Art as the Absolute: Art's Relation to Metaphysics in Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer

by Paul Gordon

Overview

Art as the Absolute is a literary and philosophical investigation into the meaning of art and its claims to truth. Exploring in particular the writings of Kant and those who followed after, including Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, Schopenhauer, and Nietzsche, Paul Gordon contends that art solves the problem of how one can “know” the absolute in non-conceptual, non-discursive terms.

The idea of art's inherent relation to the absolute, first explicitly rendered by Kant, is examined in major works from 1790 to 1823. The first and last chapters, on Plato and Nietzsche respectively, deal with precursors and “post-cursors” of this idea. Gordon shows and seeks to reddress the lack of attention to this idea after Hegel, as well as in contemporary reassessments of this period. Art as the Absolute will be of interest to students and scholars studying aesthetics from both a literary and philosophical perspective.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781501308024
Publisher:	Bloomsbury Publishing
Publication date:	09/24/2015
Sold by:	Barnes & Noble
Format:	eBook
Pages:	208
File size:	327 KB

About the Author

Paul Gordon is Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He is the author of The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse (1995), Tragedy After Nietzsche: Rapturous Superabundance (2001), and Dial 'M' for Mother: A Freudian Hitchcock (2008).

Table of Contents

Preface Art as the Absolute: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and Schopenhauer
Introduction The Symposium on Art and the Absolute
1 Kant I: The Critique of Judgment
2 Kant II: The Critique of Teleological Judgment
3 Fichte: On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy
4 Schelling I: The System of Transcendental Idealism
5 Schelling II: The Philosophy of Art
6 Hegel: The Encycopedia and Lectures on Aesthetics
7 Schopenhauer: The World as Will and Representation
Appendix Nietzsche's Wrath: Nietzsche's Critique of the Kantian Absolute

Bibliography
Index

Editorial Reviews

German idealism, in the boldness of its textual and systematic design, in the innovative persistence of its investigations, and in its profound, multinational repercussions, has, over the past four decades, served contemporary critical theory as a primary 'scene of interpretation.' The critical community is in Paul Gordon's considerable debt for the fresh and conclusive update delivered by Art asthe Absolute on the constellation of concepts and constructs crystallizing around the Romantic figure of the artist, and on the liberties, privileges, and restrictions attending this complex and ambiguous figure. The theoretical acumen and erudition that Gordon had to derive in order to synthesize this study are prodigious; yet in its directness of approach and presentation, this current status-report is accessible to advanced scholars and motivated undergraduates alike. Gordon's fresh readings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, among others, will reside at the theoretical cutting-edge for some time to come.
Henry Sussman, Visiting Professor of Germanic Languages and Literatures, Yale University, USA, and author of Playful Intelligence and The Aesthetic Contract

From the Publisher

German idealism, in the boldness of its textual and systematic design, in the innovative persistence of its investigations, and in its profound, multinational repercussions, has, over the past four decades, served contemporary critical theory as a primary 'scene of interpretation.' The critical community is in Paul Gordon's considerable debt for the fresh and conclusive update delivered by Art asthe Absolute on the constellation of concepts and constructs crystallizing around the Romantic figure of the artist, and on the liberties, privileges, and restrictions attending this complex and ambiguous figure. The theoretical acumen and erudition that Gordon had to derive in order to synthesize this study are prodigious; yet in its directness of approach and presentation, this current status-report is accessible to advanced scholars and motivated undergraduates alike. Gordon's fresh readings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, among others, will reside at the theoretical cutting-edge for some time to come.

Henry Sussman