British Journal for the History of Philosophy

ISSN: 0960-8788 (Print) 1469-3526 (Online) Journal homepage: http://www.tandfonline.com/loi/rbjh20

Hegel on the Modern Arts

Stephen Houlgate
To cite this article: Stephen Houlgate (2013) Hegel on the Modern Arts, British Journal for the
History of Philosophy, 21:5, 1009-1015, DOI: 10.1080/09608788.2013.821402
To link to this article: http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2013.821402

Published online: 24 Sep 2013.

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Benjamin Rutter: Hegel on the Modern Arts. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2010, pp. xiii, 282. 56.00 (hb). ISBN 9780521114011.
G. W. F. Hegel is one of the most signicant philosophers of art and aesthetics in the Western tradition. Perhaps his most well-known claim is that
art comes to a kind of end in the modern age, that is, in the late eighteenth
and early nineteenth centuries. This does not mean that, for Hegel, art will no
longer be produced after his death, or that we will have no further need for it,
but rather that it will no longer full its highest vocation (Hegel, Aesthetics.
Lectures on Fine Art, translated and edited by T. M. Knox, 2 vols., Oxford:
Clarendon Press, 1975, vol. 1, 11). Art fullled that vocation in ancient
Greece, where it gave perfect embodiment above all in sculpture to the
gods. In Greece, art was thus an integral and indispensable element of religious life. In the modern age, by contrast, religion has gained its autonomy
from art, and both are eclipsed by philosophy, in which truth nds its clearest
and most adequate expression. Art ceases, therefore, to be the best
expression of truth, and in this specic sense it may be said to come to an
end. Certain commentators, however, have taken Hegel to make a much
stronger claim: namely that art in modernity no longer has any real signicance for us. According to Dieter Henrich, for example, the consistency
of Hegels system requires that modern art no longer be the expression of
truth at all, even if Hegel did not himself have the courage to condemn
all the artistic production of his time as the decaying remnants of art
itself (Henrich, The Contemporary Relevance of Hegels Aesthetics, in
Hegel, edited by M. Inwood, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985,
200201). A similar view is put forward by Arthur Danto, for whom
Hegel sees modern art as a mere luxury that we can certainly enjoy but
also dispense with (Danto, Unnatural Wonders: Essays from the Gap
between Art and Life, New York: Columbia University Press, 2005, 11).
In his hugely impressive book, Hegel on the Modern Arts, Benjamin
Rutter challenges Henrichs claim that Hegel has or, if he is consistent,
should have a pessimistic view of arts future, and he argues instead
that Hegel attributes an important, distinctive and, indeed, necessary role
to modern art. Far from being redundant or a mere luxury, art, from
Hegels perspective, is an indispensable element of modern life. Its role,
however, is no longer to give sensuous expression to the divine, but rather
to enable us to enjoy a certain freedom, and to feel at home, in the specic
circumstances of modernity.
Rutter provides a powerful, detailed and lucidly argued defence of his
interpretation of Hegel and his book is without doubt the most important
study of Hegels conception of modern art published to date. It is also one
of the best books on Hegels aesthetics altogether, offering illuminating
insights not only into Hegels understanding of modern art, but also into
his conceptions of art as such, of the so-called art-forms (symbolic,

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classical and romantic), and of the system of the arts themselves. Along the
way, Rutter develops original and perceptive interpretations of (Hegels
views on) Dutch painting, lyric poetry and virtuosity in art, and he combines,
in an exemplary manner, a subtle attention to philosophical distinctions with
an equally subtle attention to specic works of art. Indeed, one of the many
highlights of this ne book is the close analysis Rutter gives of two poems
from Goethes West-stlicher Divan, a work that Hegel saw as a model
for what he calls objective humour.
In Chapter 1, Rutter rst criticizes Henrich for basing his pessimistic
reading of Hegel on a distinctly un-Hegelian conception of the relationship
between the content and the form [ ] of a work of art (10). In Rutters
view (which actually goes somewhat beyond what Henrich says in his
essay), Henrichs Hegel deems modern art to be redundant because it
merely reiterates, accessibly and with local inection, a body of speculative
propositions expressed with greater clarity and rigor by the philosophers.
Rutter points out, however, that art is redundant, only if it and philosophy
aim to express the very same content: for in this case, since philosophy
expresses that content with greater clarity, there is nothing further for art
to do. According to Rutters Hegel, by contrast, the interaction of content
and artistic form in a work of art produces a picture of, say, freedom that
is necessarily distinct from that delivered by philosophy (11). The
content expressed in art and philosophy is thus never simply the same,
and so there is always a distinctive role for art to play.
Rutter goes on to argue that art, for Hegel, not only illuminates modern
freedom and the modern world in ways that differ from those of philosophy,
but also reaches parts of that world that philosophy cannot reach. More
specically, artworks attend to dimensions of modern life whose inherent
contingency has left them unsuited to the more abstract treatments of philosophers, and which require a kind of animation that only art can provide
(61, my emphasis). This idea provides the key to Rutters interpretation
of Hegel on modern art. One can, of course, argue (as I have done), that
art remains indispensable in modernity simply because we are sensuous
beings who will always need to see the truth expressed in a sensuous, imaginative, as well as a reective, form. Rutter argues, however, that art
remains indispensable for reasons that have to do more with the specic circumstances of modernity itself. The modern world, for Hegel that is, the
world of the modern state and civil society is structured by laws and institutions that guarantee certain fundamental freedoms, such as those of property, action and choice of occupation. At the same time, Rutter points out,
the complexity of modern society entangles us in relations of above all,
economic interdependence that prevent us from enjoying the independence and self-sufciency of a hero or a saint (90). Though our lives are
protected by the laws and institutions of freedom, our daily lives at
work and at home are enmeshed in the prose of life (90) that brings
with it a whole array of disappointments (41). It is, Rutter writes, to

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these disappointments of daily life work, love, the existence of the poor
that the most important modern artworks turn their attention. In particular,
he continues

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Hegel is interested in art as a way of repairing rather than rejecting those disappointments, of engaging with and nding vitality in those realms of life
most likely to seem dead the contingencies of the market, the contingencies
of love, the impossibility of heroism, the banality of daily tasks.
(41)

Art is thus indispensable in modernity, for Rutters Hegel, not just because
we need to see the truth given visual or imaginative expression, but because
the prose of daily life needs to be reanimated and redeemed in a way that
only art in contrast to the abstractions of philosophy (41) can
achieve. One might object that Rutter understates the role that religion continues to play, in Hegels view, in redeeming and revitalizing modern daily
life; but he is surely correct that Hegel also requires art to bring to mind the
often overlooked vitality of everyday life.
Along with other commentators Rutter recognizes that, for Hegel, the
content of modern art is no longer restricted to the Greek hero, the mediaeval
saint, or the Shakespearean tragic character, but encompasses the depths and
heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its [] strivings, deeds, and
fates (44; see Hegel, Aesthetics, 607). In other words, modern art makes
what Hegel (following Goethe) calls Humanus into its new saint.
Rutter insists, however, that Hegel was also concerned, especially after
1823, to nd an adequate form for modern art (49, my emphasis). The
problem confronting Hegel, we are told, is that Humanus the content
that simply comprises shared human concerns can be treated in a
manner that is quite barren. This occurs, for example, in what Rutter
describes as the drab realism of bourgeois drama (49). As we saw above,
however, the distinctive role of modern art is to bring out the vitality in,
and in that sense redeem, daily life (41). The appropriate form for modern
art must, therefore, be one that imbues Humanus with precisely this vitality
and freedom of spirit. This form is to be found, Rutter maintains, in what
Hegel names objective humour, or what Rutter himself calls the poetry
of reconciliation (49).
Hegel has little to say about objective humour in his lectures on aesthetics. Rutter thus endeavours to shed further light on this crucial idea by
examining Hegels discussion of three other phenomena that contain the
seeds of such humour. These are Dutch painting of the seventeenth
century, virtuosity and lyric poetry. Rutters analyses of these phenomena
which make up the core of his book are rich and illuminating and
contain much that is highly original. His analysis of Dutch painting is original because it pays such close attention to the precise way in which, for
Hegel, the Dutch artist confers vitality on to prosaic objects and situations.

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The artist does so, Rutter contends, partly by depicting people who are
absorbed in their daily tasks, but also and more importantly by absorbing
himself in their lives (97). The Dutch painter does not stand back from the
scene he is depicting and simply indulge his own talents, but through the
careful use of colour or his distinctive brushwork he devotes himself to
and immerses himself in the scene before him; and by giving it his all in
this way, the painter performs a sort of attentiveness and interest that
suggests it may deserve our own attention in ways we had not expected
(98). The triviality or, indeed, banality of the scene is thus enlivened for
us by the attention devoted to it by the artist.
Such life-giving attention itself requires from the painter a certain
freedom and self-reexive virtuosity, or display of skill (99). Rutters
next chapter thus examines virtuosity itself, not only in painting but also
in literature and poetry. He claims that Hegel distinguishes three different
kinds of virtuosity. Negative virtuosity consists in the boldness of, say, a
metaphorical style that frees the artist from the dominance of prose
(1689). Positive virtuosity, by contrast, involves not so much a freedomfrom, but rather a freedom-in, specically the freedom of being-at-home
in a medium. Such positive virtuosity, we are told, is exhibited by the
painter at one with his brush or the musician at one with his instrument.
Both negative and positive virtuosity can, however, be purely formal qualities of the artists performance and can leave the content of his art what
he is depicting or playing unaffected: as Rutter writes, one can play a tasteless composition virtuosically (169). Artistic virtuosity, by contrast, is
encountered when the skill of the artist is able to travel, as it were, from
the artist to the object, and thereby to animate or enliven the materials of
the everyday with the subjective Lebendigkeit of the painters use of color
and brushwork or the poets imagistic play (169). Not only Dutch painters,
but also great poets, such as Homer, Shakespeare and Goethe, are masters of
such artistic virtuosity; and one of Rutters most original discussions concerns the virtuosic employment of what Hegel calls the simile (Gleichnis)
in order to enliven a subject. A Hegelian simile, Rutter explains, consists not
just in a simple comparison this is like that but rather in a string of
superuous imagery or comparisons that cause the reader to linger over
the object concerned (165). In this way, the use of similes by the poet has
the same effect as the painters absorption in his object or situation: it enlivens the object by focussing our attention on it and so making it more interesting to us. As Rutter puts it, the superuous labors of the simile turn out to
yield a sort of creative attention to the object, a donation of signicance, that
lifts it into view and beguiles both poet and reader into caring about it (166).
I suspect that there is more to the liveliness, or dynamic self-sufciency
of a person depicted or described in art than his or her absorption in an
activity (925): there is also the freedom displayed in the posture, or the
eyes, or the imagination of the person concerned. Rutter is to be commended,
however, for directing our attention to the way in which the artists

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absorption in his subject-matter enlivens the latter and for showing in such
arresting detail precisely how the artists virtuosity serves to express, and
to draw us into, such absorption.
After examining virtuosity in art, Rutter turns his attention to what he
describes as the preeminent modern art, namely the lyric (171). This is
the art in which the intensely personal subjectivity of the modern age is
able, on the one hand, to express itself and so to bring clarity to its own
desires, and, on the other hand, to nd itself in the world that surrounds it
and so to redeem the contingency of that world. The lyric enables the poet
to do the latter because, in contrast to the epic, which simply gives us a
world, in the lyric the world is a sort of prop, an occasion for the poet to
demonstrate the versatility and coherence of his own persona (199). In
the lyric, therefore, the world of prose no longer entangles the individual
in its complex interdependencies, but it appears, momentarily, as one in
which we could nd ourselves at home (200). Rutters chapter on Hegels
account of the lyric is, to my knowledge, the most extensive in English
and contains a wealth of insights not only into Hegels thought, but also
into the poetry of Petrarch and Shakespeare.
With his discussions of Dutch painting, virtuosity and the lyric behind
him, Rutter nally turns his attention to objective humour, which, in his
view, is the form that Hegel identies as appropriate for the distinctively
modern art that has Humanus as its content. Objective humour is distinguished by Rutter and Hegel from the in Hegels view, anarchically
self-indulgent subjective humour of the ironic novelist, Jean Paul
Richter. Whereas Jean Paul retreats into a negative virtuosity of style that
simply subverts the norms of the prosaic world, objective humour deploys
its virtuosity in order to reconcile us to that world: it both animates that
world and shows that the subject can enjoy freedom of spirit in that world.
As Hegel puts it in his 1828 lectures, objective humour shapes the object
cheerfully and with spirited imagination, moves freely (though not capriciously) within it (230, my emphasis). Its sense of being at home in the
world thereby provides an antidote to the German inwardness (231) that
grounds not only Jean Pauls subjective irony but also the Romantic yearning of Novalis (41). The supreme example of such objective humour, Rutter
argues, is to be found in Goethes collection of poems, the West-stlicher
Divan; and, as noted above, Rutter provides subtle readings of two poems
from that collection that put welcome esh on Hegels all too sketchy idea
of objective humour.
Rutter ends his book by insisting once again, contra Henrich, that art, for
Hegel, is indispensable to modernity, and that the model for modern art is
provided by the objective humour of Goethes Persian-inspired poetry. Furthermore, Rutter indicates that that model is not restricted to such poetry, but
might also be encountered in some of the great novels written after Hegels
death. He laments the fact that Hegel himself saw so little promise in the
novel; yet he suggests that the spirit of objective humour might be

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encountered in Joyce, and that the idea that the metamorphosis of an ordinary object into a thing of the imagination is the poets task and the secret of
his joy seems vaguely Proustian (266).
Rutters book is a signicant and impressive contribution to our understanding of Hegels aesthetics and, especially, his conception of modern
art. Rutters imaginative and insightful discussion of the idea of objective
humour is particularly welcome. This is not to say, however, that his book
is beyond criticism, at least from my point of view. First, I remain unconvinced by Rutters claim that Hegels conception of art leaves room for
abstraction in painting (11617). Indeed, it is not clear to me how, on
Rutters own criteria, painting can both enliven the contingencies of everyday life and be abstract. Second, although Rutters judgement in this book is
almost always sound, there is one notable exception: his claim that Hegel is a
racialist thinker is left unexplained and unsupported and should probably
have been omitted (214). Third, Rutter is very good on the way in which
in comedy and what Hegel calls true humour (found, for example, in the
novels of Laurence Sterne) everything can be forgiven (222, 226), but
he does not distinguish such true humour as clearly as I would do from
the objective humour of Goethe. The difference between the two is not
just that the rst causes laughter whereas the latter does not. It is rather
that true humour revives the spirit of Aristophanes, in which we enjoy a profound inner freedom from our foibles, whereas objective humour affords the
poet and us a sense of freedom in the world of nitude itself. Rutter is sensitive to this conceptual distinction but he appears to conate the two kinds
of humour (2389). It is to be noted, too, that he draws no parallel between
forgiveness in comedy and in religion, though of course comedy provides the
point of logical transition in Hegels system from art to religion. (In defence
of Rutters unication of true and objective humour into one phenomenon, it
should be pointed out that in his 1828 lectures Hegel himself speaks of true,
objective humor (230).)
My fourth and nal criticism is one that will come as no surprise to Rutter
(since he anticipates it in his book [see 46]). Rutter acknowledges, with other
commentators, that the content of modern art, for Hegel, is Humanus, or
whatever can be living [lebendig] in the human breast (44; Hegel, Aesthetics, 607). He insists, however, that Hegel was also concerned to nd
an adequate form for modern art and that he came to identify objective
humour as that form (49, my emphasis). As I have indicated, Rutter provides
an excellent and highly illuminating account of objective humour and of the
way in which it is pregured in, for example, Dutch painting. There are,
however, two problems with his claim that objective humour is the appropriate form for the modern art of Humanus. First, Hegel strongly suggests that
such modern art has no distinctive form of its own: the artist now stands
above specic consecrated forms and congurations [Formen und Gestaltungen] and moves freely on his own account (Aesthetics, 605). Second,
Hegel explicitly declares objective humour to be a transitional form

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(bergangsform) that stands between romantic art and the modern art of
Humanus (Aesthetics, 608). It seems to me, therefore, that, strictly speaking,
Rutters book is more about Hegels account of the prelude to modern art
than about his account of modern art as such. Yet this is not to diminish
Rutters achievement: for he has done more to shed light on Hegels conception of objective humour than any previous commentator. Furthermore,
in the process he has written one of the very best books in any language
on Hegels aesthetics.
Stephen Houlgate
University of Warwick
2013, Stephen Houlgate
http://dx.doi.org/10.1080/09608788.2013.821402

John McCumber: Time and Philosophy: A History of Continental Thought.

Durham: Acumen Publishing Ltd, 2011, pp. x + 414. 19.99 (pb). ISBN 9781-844-65276-1.
McCumbers Time and Philosophy has three main aims. First, the book aims
to provide an introduction to continental philosophy for students approaching it for the rst time. McCumber sets about achieving this aim by providing
readings of key continental philosophers based around one or two of their
most inuential texts, together with further reading for each philosopher.
Second, McCumber aims to show that continental philosophy involves a
unied project. In doing so, he takes an engagement with time to be what
distinguishes continental philosophy from what he calls traditional philosophy. Finally, McCumber aims to justify the value of the continental tradition, showing that the focus on time allows it to escape from certain
aporias haunting the attempt to relate atemporal categories to a world of
becoming. The book is organized around three strands: Germany, 1790
1890, Germany and America, 190068, and France, 19452004, along
with a shorter concluding section dealing with contemporary continental
philosophy. Each strand presents the development of continental philosophy
as a reaction to a traditional non-continental philosopher: Kant, Husserl,
and Sartre. Any attempt to provide an introduction to a tradition as broad
as continental philosophy involves trade-offs, but McCumber balances
well the demand of breadth of coverage with the demand to show the complexity and sophistication of individual philosophers, and those covered certainly provide a defensible selection of gures.
At the heart of the book is the claim that continental philosophy does form
a philosophically unied tradition. This claim is one that, as McCumber
recognizes, one might take issue with. As well as readings which reject
any unity to the discipline, there are others that assign the unity to sociological grounds, namely the rejection of a group of philosophers by gures in the