Abstract

One of the goals of examining Hegel's aesthetics, Stephen Bungay points out in his admirably lucid introduction to this topic, is to redeem aesthetics from what Roger Scruton has deemed its "continuing intellectual disaster." For Bungay, what is so compelling about Hegel's aesthetics in this regard is its attempt "to give the determination of beauty and of art in speculative terms," thereby restoring a concern for the philosophical in art, without diminishing the immediacy or "determinateness" of particular arts and artworks. The result: a panoramic depiction of art history as the self-realization of "the concept of art." It is to Bungay's credit that he does not reduce what is problematic in Hegel's project in order to reveal what is provocative.