork is that it is an object produced by human artistry-ein Gemachtes,
vom Menschen Hervorgebrachtes-which reveals to us the true character of
divine or human freedom (Werke, 13: 214; A, 1: 162).
In the case of the Ancient Greeks, Hegel argues, art was itself an
essential moment of religion. This is because it was the Greek artists and
poets, such as Homer, who "gave the nation a definite idea of the activity,
life, and work of the Divine, or, in other words, the definite content of
religion." Indeed, Hegel says, the poets and artists became for the Greeks
the "creators of their gods" (Werke, 13: 141; A, 1: 102). This does not mean
that artists simply dreamt up the gods out of nothing. It means that they
gave determinate expression and form to inchoate religious ideas about the
gods which "fermented" within the Greeks themselves. As a result of being
rendered determinate in art in this way, Hegel says, the gods hovered for the
Greeks "in a magic light between poetry and actuality" (Werke, 15: 368; A,
2: 1074).7
Greek art was not merely contingently connected to Greek religion, in
Hegel's view; it was necessarily connected with it, because the Greeks could
only work out what fermented within them in the form of art. This is a
consequence, Hegel claims, of the conception of the Divine which underlay
Greek religion and culture as a whole. The Greeks conceived of the Divine,
not as an abstract principle, such as the Light or the Good, but as a realm of
self-conscious, free individuals: the gods. The freedom of these individuals
is a spiritual one-the freedom of imagination, insight and purpose-but it is
not set in opposition to the body or to action in the world. It is not a fundamentally inward freedom constituted by spirit's withdrawal into itself and
out of the sphere of externality. On the contrary, it is spiritual freedom that
expresses itself specifically in bodily posture and action. The Greek god is
thus not a disembodied spirit, but a self-conscious individual body, and so
takes on human form. The bodily form taken by the gods is, however, one
that expresses nothing but divine freedom. It thus lacks the contingent blemishes which mark mortal human bodies, and is consequently idealized bodily
form. It is because the Greek gods are conceived of as concrete, free individuals exhibiting idealized physical form that they can only be envisaged in
a determinate manner in art. Purely inward spirit can be brought to mind in
pure thought or inner feeling, and a spirit that is understood to become
incarnate in a real historical figure can be encountered in that historical

The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

incarnation itself. But Greek divinity is neither inward enough to be conceived in abstraction from visible or imaginable bodies, nor concrete and
historical enough to be encountered in the world. It can therefore only be
envisaged in a visible or imaginable physical form that has been idealized by
art, above all by sculpture and poetry. Art enjoys such a high status in Greece,
therefore, because it is the activity through which alone the Greeks can
come to a clear and determinate conception of their gods: "in the case of
the Greeks, art was the highest form in which the people represented the
gods to themselves and gave themselves a consciousness of the truth" (Werke,
13: 141; A, 1: 102).
But note that art is not only elevated to a position of cultural supremacy
among the Greeks; it also perfects itself as art by fulfilling art's highest
vocation. The supreme task of art for Hegel, as we have seen, is to give
sensuous and imaginative expression, through objects created by human
beings, to "the highest interests of the spirit" (Werke, 13: 28; A, 1: 13). It is
to bring before human consciousness all that human beings most cherish
and revere: the family, the state, heroism, eternal justice, freedom and the
gods. This task is best carried out, Hegel believes, when art gives direct expression to our deepest religious beliefs and ideas, because religion is where
our most strongly held views about the family, the state and the gods have
their ultimate source. Religion is, as Hegel puts it, "the place where a people
defines for itself what it holds to be true."S Art necessarily fulfills its highest
vocation as art in ancient Greece, therefore, because for the Greeks art is
itself an integral part of the religious life of the people.
It is also in Greece that art attains to its purest beauty. Beauty, for
Hegel, is "the sensuous shining of the Idea" (das sinnliche Scheinen der
Idee}-the manifestation in sensuously intuitable (or imaginable) form of
unity, reason and wholeness (Werke, 13: 151;A, 1: 111). This is best achieved
when sensuous or imagined form is thoroughly imbued with spiritual freedom and thereby idealized, that is, when there is a perfect fusion of spirit
and bodily form. This in turn requires that the spirit concerned can find
itself in perfect harmony with the body. It is Greek divinity above all that is
capable of such harmony, because it expresses its own spiritual freedom
wholly and only in bodily posture and action. It is Greek divinity, therefore,
that is capable of the most beautiful aesthetic expression. This does not
mean that all Greek art is necessarily beautiful, but that only the Greeks are
capable of the most beautiful art, because only the Greek spirit can be perfectly fused with its sensuous or imaginative expression. Greek art, Hegel

Hegel and the "End" of Art

says, is thus "the consummation of the realm of beauty" : "nothing can be or

become more beautiful" (Werke, 14: 127; A, 1: 517).
It should be noted, by the way, that Hegel's judgement that Greek
sculpture and poetry is the most beautiful art there can be is not based
merely on personal preference or on any outdated allegiance to Winckelmann.
It is based on what he understands to be an objective structural feature of
Greek spirituality: namely that Greek divinity is capable of idealized sensuous
and imaginative expression like no other before or since.
The account I have given here is obviously greatly simplified. Greek
civilization was not restricted to the production of art, but prided itself on
its political, historical, philosophical and even sporting achievements as well.
Furthermore, Greek art was not confined to the presentation of the gods,
but also depicted demigods, humans and animals. Nevertheless, Hegel believes that art achieved a unique prominence in Greece and that Greek
religion was what made the Greeks look to art as their privileged vehicle of
expression.

-IIIChristianity, for Hegel, is a very different religion from that of the

Greeks. Not only is it monotheistic, rather than polytheistic, it is also more
inward and more historical than Greek religion. The Christian God, Hegel
claims, is above all pure spirit and love-spirit which takes the form, not of
idealized bodily shape, but of "self-conscious inwardness." Consequently,
such divinity does not demand "sensuous presentation" from the outset, as
does Greek divinity, but is "freed from this immediate existence which must
be posited as negative, overcome and reflected into the spiritual unity"
(Werke, 13: 112-13; A, 1: 80). The Christian God thus does not have to be
given sensuous, aesthetic expression in order to become determinate for us.
Rather, the intrinsic nature of God can be fully comprehended within religious feeling, belief and representation itself. The Christian religion is thus
independent of art in a way that the Greek religion was not, and can formulate its Trinitarian conception of God on the basis of purely religious belief
(together with a little help from philosophy).
Yet essential to Christian faith is the belief that God becomes incarnate in
the figure ofJesus Christ. Christian faith understands Christ to embody for
us God's pure inwardness and love and to show us what such love means in
concrete practical and historical terms. Divine love is thus understood by

The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

faith to make itself visible in the world, to embroil itself in the complexities
of human finitude, even to the point of death, and thereby to make a visible
difference to the world. In Hegel's view, this becoming-visible of divine love
allows such love to be rendered visible and imaginable in art. Thus, even
though Christian divinity is spiritual love that can be comprehended through
religious belief without recourse to aesthetic presentation, such divinity is
nevertheless capable of such presentation due to its having become incarnate in the life and work of Christ (and, indeed, the lives of the Virgin
Mary, the Apostles and the Saints). Such aesthetic presentation will not be
able to communicate all that faith understands about divine love; in particular,
it will not be able to communicate the feeling that divine love is actually at
work within faith itself-that we are ourselves united with divine lovebecause art can only ever present such love in an objective form as something
to be contemplated and beheld. Art will also fail to render Christian love
visible in all its worldly, historical concreteness. Nevertheless, art is capable
of rendering divine love visible or imaginable. Indeed, art must do this, if
something of the worldly concreteness of the original Incarnation is to be
kept alive for us after Christ's death. Art is thus not needed in order to gain
a determinate understanding of God's love in the first place, but it is needed
to preserve for our intuition a concrete image of the form such love took in
the lives of Christ, Mary and the Apostles.
[Tlhe religious material contains in itself at the same time a factor whereby
it is not only made accessible to art but does in a certain respect actually
need art. In the religious ideas of Romantic art, as has been indicated
more than once already, this material involves pushing anthropomorphism
to an extreme, in that it is precisely this material (i) which has as its centre
the coalescence of the Absolute and Divine with a human person as
actually perceived and therefore as appearing externally and corporeally,
and (ii) which must present the Divine in this its individuality, bound as it
is to the deficiency of nature and the finite mode of appearance. In this
respect, for the appearance of God art provides to the contemplative
consciousness the special presence of an actual individual shape, a concrete picture too of the external features of the events in which Christ's
birth, life and sufferings, death, Resurrection and Ascension to the right
hand of God are displayed, so that, in general, the actual appearance of
God, which has passed away, is repeated and perpetually renewed in art
alone (Werke, 14: 149; A, 1: 535. See also Werke, 14: 130; A, 1: 519-20).

The beauty of which Christian or Romantic art is capable is, consequently, different from that created by the Greeks. The purest Greek beauty,
found in sculpture and drama, is spiritual freedom that is wholly identical

Hegel and the "End" of Art

with, and immersed in, visible or imaginable bodily shape. In Romantic art,
on the other hand, what must come to appearance in the sensuous or imaginative medium is divinity that has withdrawn out of the body into the
profound inwardness of love. Romantic beauty must thus take the form,
not just of idealized bodily shape as such, but of harmonious human form
that is suffused with inner feeling and love. Such beauty is not pure beauty,
but the "beauty of inwardness" (Schonheit der Innigkeit) (Werke, 14: 144;
A, 1: 531), and is found supremely in the images of the Virgin and Child
and of Christ and his disciples created by painters such as Jan van Eyck,
Raphael and Correggio. Greek sculpture may exhibit the purest beauty, and
Sophocles' Antigone may be "the most excellent and most satisfying work of
art;" but, for Hegel, the "immortal" paintings of the late Middle Ages and
the Renaissance are the most soulful and the most inward works that art is
able to produce (Werke, 15: 550, 59; A, 2: 1218,831).9
This is not the place to provide a detailed discussion of Hegel's
account of Christian art, but a couple of things should be noted. First of all,
with the move from Classical to Romantic beauty the most appropriate
medium of aesthetic expression changes. Classical beauty-the beauty of
idealized bodily shape-finds its most perfect expression in the art of ideally
shaped matter, namely sculpture. Romantic beauty, by contrast, finds its
fitting expression in painting-an art which does not present us with
concrete, embodied divinity, but which is nevertheless able to render divine
love visible for us. By shedding the third spatial dimension that characterizes sculpture, painting dissolves the idea that what we behold is a fundamentally
material presence and so opens the way for us to regard what we see as the
"shining forth" (Herausscheinen) of inward, immaterial spirituality (Werke,
15: 14; A, 2: 794-95). Painting is thus more properly suited to the Romantic
beauty of inwardness than is sculpture (though Hegel did praise the sculpture of
Michelangelo, a copy of whose Pieta he had seen in Berlin) (Werke, 14: 460;
A, 2: 790).
Secondly, the structure of what Hegel calls the "Ideal" presented in art
also changes with the move from Classical to Romantic beauty. The Classical Ideal in both sculpture and drama is one of independence: "it is complete
in itself, independent, reserved, unreceptive, a finished individual which rejects
everything else. Its shape is its own" (Werke, 14: 145; A, 1: 532). The Romantic Ideal, by contrast, is one of relatedness and, at times, even dependence,
because love is essentially an inward, felt bond between individuals-between

The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

God and humanity, between Christ and his disciples, and between the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child. In Romantic art, therefore,
infinite subjectivity is not lonely in itself like a Grecian god who lives
in himself absolutely perfect in the blessedness of his isolation; on the
contrary, it emerges from itself into a relation with something else which,
however, is its own, and in which it finds itself again and remains communing and in unity with itself. This being at one with itself in the other
is the really beautiful subject-matter of Romantic art, its Ideal which has
essentially for its form and appearance the inner life and subjectivity, mind
and feeling. (Werke, 14: 146; A, 1: 533)10

Similarly, the figures who best manifest religious love in Romantic art
stand in explicit relation to their external architectural and natural surroundings. This follows, Hegel believes, from the very nature of Christian
inwardness itself: for in withdrawing out of the world into itself Christian
inwardness does not seek to suppress or deny the world, but rather lets it go
free as the realm of externality. Furthermore, as is recognised in the Christian doctrine of the Incarnation, that inwardness enters into the world of
externality in order to make a visible difference to it. Indeed, "only in this
involvement with concrete reality does [free subjectivity] prove itself in its
own eyes to be concrete and living" (Werke, 15: 24-25; A, 2: 803). The beautiful, inward bond oflove between the Virgin Mary and the Christ Child is thus
itself most concrete when it is set in the context of the visible external world. 11
Hegel understands the requirement that the Divine be visualized in
art to stem from the need to preserve for intuition an image of divine love's
original Incarnation. It is, however, above all in the Middle Ages that
aesthetic expression of divine love is given prominence by Christian culture, because medieval Catholicism, in Hegel's view, is governed by the general
belief that the Divine is most fully present when it is there for us in a sensuous form, for example, in the form of the Host. 12 The most beautiful
Christian art is produced in the late Middle Ages and in the Renaissance
(approximately from the time of Giotto onwards) once the "stiffness" of
Byzantine art has begun to give way to a new sense of "life and full individual expression" (Werke, 15: 116; A, 2: 876).13 Late medieval and
renaissance art thus becomes a prominent, though not unique, form of
religious expression due to the distinctive emphasis placed by Catholic
Christianity itself on rendering the Divine visible. And, by rendering the
Divine visible in this way, art in this period is able to fulfill the highest
calling of art itself.

Hegel and the "End" of Art

With the Reformation the relation between art and religion alters and
the possibilities for art itself change. The defining characteristic of the
Reformation for Hegel is that divine love comes to be understood as fully
present, not simply in visible objects which we can behold (such as the Host),
but within faith itself. 14 The implications for art are clear. For, if God is
only fully present within the inwardness of our own faith, then He cannot
be regarded as fully present in the human artifacts which we see before us.
As Hegel puts it, "to the Lutherans truth is not a manufactured object." 15
Through the Reformation, therefore, "religious ideas were drawn away from
their wrapping in the element of sense and brought back to the inwardness
of heart and thinking" (Werke, 13: 142; A, 1: 103). This does not mean that
Protestantism abandons all interest in visualizing God; there is great
Protestant religious art, for example by Rembrandt. But it does mean that
art ceases to play the prominent role in religious life that it played in the
Middle Ages and makes way more and more for the inner witness of faith
itself. It also means that to the extent that Protestant spirituality does find
aesthetic expression, it is less in the painted images of the Virgin Mary and
more in religious music, hymns and lyric poems (Werke, 14: 159, 15: 211,
459; A, 1: 542-43, 2: 950, 1145).
What is distinctive about Protestantism is not that it shuns all aesthetic expression as such, but rather that it frees art from dominance by
religion and so allows it to become fully secular. Indeed, Protestantism actually encourages art to become secular by acknowledging the special value of
the worldly and the everyday. There was, of course, secular art, including
portrait painting, before the Reformation. But, for Hegel, the Reformation
gave a new and powerful impetus to secular art by seeing secular forms of
activity, such as labor, life in the family and life in the state, not simply as
falling outside the religious, monastic life, but as "holy" in themselves. "To
Protestantism alone," Hegel claims, "does it fall to get a sure footing in the
prose of life, to make it absolutely valid in itself independently of religious
associations, and to let it develop in unrestricted freedom" (Werke, 14:
225-26; A, 1: 598). Protestantism thus frees a people such as the Dutch to
explore in their paintings everyday scenes and objects which might otherwise have been deemed unworthy of artistic portrayal. The most beautiful
art had previously been religious art. If we look at Dutch painting with the
right eyes, however, we will discover great cheerfulness and freedom in their
pictures of peasant merrymaking and of domestic life and "we will no longer
suppose that they should have avoided such subjects and portrayed only

10

The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

Greek gods, myths and fables, or the Madonna, the Crucifixion, martyrs,
Popes, saints male or female" (Werke, 15: 130; A, 2: 887).
By freeing art from religion and by also emancipating the secular,
Protestantism allows art to explore with a good conscience the subtle beauty
of the everyday. Once art has become liberated in this way, however, its
distinctive vocation is no longer to give expression to the Divine. Art is thus
no longer able to fulfill its highest calling. Nevertheless, art is still able to
carry out a task that comes close to its highest vocation, because it is still
able to create beauty by giving sensuous expression to concrete human
freedom and natural life.
Hegel is well aware that some naturalistic art of the seventeenth and
eighteenth centuries confines itself to imitating (or at least seeking to imitate) the surrounding world. Such art no longer counts as art in the fullest
sense, in his view. Naturalistic artworks do still count as genuine works of
art, however, when they do not merely show us what things are like, but
breathe life and "soul" into the objects portrayed and so continue to give
sensuous expression to the "Idea" (which, as we know from the Logic, first
manifests itself explicitly as life). The naturalistic paintings of the Dutch are
thus quite definitely Kunstwerke, rather than mere KunststUcke, because
their aim is not simply to reproduce on canvas the appearance of things in
the world, but to afford the viewer "satisfaction in the presence of life, even
in the commonest and smallest" (Werke, 13: 69-70, 14: 223-25; A, 1: 45,
596-97 [my italics]). This, Hegel tells us, is why Dutch art so often seeks to
capture fleeting moments in paint, such as "the lustre of metal, the shimmer of a bunch of grapes by candlelight, a vanishing glimpse of the moon or
sun" or "a waterfall, the foaming waves of the ocean, still-life with casual
flashes of glass, cutlery, etc."-because it is in their movement, shining and
gleaming that even inanimate objects can be said to be alive (Werke, 14:
227; A, 1: 599).
What also engages our attention in Dutch art, Hegel claims, is the
complex animated interplay of colors themselves: what Hegel calls "objective music" or "a resounding in colors" (ein Tonen in Farben}.lndeed, from
as long ago as the time of Jan van Eyck, Netherlandish artists made the
study of the "magical" effects of color the explicit concern of their art. In
this way, Hegel says, they made the exploration of the means of artistic portrayal, and indeed the display of the artist's skill in handling such means,
into an end in itself (fur sich seiber Zweck). The depiction of the life of

Hegel and the "End" of Art

11

objects was thus often at one and the same time for the Dutch the explicit
presentation of the artist's own artistry (Werke, 14: 227-29; A, 1: 599-600).
Such self-presentation continues to count as art to the extent that it
presents not merely the artist's activity of creating in the abstract, but the
artist's activity of creating an object in which concrete embodied life or
human freedom come to appearance. Beautiful art, we remember, is the
sensuous expression of the Idea; and the Idea takes the form of life in nature and, as the Greeks and the Medievals recognised, of concrete, incarnate
human freedom. If art is to fulfill its distinctive task in the modern, postReformation era, therefore, it must-where it can-depict or describe concrete
natural and human forms, because life and human freedom are nothing
outside of or apart from their concrete embodiment.
Hegel sees some modern artists, however, shifting their attention away
from the depiction of concrete natural and human forms to the presentation of
their own act of producing and creating by itself. In the works of such
artists, "it is the stark subjectivity of the artist himself which intends to
display itself and to which what matters is not the forming of a finished and
self-subsistent work, but a production in which the productive artist lets us
see himself alone" (Werke, 14: 229; A, 1: 600). Hegel does not identify
which artists he has in mind in saying this, or even clarify whether he is
thinking of painters or poets; but we are surely familiar with artists from
our own century-Jackson Pollock may be one-who want their work to
render visible their own creative activity and performance, rather than
bring objects in the world into view.
Hegel is a passionate advocate of the living and concrete in all areas of
his philosophy, and is an unrelenting critic of the abstract, the one-sided
and the disembodied. This is why he is less than enthusiastic about the
distortions of natural and human form which he sees in Indian and Egyptian art. It is also why he is so critical of the abstract characterization in
seventeenth-century French drama and of the pallid, insipid images created
by the Dusseldorf school. To the extent that painters such as Pollock endeavour to present the act of creation itself in their work, but do not proceed
to create images of concrete life and human freedom, they, too, would be
guilty of abstraction, in Hegel's view, because they give expression to human
creative activity by abstracting from the concrete embodied form that human freedom itself takes. Music and architecture are by their very nature
non-representational arts. But painting, sculpture and poetry are not. To the
extent that they strive to become purely "musical" and non-representational

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in their exploration of the interplay of color and shape in the abstract, therefore, they fall short of the distinctive aesthetic expression of concrete human
freedom of which they are capable. This is not to say that Hegel objects to
the abstract exploration of "musical" color-effects as such. But it
is to insist that such exploration be integrated, as it is in the work of the
Netherlandish and Dutch artists he admires so much, into the exploration
in paint of concrete human freedom and life (see Werke, 14: 228; A, 1: 599600).16 Hegel's criticism of Pollock (and, indeed, Mondrian and other abstract
artists) would thus be that, although painters may certainly concern themselves with abstract color-relations, they should not do so in abstraction
from the depiction of concrete human and natural life.
Hegel was not familiar with the work of J. M. W. Turner which
perhaps marks the first turn towards pictorial abstraction in the Western
tradition. I? But he does see a related move away from naturalistic objectivity
in the literary art of modern ironic humor. What distinguishes the writing
of humorists such as Jean Paul Richter is not, however, that they aim at the
direct aesthetic presentation of the artist's creativity, but rather that they
aim within their texts at the ironic subversion and undermining of the forms
of objectivity. The activity of the ironic artist, for Hegel, thus consists in
"destroying and dissolving everything that proposes to make itself objective
and win a firm shape for itself in reality, or that seems to have such a shape
already in the external world" (Werke, 14: 229; A, 1: 601). In doing so the
artist raises himself above and so abstracts himself from the determinate
forms of objectivity and thus establishes for himself a freedom of ironic
indeterminacy. Even such humor can still remain within the province of
genuine art, however, if, as in the case of Laurence Sterne, the artist's subversive activity allows that which is "substantial" to be seen (Werke, 14: 231;
A, 1: 602). But if this does not occur and what comes forth is primarily the
ironic indeterminacy of the artist himself, then such art no longer counts as
art in the fullest sense, because it no longer renders concrete human freedom visible and imaginable in a definite, determinate manner.
Hegel believes that with the ironic humorist's subversion of determinate objectivity and consequent "emancipation" of himself from such
determinacy, the Romantic form of art is dissolved and comes to an end.
This is because, by subverting determinacy as such, the ironic artist subverts, suspends and withdraws from all of the particular religious, chivalric
and everyday forms in which Christian sensibility and its secular counterpart gave itself aesthetic expression. The humorous, ironic spirit thus gives

Hegel and the "End" of Art

13

itself aesthetic expression by showing that it is not tied to any of the determinate forms of expression which Romantic art has traditionally employed. In
this way the ironic artist shows everyone in the modern world that art need
no longer confine itself to traditional Romantic forms of expression and
that the Romantic artform in that sense has come to an end. Indeed, he
shows that no particular artform whatsoever need now dominate artistic
creation. As Hegel puts it, "bondage to a particular subject-matter and a
mode of portrayal suitable for this material alone are for artists today a thing
of the past" (Werke, 14: 235; A, 1: 60S).
It is important to note here that Hegel does not think that the
emergence of such irony and humor is merely an unfortunate contingency
of the modern world which could have been avoided. It is the necessary
result of the development of Christian art itself. For what the ironic artist
does is give secular expression within art itself to the Christian idea that the
freedom of the spirit is an essentially inward freedom that ultimately transcends and exceeds any determinate form of aesthetic expression. The Greeks
could only give their gods determinate form within art; but Christianity
knows God within purely religious feeling and belief to be pure spirit and
love. As we have seen, Christianity also understands the Divine to become
incarnate and thus to be capable of its own distinctive aesthetic expression.
The Christian God found such expression as love in the religious art of the
Middle Ages and Renaissance, at a time when Christianity itself conceived
of God as fully present when He appeared in a sensuous, visible form. However, the Reformation emphasized that God is in fact only fully present in
the very inwardness of faith itself, not in art, and so liberated art to the
exploration of secular human freedom. The Reformation also inaugurated
a turn inward by secular consciousness as well, especially in the spheres of
morality and philosophy. By subverting all the determinate forms in which
spirit has found aesthetic expression in the past, modern humor indicates
within art that this secular human freedom also transcends aesthetic expression. In this way, Hegel remarks, the history of Romantic art proves to be
"the self-transcendence of art but within its own sphere and in the form of
art itself' (Werke, 13: 113; A, 1: 80).
But by showing that human subjectivity is now no longer tied to any
determinate form of aesthetic expression, do not modern ironists do more
than just bring to an end the Romantic form of art? Do not modern ironists
(with the possible exception of a writer, such as Sterne) turn their back on
the very idea of giving determinate aesthetic expression to concrete human

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The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (FalJ 1997)

freedom and so abandon the distinctive vocation of art as such? Is it not the
case, in other words, that by becoming ironic modern art actually destroys
its character as art and so effectively commits suicide?
This is indeed what Hegel maintains. In his 1820..21 lectures he states
explicitly that in humor and comedy "art proceeds to self-destruction" (die
Kunst geht fort zur Selbstvernichtung).18 But does this not contradict the
claim made at the start of this essay that Hegel never says that art comes to
an end in the modern world? I do not believe so, because, like H. S. Harris,
I believe that Hegel thinks that a new form of art, which continues to fulfill
the genuine task of art, is resurrected from the" death" of art in ironic humor. 19
This new form of art is no longer able to fulfill the highest vocation of
art, which is to give direct expression to the truths of religion. In the
modern world, therefore, we can no longer regard art as the direct revelation of
the Divine itself and can no longer worship and revere the God-in-art in the
manner of the ancient Greeks and the Medievals. "No matter how excellent
we find the statues of the Greek gods, no matter how we see God the
Father, Christ, and Mary so estimably and perfectly portrayed: it is no help,"
Hegel says; "we bow our knee no longer [before these artistic portrayals]"
(Werke, 13: 142; A, 1: 103). However, this new form of art is able to fulfill
the modified vocation of post-Reformation art, because it is able to present
in a concrete, determinate form secular human freedom and natural life.
Modern secular freedom does indeed transcend art in the sense that it finds
its most perfect articulation beyond art in philosophy. Nevertheless, such
freedom is still capable of determinate aesthetic expression, in Hegel's view;
and it is precisely the task of the new, "resurrected" modern art to afford
modern freedom such expression.
Before describing this new form of art, however, I should point out
that I do not share Harris's view that, for Hegel, the hegemony of religion
over art simply gives way in the modern world to the hegemony of philosophy
over art. 20 Hegel certainly recognizes that ours is a more reflective and philosophical age than earlier ages and that, as a consequence, our age is in many
ways "not favorable to art." Thought and reflection have "surpassed" fine
art (die schone Kunst iiberfliigelt), Hegel says, so that our response to art
now takes the form of critical judgement as much as sensuous enjoyment
and delight. Furthermore, we have developed the philosophical science
of aesthetics to help us understand the nature of art, and this science appears to have become as much a need in the modern world as art itself
(Werke, 13: 24-25; A, 1: 10..11). But Hegel is clear that this does not mean

Hegel and the "End" of Art

15

that art has now inevitably to become a vehicle for explicit philosophical
reflection. He acknowledges that many modern artists-for example, Schillerhave in fact been "misled" (verleitet) into bringing more philosophical
reflection into their art; but his choice of verb indicates that he does not by
any means regard such a development as inevitable in the modern world.
Art, for Hegel, can still offer us a distinctively aesthetic-that is, sensuous
and imaginative-vision of the truth that differs from, and is independent
of, that granted by philosophy and religion. Furthermore, the modern response to art does not have to be a predominantly, or exclusively, intellectual
one that always looks for philosophemes in art, but can still involve "immediate enjoyment" (unmittelbarer GenuS) and delight in the sensuous or
imaginative vision which we are offered (Werke, 13: 25; A, 1: 11). Indeed, I
believe that, for Hegel, art must still offer us a sensuous or imaginative vision of the truth in which we can take delight, because we still have a powerful
need to see and imagine the truth, as well as understand it. Art may no
longer be the highest need of the modern spirit, but it is nevertheless still a
need. Stephen Bungay is, in my view, wrong to claim that, for Hegel, art is
now no longer a need of spirit at all and that we have become bored with
what art has to tell us. 21 We are still irreducibly sensuous beings for Hegel
and will always need to see the truth in a sensuous or imaginative, as well as
a reflective, form. Art thus continues to be a need for us in the modern
world, and still has a role to play that is independent of both philosophy
and religion.

-IVThe character of the new-resurrected-form of modern art which Hegel

identifies follows from the simple fact that it has to be both modern and
genuine art. On the one hand, as modern, it must enjoy the freedom from
previous forms of aesthetic expression which was gained by the art of humor. It must also enjoy freedom to choose its own content. In the modern
age, Hegel says, "the artist ... stands above specific consecrated forms and
configurations and moves freely on his own account, independent of the
subject-matter and mode of conception in which the holy and eternal was
previously made visible to human apprehension." For the modern artist, art
thus becomes a "free instrument which the artist can wield in proportion to
his subjective skill in relation to any material of whatever kind" (Werke, 14:
235; A, 1: 605). On the other hand, as genuine art, modern art must still be

16

The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

the sensuous expression of the Idea, that is, of concrete natural life and
human freedom. This means that it must still create animated, harmonious, beautiful forms: "every material may be indifferent to him [the artist] if
only it does not contradict the formal law of being beautiful and capable of
artistic treatment" (Werke, 14: 235; A, 1: 605). Modern naturalism has often sought to reproduce the details of nature or prosaic human life "even at
the sacrifice of beauty and the Ideal" (Werke, 14: 225; A, 1: 597); and, of
course, modern irony "emancipates" itself from beauty by distorting and
dissolving, and so pitting itself against, determinate objective form. But these
do not any longer represent the highest that art can achieve in the modern
world. They merely prepare the way for a new form of art which will be as
committed to beauty as the great art of the past.
Genuine modern art must thus present concrete life and human
freedom, whilst making free use of the Classical, Romantic and possibly
even Symbolic art-forms. The new "holy" subject-matter of such art, for Hegel,
is not merely the idealized humanity of the ancient Greeks, or the bourgeois
freedom of seventeenth-century Dutchmen, or indeed the bourgeois coziness of nineteenth-century German Biedermeier culture, but what Hegel
calls, following Goethe, Humanus: "the depths and heights of the human
heart as such, the universally human in its joys and sorrows, its strivings,
deeds, and fates" (Werke, 14: 237-38; A, 1: 607-08).22 This does not mean
that Hegel thinks art should now portray human passions of eveIysort. The
modern artist has still to create beauty, so there are some limits to what can
be portrayed in modern art. But these limits are, from Hegel's point of view
at least, not especially restrictive: modern art can give expression to whatever can be "alive (lebendig) in the human breast," that is, to "everything in
which man as such is capable of being at home (heimisch)" (Werke, 14: 238;
A, 1: 607 [my italics]). All that is excluded, therefore, is that in which the
human being cannot find itself at home-that which deliberately seeks to
disturb, provoke, elude or disorient the viewer-or that which in the human
breast is itself dead-that which is abstract, cold or purely negative.
Hegel gives no precise guidelines or rules to determine what is and
what is not acceptable in modern art. We know from his admiration of
Shakespeare that he has no problem accepting the depiction of evil and
criminality in art, but we also know from remarks he makes about a German genre painting exhibited in Berlin in 1828 that there is a certain kind
of viciousness which he does not find acceptable. What makes the difference, it seems, is the fact that the genre painting Hegel has in mind appears

Hegel and the "End" of Art

17

to him to offer nothing but a scene of spiteful, poisonous people, whereas

Shakespeare manages to imbue evil characters, such as lago and Lady
Macbeth, with a rich poetic imagination which gives them "life" even though
they are ultimately negative, destructive individuals. Such characters thus
do not simply alienate us, but also engage us and induce in us an attitude of
admiration and affirmation, even as they horrify us. 23 The modern art Hegel
recommends does not have to be bland, therefore, but can, like Shakespeare's
art, explore the darker side of the human souL The important thing, however, is that in so doing, it must not seek merely to disturb us through the
spectacle of characters that are simply cold or violent, but must allow us to
feel a sense of satisfaction and freedom in the presence of characters that are
vital, imaginative and--even if only to a certain degree-worthy of affirmation.
Hegel also gives little idea of precisely how human freedom and life
should be portrayed in modern art. All he tells us is that the artist must be
free to draw on "his store of images, modes of configuration, [and) earlier
forms of art" (Werke, 14: 235; A, 1: 605). He explicitly states that the artist
can appropriate Homeric forms and forms drawn from medieval art, and he
also points approvingly to Goethe's "turn to the Orient" in his West-ostlicher
Divan (Werke, 14: 238, 24142; A, 1: 607-08, 610_11).24 But again there are
limits. As his criticisms of the art of ironic humor demonstrate, for example,
Hegel does not think that modern artists should revert to the distortion of
determinate, natural forms characteristic of Indian and some Egyptian art.
He would thus certainly have rejected Picasso's incorporation of African
face masks into Les Demoiselles d'Avignon. This is not merely because of
the distorted contours of the masks themselves, but also because of the
polemical, antagonistic purpose to which Picasso put those masks. As Robert Hughes has noted, the Demoiselles "has none of the aloofness, the
reserved containment, of its African prototype; its lashing rhythms remind
us that Picasso looked to his masks as emblems of savagery, of violence
transferred into the sphere of culture.,,25
What I have said so far will no doubt make it appear as if Hegel's
conception of modern art is an extremely conservative one, one that allows
little of what has been produced since Hegel's death to count as genuine art.
Some of the work of the Impressionists, Degas and, perhaps, Cezanne might
satisfy Hegel's criteria for art, but it is hard to think of the work of George
Grosz or Francis Bacon or Mark Rothko or Jackson Pollock as giving aesthetic expression to concrete human freedom and life or Humanus. But one
should remember that many of the modern movements which are today

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The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

regarded as revolutionary and progressive, would themselves have seemed

reactionary to Hegel, to the extent that they have abandoned the presentation of concrete human freedom and resorted to styles that seem to be
thoroughly symbolic rather than modern. The savage distortion of the
human form by Picasso or De Kooning, the flattening and geometricizing
of human form by Leger, the deliberate evocation of mystery by De Chirico,
and the abstract, sublime transcendentalism of Rothko, all echo styles of art
which Hegel associates with ancient symbolic cultures and so would have
seemed to him to be backward-looking, rather than modern-offering a reduced, insufficiently determinate or, indeed, wholly abstract conception of
human spirituality, rather than a concrete modern one.
One could, of course, respond to such a charge by pointing out that
Hegel himself notes that art can do many things apart from giving expression to
concrete freedom and life. It can be satirical, critical, decorative, and
entertaining, it can explore human misery and frailty, and it can study the
effects of color and light in the abstract. Why should we not just allow modern artists to experiment as they see fit, without asking them to do what the
Greeks, the Medievals and the Dutch did; and why can we not seek to appreciate in their own terms the new possibilities which modern artists are
attempting to open up for art? The problem, as far as Hegel is concerned, is
that whatever else modern art may do, if it neglects to offer us the concrete
intuition of freedom and life incarnate, it effectively deprives modern life of
an essential form of self-consciousness. To leave post-Hegelian artists to their
own experimentation, and to seek simply to appreciate their work on its
own terms, would thus be to participate in what Hegel regards as the impoverishment of modern experience. As I noted before, Hegel does not believe
that art is the highest need of humanity in the modern world, but it remains
a need nevertheless, because as well as being thinking beings, we are sensuous, imaginative beings who require a sensuous or imaginative vision,
not just a conceptual understanding, of what it is to be truly free and human. Without such a vision, we lack an important dimension of
self-awareness, and so indeed lead an impoverished life. (One might add
that, even though most twentieth-century "high" art has abandoned the
task assigned to art by Hegel, the popularity of soap-operas and domestic
comedies on television today bears witness to the truth of Hegel's claim that
we still need to see our concrete worldly freedom reflected in works of the
human imagination-though Hegel would surely have regarded such
programmes as falling woefully short of what was offered to the Dutch by
their painters or to the Greeks by Aristophanes.)

Hegel and the "End" of Art

19

It has been argued by some that Hegel's aesthetic theory is now outmoded because it can no longer make sense of an art that has "emancipated"
itself from beauty. Many today look to Adorno or to Heidegger, rather than
Hegel, to elucidate the subtleties of modern art. In my view, however, Hegel's
aesthetic theory remains supremely important because it reminds us of what
we have lost through the so-called "emancipation" of art from beauty: the
aesthetic expression of concrete freedom and life in the world. Furthermore,
Hegel reminds us that we do not need to lose this aesthetic expression of
freedom and ought not to lose it. Hegel is critical of the threat posed to the
religious experience of freedom by an abstract, other-worldly conception of
God and by atheism. He is critical of the threat posed to social, economic
and political freedom by the excesses of the free market. And he is critical of
the threat posed to the aesthetic experience of freedom by excessive subjectivism and subversive irony. In each case Hegel's complaint is the same: that
the true nature of modern religious, political and aesthetic freedom is in
danger of being obscured and undermined by abstract, one-sided conceptions of the role of religion, politics and art. And, in each case, he sees it as
his own task to provide a thorough speculative critique of such abstractions
in order to keep true freedom alive in the modern world.
Hegel did not believe that true religion or genuine political and economic freedom had been altogether killed off by abstraction in the modern
world. Nor did he believe that art had come to a definitive end, since he saw
above all in the work of Goethe a new art of Humanus arise from the dissolution of the Romantic artform. 26 However, his persistent criticisms of writers
such Friedrich Schlegel, E. T. A. Hoffmann and Heinrich von Kleist, all of
whom anticipate features of later "post-modernist" art, show that he perceived the continuing threat of a definitive "death of art" right until his
own death. To the extent that many artists of the last one hundred and fifty
years have sought to call into question or openly subvert the very ideal of
concrete human freedom to which Hegel was committed, it would appear
that they have brought art ever closer to the death he hoped to prevent.
Whether Hegel's aesthetic theory has the power to help art revive at the
beginning of the twenty-first century remains, of course, to be seen.
NOTES
1. This paper was originally presented at a conference entitled The Ends of Arc which
was held at the University of Warwick on 13-14 June, 1997. I should like to thank my

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The Owl of Minerva 29:1 (Fall 1997)

colleague, Dr. Miguel Beistegui, for inviting me to participate in the conference and all
those who commented on my paper for their helpful and provocative remarks.
2. D. Henrich, "The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel's Aesthetics," in Hegel, ed.
M. Inwood (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985), pp. 200-01, and A. Danto, The
Philosophical Disenfranchisement ofArt {New York: Columbia University Press, 1986),
pp. 107-15.
3. A. Gethmann-Siefert, "Das moderne 'Gesamtkunstwerk:' Die Oper," in Phiinomen
versus System. Zum Verhiiltnis von philosophischer Systematik und Kunsturteil in Hegels
Berliner Vorlesungen aber Asthetik oder Philosophie der Kunst, ed. A. Gethmann-Siefert
(Bonn: Bouvier, 1992), p. 221.
4. G. W. F. Hegel, Werke in zwanzig Blinden, ed. E. Moldenhauer and K. M. Michel, 20
Vols. and Index (Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 19690, 14: 220, 231; 15: 415, 457.
For the English text see G. W. F. Hegel, Aesthetics. Lectures on Fine Art, trans. T. M. Knox,
2 Vols. (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1975), 1: 593, 602; 2: 1110, 1143. Further references will
be given in the main text in the form: Werke, 14: 220; A, 1: 593. The English translation
has occasionally been emended.
5. Danto, The Philosophical Disenfranchisement ofArt, p. 114.
6. The relation between art and religion in Hegel's aesthetics is explored in detail by
William Desmond in Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics (Albany: SUNY
Press, 1986), especially chapter three.
7. See also S. Houlgate, Freedom, Truth and History. An Introduction to Hegel's Philosophy (London: Routledge, 1991), pp. 162-63.
8. G. W. F. Hegel, The Philosophy of History, trans. J. Sibree (New York: Dover Publications, 1956), p. 50; Werke, 12: 70. Further references will be given in the form: Werke,
12: 70; Hegel, The Philosophy of History, p. 50. The English translation has occasionally
been emended.
9. For Hegel's views on the relative merits of the Netherlandish and Italian masters, see
Werke, 15: 125; A, 2: 883.
10. See also G. W. F. Hegel, Vorlesungen aber Asthetik. Berlin 1820/21. Eine Nachschrifr.
1. Textband, ed. H. Schneider (Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995), p. 245. Further references will be given in the form: Hegel, Asthetik 1820/21, p. 245.
11. Craig Harbison notes that the material splendor of Jan van Eyck's religious paintings
allows figures such as Nicolas Rolin, who aspired to be both worldly and devout, to "simulate material riches as well as personal piety" (Jan van Eyck. The Play of Realism [London:
Reaktion Books, 1991], p. 190). But he also confirms Hegel's insight by drawing attention
to the way van Eyck's choice of setting reinforces the Real Presence of the Divine in the
painting itself. The domestic setting of the Lucca Madonna, for example, quite literally
"brings religious life home" to fifteenth-century viewers who increasingly wanted to see
their own world as the "setting for the highest truth" (pp. 97, 99); and the ornate ecclesiastical setting of the Dresden Triptych-especially "the warm, living glow of the interior"
(p. 132)-reinforces the visible physicality (p. 155) of the Virgin Mary and the infant Jesus
for a developing "popular piety that longed, in a non-intellectual, unadulterated way, for a
vision of the Christ Child" (p. 132).
12. Hegel, Werke, 12: 467-68; The Philosophy of History, pp. 389-90.
13. See also Hegel, Werke, 12: 488; The Philosophy of History, p. 408.
14. Hegel, Werke, 12: 495; The Philosophy of History, pp. 415-16.

Hegel and the "End" of Art

21

15. Hegel, Werke, 12: 496; The Philosophy of History, p. 416.

16. The term "Netherlandish" is used to refer to fourteenth-, fifteenth-, and sixteenthcentury painters from the Low Countries (such as Jan van Eyck or Pieter Bruegel the Elder).
The term "Dutch" is used to refer to painters from the northern Low Countries (such as
Rembrandt), who lived from the seventeenth century onwards. The "Dutch Republic"-The
United Provinces of the Netherlands-was formed in 1579-80 after a revolt against the rule
of the Spanish Habsburgs. The term "Flemish" is used to refer to painters from the southern Low Countries (such as Rubens), who lived between the late sixteenth century and the
founding of modern-day Belgium in 1831, but is sometimes applied to earlier Netherlandish painters from the southern Low Countries as well.
17. Andrew Graham-Dixon writes of Turner's Interior at Petworth that it evokes "a strange,
elemental, primal world, a place such as the universe might have been before the advent of
objects" (my italics). He also says of one of Turner's late watercolors, A Bedroom in Venice,
that in it "we can see, almost as mapped out for future generations, the entire course of
what we call modern art[:] ... the spatial freedom of Cubism[,] ... the imperious free
geometry of Mondrian[,] ... the sublimity of the finest absrract American paintings of the
twentieth century." See A. Graham-Dixon, A History of British Art (London: BBC Books,
1996), pp. 155, 159.
18. Hegel, Asthetik 1820/21, p. 306.
19. See H. S. Harris, "The Resurrection of Art," The Owl of Minerva 16, 1 (Fall 1984): 7.
20. Harris, "The Resurrection of Art," p. 7: "the important art of our western culture has
had to be philosophical because it could no longer be religious."
21. S. Bungay, Beauty and Truth: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1984), p. 78.
22. The (in my view, mistaken) association of the art of Humanuswith Biedermeie~ art is
made by Dieter Henrich in "The Contemporary Relevance of Hegel's Aesthetics," p. 201.
The most important discussion of the relation between Hegel's remarks on Humanus in his
lectures on aesthetics and Goethe's poem, Die Geheimnisse, to which Hegel alludes, is
provided by Martin Donougho in "Remarks on 'Humanus heiBt der Heilige'," Hegel-Studien
17 (1982): 214-225.
23. The genre painting to which Hegel refers is identified by Annemarie GethmannSiefert as Sermon by Constantin Schrotter. See Hegel in Berlin. PreuBische Kulturpolitik
und idealistische Asthetik. Zum 150. Todestag des Philosophen, ed. O. Poggeler and others
(Berlin: Staatsbibliothek Preul3ischer Kulturbesitz, 1981), pp. 236-37. For Hegel's remarks
on this painting, see Werke, 13: 223, 15: 130; A, 1: 169,2: 887. For Hegel's remarks on the
rich poetic imagination of evil Shakespearean characters, see Werke, 15: 561.62; A, 2: 1227-28.
24. On Goethe, see also Hegel, Werke, 12: 4334; The Philosophy of History, p. 360. The
poems in Goethe's West-6stlicher Divan are actually understood by Hegel to belong to the
transitional form (Obergangsform) of" objective humor," rather than to the art of Humanus
itself. However, Hegel's remark that Persian and Arab poetry affords "a brilliant example
even for the present" suggests that he also considered it appropriate for those seeking to
give aesthetic expression to Humanus to draw on Near Eastern models in their art. On the
art of "objective humor," which falls between the art of ironic, "subjective" humor and the
art of Humanus, see Werke, 14: 239-42; A, 1: 608-11.
25. R. Hughes, The Shock of the New (London: BBC Publications, 1980), p. 21.
26. See Hegel, Asthetik 1820/21, pp. 181-82.