Abstract

I argue in defence of the view that Hegel's aesthetics does not imply that art is "dead" in the modern age, but only that art, since Hegel's own time, has had to be philosophical since it can no longer be religious. Art, according to Hegel, has already died twice. It died for the first time along with the gods it had created. It died a second time along with the God it had served. It is only in and through its second death that art liberates itself from religion and becomes art-proper. ;I am also specifically interested in the application of Hegel's theory of the epic and the novel to the post-Hegelian novel. The romantic novel, Hegel says, has replaced epic proper in the modern world. In the final chapter, I put Hegel's theory to the test by examining some examples of novels from Hegel's time as well as our own. Thomas Mann's Joseph and His Brothers, I argue, is more epical than Hegel says the modern novel can be. I also claim that Joseph and His Brothers is a philosophical work of art