Abstract

The aim of this paper is to challenge Fred Beiser’s interpretation of Hegel’s meta-aesthetical position on the future of art. According to Beiser, Hegel’s comments about the ‘pastness’ of art commit Hegel to viewing postromantic art as merely a form of individual self-expression. I both defend and extend to other territory Robert Pippin’s interpretation of Hegel as a proto-modernist, where such modernism involves (i) his rejection of both classicism and Kantian aesthetics, and (ii) his espousal of what one may call reflective aesthetics. By ‘reflective aesthetics’, I mean an aesthetic framework which sees art as a form of enquiry, one whose aim is to not merely excite the imagination but to principally focus attention on social and cultural norms. The meta-aesthetical consequences of reflective aesthetics and their Hegelian heritage have both an interpretive and philosophic value: under my account, Beiser’s reading of Hegel is challenged, and my interpretation of how Hegel envisaged the future of art offers a new and engaging way of understanding one of the most notorious claims in the philosophy of art, namely that art has ended.