Part of a series on
Hegelianism
Core concepts Absolute idealism Dialectic End of history Spirit (Geist) Ethical life (Sittlichkeit) Sublation (Aufhebung) Lord–bondsman dialectic
Major works The Phenomenology of Spirit Science of Logic Encyclopedia of the Philosophical Sciences Elements of the Philosophy of Right Lectures on the Philosophy of History Lectures on the Philosophy of Religion Lectures on the History of Philosophy Lectures on Aesthetics
Schools of thought Absolute idealism British idealism German idealism Old (Right) Hegelians Young (Left) Hegelians British idealism Frankfurt School Italian idealism Pragmatism St. Louis Hegelians
People Founder Hegel Old Hegelians Daub Marheineke Rosenkranz Young Hegelians Bauer Feuerbach Marx Stirner Strauss British Idealists Bosanquet Bradley Green McTaggart Italian Idealists Croce Gentile French Hegelians Hyppolite Kojève Wahl Frankfurt School Adorno Horkheimer Marcuse
Associations and societies Hegel-Archiv Hegel Society of America Hegel Society of Great Britain Internationale Hegel-Gesellschaft Internationale Hegel-Vereinigung
Academic journals Hegel Bulletin Hegel-Jahrbuch Hegel-Studien The Owl of Minerva Studia Hegeliana
Related topics The Absolute Existentialism Historicism Idealism Marxism Phenomenology Philosophy of history Post-structuralism Process philosophy Romanticism Teleology
Philosophy portal
v t e

Lectures on Aesthetics orLectures on Fine Art (German:Vorlesungen über die Ästhetik) is a compilation of notes from university lectures onaesthetics given byGeorg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel in Heidelberg in 1818 and in Berlin in 1820/21, 1823, 1826 and 1828/29. It was compiled in 1835 by his studentHeinrich Gustav Hotho, using Hegel's own hand-written notes and notes his students took during the lectures, but Hotho's work may render some of Hegel's thought more systematic than Hegel's initial presentation.

Hegel develops his account of art as a mode of absolute spirit that he calls "the beautiful ideal," which he defines most generally as

Now when truth in this its external existence [Dasein] is present to consciousness immediately, and with the concept remains immediately in unity with its external appearance, the Idea is not only true butbeautiful.Beauty is determined as the sensibleshining of the Idea.^[1]

This ideal is developed throughout theLectures in accordance to Hegel'sLogic:

1. The firstuniversal part is devoted to the concept of the artistic ideal.
2. The secondparticular part examines this ideal as it actualizes itself in three stages:
   1. Symbolic art, understood to encompass everything before Classical Greek art
   2. Classical art
   3. Romantic art, understood to emerge with the advent of Christianity on the world stage
3. The thirdsingular part concerns itself with an examination of each of the five major arts in ascending order of "inwardness":
   1. architecture
   2. sculpture
   3. painting
   4. music
   5. poetry

In these second two parts of theLectures, Hegel documents the development of art from the paradigmaticallysymbolic architecture to the paradigmatically classicalsculpture to theromantic arts of painting, music, andpoetry. At the time it was noted for the wealth of pictures included with it.

Contrary to once-common belief, Hegel nowhere declares art to be "dead." What he says, in a representative statement is, "For us art counts no longer as the highest mode in which truth procures existence for itself."^[3] He speaks frequently of its "dissolution" [Auflösung], not its end [Ende], despite Hotho's use of the latter for the heading of the final moment of the Romantic art form.

Lydia Moland^[4] states that understanding Hegel's theory of aesthetics presents a significant challenge with Hegel scholarship due to the nature of the surviving materials on aesthetics.^[4] Although Hegel lectured on art several times ,^[a] he died before he was able to publish the handbook that he intended to use to accompany the lectures. Apart from his treatment of the "Art Religion" in thePhenomenology of Spirit, he only published a brief section on art in theEncyclopedia.^[4]

After his death, one of his former Berlin students,Heinrich Gustav Hotho, gathered the lecture notes that Hegel had intended to adapt for publication and combined them with a significant number of student notes.^[4] While this work has been the standard text for almost 200 years,^[4] more recent studies byAnnemarie Gethmann-Siefert have shown that there is a significant amount of material in Hotho's text that is not represented in the student notes, and it is unclear how much of the material is originally based on manuscripts that have been lost.^[4] Additionally, the student notes show that Hegel's views on aesthetics evolved over time, while Hotho's text only presents a compiled, synthesized version of Hegel's thought.^[4]

A resolution of these interpretative challenges may come from the discovery in 2022 made by Hegel's biographerKlaus Vieweg. More than 4,000 pages of notes from Hegel's lectures atHeidelberg University have been discovered in the library of theArchdiocese of Munich and Freising. These notes mainly deal with aesthetics and were written byFriedrich Wilhelm Carové between 1816 and 1818. Vieweg argues that this material will help scholars resolve the issue relating to the authenticity of Hotho's transcriptions, which are so far the only source on Hegel's philosophy of art. These new notes are the only ones available dating back to Hegel's teaching period in Heidelberg and will be of use reconstructing the genesis of Hegelian thought on art and its relationship with religion and philosophy.^[6]

Hegel's Aesthetics is regarded by many as one of the greatest aesthetic theories to have been produced sinceAristotle.^[7] Hegel's thesis about the historical dissolution of art has been the subject of much scholarly debate and influenced such thinkers likeTheodor W. Adorno,Martin Heidegger,György Lukács,Jacques Derrida, andArthur Danto. Hegel was himself influenced byJohann Joachim Winckelmann,Immanuel Kant,Friedrich Schiller, andFriedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling. Heidegger calls Hegel'sLectures on Aesthetics "the most comprehensive reflection on the essence ofart that the West possesses".^[8]

• Vorlesung über Ästhetik. Berlin 1820/21. Eine Nachschrift, ed. H. Schneider. Frankfurt am Main: Peter Lang, 1995.
• Vorlesungen über die Philosophie der Kunst, ed. A. Gethmann-Siefert. Hamburg: Felix Meiner Verlag, 2003.
• Philosophie der Kunst oder Ästhetik. Nach Hegel. Im Sommer 1826. Mitschrift Friedrich Carl Hermann Victor von Kehler, eds. A. Gethmann-Siefert and B. Collenberg-Plotnikov. Munich: Wilhelm Fink Verlag, 2004.
• Philosophie der Kunst. Vorlesung von 1826, eds. A Gethmann-Siefert, J.-I. Kwon and K. Berr. Frankfurt am Main: Suhrkamp Verlag, 2004.

• Hegel, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich (1998).Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art. Translated by T.M. Knox. Clarendon Press, Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-823816-4. Retrieved4 December 2022.
• Hegel, G.W.F. (29 July 2004).Introductory Lectures on Aesthetics. Penguin UK.ISBN 978-0-14-191561-6. Retrieved9 April 2022.

• Houlgate, Stephen (ed.), 2007,Hegel and the Arts. Evanston, Ill.: Northwestern University Press.
• Desmond, William (1 January 1986).Art and the Absolute: A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics. SUNY Press.ISBN 978-0-88706-150-9. Retrieved9 April 2022.
• Houlgate, Stephen."Hegel's Aesthetics". InZalta, Edward N. (ed.).Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy.
• James, David (3 November 2011).Art, Myth and Society in Hegel's Aesthetics. A&C Black.ISBN 978-1-4411-6471-1. Retrieved9 April 2022.
• Moland, Lydia L. (15 May 2017)."Hegel's Philosophy of Art". In Moyar, Dean (ed.).The Oxford Handbook of Hegel. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-935523-5. Retrieved24 March 2022.
• Moland, Lydia L. (2019).Hegel's Aesthetics: The Art of Idealism. Oxford University Press.ISBN 978-0-19-084732-6. Retrieved9 April 2022.
• Peters, Julia (20 November 2014).Hegel on Beauty. Routledge.ISBN 978-1-317-63523-9. Retrieved9 April 2022.
• Rutter, Benjamin (29 July 2010).Hegel on the Modern Arts. Cambridge University Press.ISBN 978-1-139-48978-2.
• Robert Wicks (29 January 1993)."Hegel's aesthetics: An overview". In Beiser, Frederick C. (ed.).The Cambridge Companion to Hegel. Cambridge University Press.doi:10.1093/oxfordhb/9780199355228.013.26.ISBN 978-1-139-82495-8. Retrieved24 March 2022.

• Bungay, Stephen, 1984,Beauty and Truth. A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics. Oxford: Oxford University Press.
• Desmond, William, 1986,Art and the Absolute. A Study of Hegel's Aesthetics. Albany: SUNY Press.
• Geulen, Eva, 2006,The End of Art. Readings in a Rumor after Hegel, trans. J. McFarland. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
• Lukács, György, 2002,Hegel's Aesthetics, Graduate Faculty Philosophy Journal, vol. 23, Nr 2, 87-124.
• Maker, W. (ed.), 2000.Hegel and Aesthetics. New York.
• Pippin, Robert, 2009. "The Absence of Aesthetics in Hegel’s Aesthetics",The Cambridge Companion to Hegel and Nineteenth-Century Philosophy, New York[1].
• Roche, Mark-William, 1998.Tragedy and Comedy. A Systematic Study and a Critique of Hegel. Albany. New York.
• Rutter, Benjamin (2010),Hegel on the Modern Arts, Cambridge: Cambridge University Press
• Winfield, Richard Dien, 1995.Systematic Aesthetics. Gainesville, FL, University Press of Florida.
• Wyss, Beat, 1999,Hegel's Art History and the Critique of Modernity. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press.

• Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics web version ofSelections from Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics, byBernard Bosanquet & W.M. Bryant, "The Journal of Speculative Philosophy", 1886; published byMarxists Internet Archive
• [2] German text in .pdf format.

• 1835 documents
• Aesthetics literature
• Works by Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
• Books of lectures

• Articles with short description
• Short description is different from Wikidata
• Articles containing German-language text