Abstract

Bungay sets the tone of his study of Hegel’s aesthetics with these prefatory remarks: “Hegel is a good example of one of those Germans who dives deeper into murkier waters than the rest of us, and who not surprisingly comes up muddier. Perhaps a suitable role for an English sceptic is washing off the mud and polishing some of the nuggets he finds underneath. It is for the reader to judge whether or not the glitter is that of gold”. Hegel is different from the rest of us, Bungay suggests, because of his speculative depth and hermeneutic ambitions; that is, he belongs to a different tradition than “we” do. Bungay explicitly dissociates his own approach further from that tradition by explaining that the job of the “English sceptic” is to provide a number of crisp and limited formulations of Hegelian arguments and interpretations. Above all, these “nuggets” must be compact and isolable from one another; they must lend themselves to analytical examination. It is good to have such a forthright statement of purpose and method, especially when these differ so much from Hegel’s. But it should not be assumed that this book is nothing more than an analytical dissolution of Hegel. Originally an Oxford thesis in modern languages and literatures, it brings a wide ranging knowledge to bear on its subject; Bungay makes judicious use of his familiarity with the philosophical literature on Hegel and demonstrates an impressive knowledge of many of the specific art works that Hegel discusses in the course of his Lectures on Aesthetics. This may be the only book on Hegel’s aesthetics in English that deploys such an array of philosophical, philological, and artistic learning.