From December 16-18, 2013 an Italian-German workshop, “Da Hegel ad oggi. Sviluppi della riflessione estetica tedesca e italiana dopo la morte dell’arte. / Von Hegel bis heute. Entwicklung der deutschen und italienischen Ästhetik nach dem Ende der Kunst,“ was held in Rome (see our previous post – link). Prominent philosophers and young researchers participated in the workshop and delivered talks mainly focused on the end of art and its developments after Hegel.

All contributions will be collected in a volume that will be published in German by Wilhelm Fink Verlag and in Italian by a publisher, yet to be determined.

We are pleased to host the abstracts of some of the conference talks on our website.

We continue the series with the abstract of a young researcher, M. A. Suzanne Dürr, “Philosophie als das Ende der Kunst? Das Verhältnis von Kunst und Philosophie bei Hegel und Danto”.

Previous entries:

I – Erzsébet Rózsa, “Vom Ideal der Schönheit zum Prinzip der Freiheit. Einige systematische Überlegungen Hegels über das Ende der  Kunst als ihren „neuen Anfang“”

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Suzanne Dürr

     Philosophie als das Ende der Kunst? Das Verhältnis von Kunst und Philosophie bei Hegel und Danto

Abstract:

The concept of ‘end’ in the talk of ‘the end of art’ has two meanings: on the one hand it means the achievement of a final result, on the other it implies finitude – the death or dissolution of something out of which something new might begin. In relation to the thesis of the end of art this constructive-destructive double meaning of the term ‘end’ raises two fundamental questions. Firstly, to what extent can the end of art be understood as art’s completion, i.e. as the highest stage of art? Secondly, what comes after the end of art, i.e. what is art transformed into? One possible answer to the second question is that art is transformed into philosophy. This idea is to be found in Hegel and in more recent times, recalling Hegel, in the work of the recently deceased art critic and philosopher Arthur C. Danto.

This paper is divided into four parts: whilst the first part deals with Hegel’s understanding of the relation between art and philosophy, where in particular it is necessary to explore the transition from poetry to philosophy and the significance of the philosophy of art for modern art, the second part deals with Danto’s definition of this relationship. According to Danto, the thesis of the end of art finds its confirmation in artworks which are indistinguishable from objects in the real world, for example Marcel Duchamp’s ‘Ready-Mades’ or the Pop Art of Andy Warhol, artworks which, by posing the question of the very definition of art, turn into theories of themselves and thereby into philosophy. In the third part, a comparison of Hegel’s and Danto’s positions is then pursued, where it is shown that Danto, in contrast to Hegel, gives a different interpretation of the relation of art to philosophy, as well as providing a different grounding to this relation. In the fourth part, Hegel’s and Danto’s positions are then critically examined, in order finally to demonstrate the need for a new definition of the relation between art and philosophy.

The central thesis of the paper is that modern art, by virtue of its self-reflexive character, presents a new form of art, one that explodes the triadic structure of Hegelian Absolute Spirit. The relation between art and philosophy is thus to be explained via the model of a doubled ‘end’, where the concept of end is in turn to be understood in the sense of a boundary that functions as a starting point as well as a point of differentiation.

Bibliography
Danto, Arthur C.: The Philosophical Disenfranchisement of Art, New York 1986.
Danto, Arthur C.: After the End of Art: Contemporary Art and the Pale of History, Princeton 1997.

Suzanne Dürr (suzanne_duerr@web.de): studied Philosophy, German Linguistics and Media Science in Jena; 2009: Master of Arts; 2010 – 2011: Coordinator of the German-Italian study course “Deutscher Idealismus und moderne europäische Philosophie”; since 2011: Doctoral Student, thesis on “Theorie des Selbstbewusstseins bei Fichte und Hegel”; since 2013: Assistant Lecturer at Friedrich-Schiller-Universität Jena. Publications: Reflexion und Produktion. Zur Bestimmung des absoluten Ich in Fichtes Grundlage der gesammten Wissenschaftslehre von 1794/95, in Die Aktualität der Romantik, eds. Michael Forster and Klaus Vieweg (Berlin 2012); Spiegel und Auge. Zur Bildung des Bewusstseins in Fichtes Wissenschaftslehre nova methodo, in Freiheit und Bildung bei Hegel, eds. Andreas Braune et al. (Würzburg 2013).