One would hope that myths about what Hegel did or did not claim would die, especially within the sphere of philosophy experts, but some myths die hard because the source of the belief is itself a myth, and as they somewhat say: what comes without reason tends to not leave with reason. Such is one of the many Hegel myths: the claim that Hegel declared that art was at its end, its development over, and its importance buried. But where exactly does Hegel claim this? If one looks for a quote one will not find it by virtue that such does not exist. There are, however, some passages which are of prime interest to a related question: Is art really all that important to us now, and if it is or isn’t, why and to what extent? If art is dead and over, what exactly could be dead about it?

Hegel says in the very early part of his Introduction to the Lectures on the Philosophy of Fine Art:

But while on the one hand we give this high position to art, it is on the other hand just as necessary to remember that neither in content nor in form is art the highest and absolute mode of bringing to our minds the true interests of the spirit. For precisely on account of its form, art is limited to a specific content. Only one sphere and stage of truth is capable of being represented in the element of art. In order to be a genuine content for art, such truth must in virtue of its own specific character be able to go forth into [the sphere of] sense and remain adequate to itself there. This is the case, for example, with the gods of Greece. On the other hand, there is a deeper comprehension of truth which is no longer so akin and friendly to sense as to be capable of appropriate adoption and expression in this medium. The Christian view of truth is of this kind, and, above all, the spirit of our world today, or, more particularly, of our religion and the development of our reason, appears as beyond the stage at which art is the supreme mode of our knowledge of the Absolute. The peculiar nature of artistic production and of works of art no longer fills our highest need. We have got beyond venerating works of art as divine and worshiping them. The impression they make is of a more reflective kind, and what they arouse in us needs a higher touchstone and a different test. Thought and reflection have spread their wings above fine art. . . . However all this may be, it is certainly the case that art no longer affords that satisfaction of spiritual needs which earlier ages and nations sought in it, and found in it alone, a satisfaction that, at least on the part of religion, was most intimately linked with art. The beautiful days of Greek art, like the golden age of the later Middle Ages, are gone.

It is a completely fabricated myth that Hegel claims art to be dead, but here he does make clear that art has met its logical and, therefore, empirical end in its essential limitation to sensuous appearance. In the realization of such an end, art no longer is the absolute self-comprehension of Spirit (self-conscious thinking society) and cedes to a higher realm of self-comprehension in religion and Science (Philosophy). We do not have a society geared toward aesthetic realization so much as a higher principle of self-determination and comprehension found in religion (representation or picture thinking) and philosophy (conceptual cognition). How do we comprehend our world today? Through a scientific materialism where we are no longer agents, only puppets of external forces which despite being called physical have in themselves no material or sensuous immediate reality; in certain parts of the world there remains a religious framework of belief in divine providence where what was laid down as revealed in antiquity is to be unquestioned law, and where all that is is truly a representation of divine immaterial realities or at least the hint of an ineffable divine mystery. Nowhere, however, do we find a society where the generally accepted highest meaning of reality is aesthetic. Perhaps the last emergence of such a spirit was with the Nazis and their vision of a society of Übermenschen who would make of the world whatever they pleased with no other reason than their personal aesthetic vision, and one should be glad they did not succeed (it is no coincidence that the politics of aestheticism is virtually always reactionary).



If Hegel has anything close to a thesis that art is dead, it is only this: art is no longer capable of satisfying the fundamental task it had to begin with—to show us Truth. The Truth of reality has shown itself to be something beyond the natural and sensuous, beyond even sensuous appearance freed from natural limits of arrangement, for the higher truths of consciousness and intellect cannot be grasped sensuously. According to Hegel, with the Christian (and this is not truly uniquely Christian) era the concept of God no longer was capable of being grasped sensuously, God no longer had a possible image or sound, nor is the world of intuitive emotion truly captured in painting, and finally the full reality of freedom cannot be captured in any work of art. In all these the comprehension which brings to us the knowledge of what we are is beyond any sensuous appearance because reality itself is more than sensuous appearance. Art, simply put, no longer can provide the mirror of our own reality, it can no longer suffice our needs for self-comprehension. For us as society art has now become but a moment, either as a mere instrument for something else (ethical, religious, or political instruction) or as a mere moment of personal development beyond which awaits the higher calling of the powers of the intellect which can more clearly grasp the nature of the world.

All major art movements past the Romantic era have strived to break from any entanglements with realism and become, strangely, either logocentric in attempting to present ideas which cannot truly be presented and thus the art piece only becomes a means toward reflection of one kind or another (there are art pieces that come accompanied by an explanatory essay, and critical art about art presents itself often enough), mimetic towards particular experiences which no art piece itself could truly match (giving us the always flawed simulation of reality like in Synecdoche, New York), or a jump into the incomprehensible and irrational presentation of primal forces in art works of pure aestheticism with no pretension towards any universally graspable meaning for anyone, not even the artist (furious or random brush strokes, blobs of paint, random performances etc.). Art has attempted again and again to overcome Beauty, yet in such attempts we only find the ever increasing alienation of what art originally did for us in sensuously showing the higher Truths of reality concerning the ultimate nature of the world. Even in Hegel’s time art had already become highly mediated by intellectual concepts where the appearance of any piece no longer could truly be grasped purely in its sensible appearing, but only with an eye towards its conceptual meaning. Who could possibly grasp the meaning of Shakespeare’s Hamlet in a merely sensuous, wordless, and conceptless presentation? Who could grasp Goethe’s Faust in such a way?

Consider for a moment how popular anything that does not include words is today. Few people listen to pure music, i.e. instrumental music. The mere vagueness of music, even in its moments of clarity, does not catch our attention anymore. We desire—we need—the words to fill out the void of meaning which pure sensuality has. Poetry’s beauty is not simply found in its pleasant structures or rhymes, but in the words which often speak directly to what itself cannot be made present to the senses. Dance is now rarely for its own sake, rarely even to be found with mere instrumental music, and almost entirely as a superfluous backdrop to a lyrical song if it has any presence at all. The beauty of Lord of the Rings or Dune is not to be found only in what it calls forth in our imagination, but in the beyond of the concepts which posit the goal and the final meaning of all events, concepts which are never graspable merely as what is in the imagination.

To finish, here is another famous quote near the end of the Introduction to Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics:

But if the perfect content has been perfectly revealed in artistic shapes, then the more far-seeing spirit rejects this objective manifestation and turns back into its inner self. This is the case in our own time. We may well hope that art will always rise higher and come to perfection, but the form of art has ceased to be the supreme need of the Spirit. No matter how excellent we find the statues of the Greek gods, no matter how we see God the Father, Christ, and Mary estimably and perfectly portrayed: it is of no help; we bow the knee no longer before these artistic portrayals.

We may indeed be in need of something far beyond art, i.e. we are in a historical and conscious position where no great work of art could ‘save the soul’ of our societies, but art is not dead. Hegel does not claim such, nor does he hope such. That art is not enough and no longer the proper medium to present our present plight and essential Truth only states that art and its beauty as such is not to be our answer any more than religion and faith is still an answer.

Art is not dead—art cannot be dead—for the simple reason that though its horizon is clearly determined, its internal development is without question not over, and may perhaps never be over with regards to its variety. In the monotony of any social age we will find the birth and rebirth of the impetus of art born in the visions of the artists. The infinite creativity of the imagination which is born of a source that is beyond the human will and understanding has never and will never be clamped down. Art shall also never cease to be important, for its mode is not something we can simply leave behind. Its connection to the feeling soul and the power to awaken intuitive self-reflection and ease our emotional burdens as well as elate our souls shall never end. A perfect intellect without aesthetic sensibility would truly be a lower being.

Immediately following Hegel, and even in Hegel’s time, the progression of technology brought to bear the new possibilities of photography whose truth was the birth of the possibility of the film, a theatrical play in which unprecedented control over perspective, space, and time is possible. Film is ultimately a purer appearance than theater could ever be, though certainly something else is lost. Painting pushed forth into ever more attempts to portray realities which although not fully possible to render succeeded in ways unforeseen. Music found an explosion of variety and freed itself from being handmaiden to poetry or to analogue instruments. Yet… though art continues to develop and indeed has risen ever higher in perfection with new ways to show things prior impossible (are video games capable of rising to being art? Will virtual reality be a new renaissance?) it simply has not had an effect on the comprehension of ourselves which it once had. Indeed, as society we no longer have our great myths or anthems to unite us in agreement of what matters, nor to guide us on our individual way. Aesthetic no longer provides the glue of community nor the glue of our self-comprehension.

Alas, Hegel is right: we can only hope that art will rise ever higher to perfection, but never again will it fully satisfy our need to come to grips with what and who we truly are. For that we can only look towards (rational) religion and philosophy. For us the beautiful works of the Greek poets, of the playwrights of the enlightenment and romantic era, of the novelists and musicians of modernity only have a lasting beauty insofar as these works rise above their own sensuous limit and hint ever more strongly at the suprasensuous reality which is forever to be their beyond, the reality of the Idea.