He goes
on to say that the reason generally given for this is the prevalence of
material and political interests. But the true reason is the inferiority
in degree of art as compared with pure thought. Art is dead, and
Philosophy can therefore supply its complete biography.
Hegel's _Vorlesungen Ueber Aesthetik_ amounts therefore to a funeral
oration upon Art.
Romanticism and metaphysical idealism had placed art, sometimes above
the clouds, sometimes within them, and believing that it was no good
there to anyone, Hegel provided a decent burial.
Nothing perhaps better shows how well this fantastic conception of art
suited the spirit of the time, than the fact that even the adversaries
of Schelling, Solger, and Hegel either admit agreement with that
conception, or find themselves involuntarily in agreement with it, while
believing themselves to be very remote. They too are mystical
aestheticians.
We all know with what virulence Arthur Schopenhauer attacked and
combated Schelling, Hegel, and all the "charlatans" and "professors" who
had divided among them the inheritance of Kant.
Well, Schopenhauer's theory of art starts, just like Hegel's, from the
difference between the abstract and the concrete concept, which is the
_Idea_. Schopenhauer's ideas are the Platonic ideas, although in the
form which he gives to them, they have a nearer resemblance to the Ideas
of Schelling than to the Idea of Hegel.
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