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Hegel gave various lecture series on aesthetics or the philosophy of art, but never published a book of his own on this topic. His famous works on aesthetics were compiled from transcripts of lectures. This volume now presents one transcript complete in English for the first time, with extensive introductory material.
List of contents
- Preface
- Editorial Introduction
- 1: Background Issues
- 2: The Hotho Transcript in the German Edition
- 3: This English Edition
- Introduction: The Shape and Influence of Hegel's Aesthetics
- 1: The Contemporary Importance of Hegel's Aesthetics
- 2: The Sources for Hegel's Aesthetics
- 3: Hegel's Philosophy of Art as Reflected in Its Original Reception
- 4: 'Transcripts Are of Course Opaque Sources'
- The Hotho Transcript of the 1823 Berlin Lectures
- Introduction
- 1: Two Challenges to the Worthiness of Art for Philosophical Examination
- 2: The Specific Topic: The Philosophy of Art
- 3: Overview of the Topic and Its Treatment
- The General Part
- Introduction
- 1: The Beautiful as Such
- 2: Artistic Beauty as the Ideal
- 3: The Existence or Actualization of the Ideal
- 4: The General Art Forms
About the author
Robert F. Brown is Professor Emeritus of Philosophy at the University of Delaware.
Summary
Hegel gave lecture series on aesthetics or the philosophy of art in various university terms, but never published a book of his own on this topic. His student, H. G. Hotho, compiled auditors' transcripts from these separate lecture series and produced from them the three volumes on aesthetics in the standard edition of Hegel's collected works. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert has now published one of these transcripts, the Hotho transcript of the 1823 lecture series, and accompanied it with a very extensive introductory essay treating many issues pertinent to a proper understanding of Hegel's views on art. She persuasively argues that the evidence shows Hegel never finalized his views on the philosophy of art, but modified them in significant ways from one lecture series to the next. In addition, she makes the case that Hotho's compilation not only concealed this circumstance, by the harmony he created out of diverse source materials, but also imposed some of his own views on aesthetics, views that differ from Hegel's and that the ongoing interpretation of the aesthetics part of Hegel's philosophy has unfortunately taken to be Hegel's own.
This translation of the German volume, which contains the first publication of the Hotho transcript and Gethmann-Siefert's essay, makes these important materials accessible to the English reader, materials that should put the English-speaking world's future understanding and interpretation of Hegel's philosophy of art on a sounder footing.
Additional text
Oxford's decision to publish translations of editions of the transcripts is one for which English-language scholarship on Hegel can be grateful, and Robert F. Brown's long-term familiarity with translating Hegel's texts is helpful here.
