Abstract

“I am now convinced” wrote Hegel in 1796, “that the highest act of Reason, the one through which it encompasses all Ideas, is an aesthetic act, and that truth and goodness only become sisters in beauty - the philosopher must possess just as much aesthetic power as the poet.” The essentially Kantian inspiration of this dictum is evident, for it is the architectonic pattern of the three Critiques that dictates the structure of this program for a new beginning of speculation after Kant’s attack. The theory of “beauty” in the third Critique is to provide the bridge between “truth” in the first, and “goodness” in the second Critique.