Embodied meaning and art as sense-making: a critique of Beiser's interpretation of the “End of Art Thesis”
- Submitting institution
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Manchester Metropolitan University
- Unit of assessment
- 32 - Art and Design: History, Practice and Theory
- Output identifier
- 232991
- Type
- D - Journal article
- DOI
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10.3402/jac.v8.29934
- Title of journal
- Journal of Aesthetics & Culture
- Article number
- -
- First page
- 29934
- Volume
- 8
- Issue
- 1
- ISSN
- 2000-4214
- Open access status
- Out of scope for open access requirements
- Month of publication
- April
- Year of publication
- 2016
- URL
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https://e-space.mmu.ac.uk/620918/
- Supplementary information
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- Request cross-referral to
- -
- Output has been delayed by COVID-19
- No
- COVID-19 affected output statement
- -
- Forensic science
- No
- Criminology
- No
- Interdisciplinary
- No
- Number of additional authors
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0
- Research group(s)
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B - Art & Performance
- Proposed double-weighted
- No
- Reserve for an output with double weighting
- No
- Additional information
- This paper challenges Federick Beiser's influential and important interpretation of arguably Hegel's most notorious position in the philosophy of art. In this respect the scholarly stakes are high, since 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. The research draws on rigorous use of appropriate primary and secondary philosophical and art historical materials sources on a topic significant for Hegelian aesthetics and wider understandings of the meaning of art, with fullsome footnotes. This paper defends and extends to other territory specifically Robert Pippin’s helpful 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 is termed in the paper 'reflective aesthetics'. Reflective aesthetics implies 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. Using the conceptual resources and methodologies of both Anglo-American analytic philosophy as well as Continental European philosophy, the paper argues that the meta-aesthetical consequences of reflective aesthetics and their Hegelian heritage have both significant interpretive and philosophic value – under this account, Beiser’s reading of Hegel is challenged, and the 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.
- Author contribution statement
- -
- Non-English
- No
- English abstract
- -