The dialectic of beauty and agency

Philosophy and Social Criticism 39 (1):79-98 (2013)
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Abstract

I present Hegel’s position that beauty and moral agency cannot be paired in any productive way, demonstrating this as a culminating claim of the sixth chapter of The Phenomenology of Spirit. In this, we learn that for Hegel, beauty claims an ambiguous position, always eviscerated yet never fully put to rest. This dialectical tension requires that we attend to the place of beauty as it appears in Hegel’s thoughts on morality and marks a departure from a long-standing tradition – exemplified in the work of such thinkers as Plato, Immanuel Kant, the ‘Beautiful Souls’ of 18th-century German Romanticism and Elaine Scary – that matches moral goodness with beauty.

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References found in this work

Sources of the self: the making of the modern identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press.
Sources of the Self: The Making of the Modern Identity.Charles Taylor - 1989 - Cambridge, Mass.: Cambridge University Press.
Speculum of the Other Woman.Luce Irigaray - 1985 - Cornell University Press.
Sources of the Self.Allen W. Wood - 1992 - Philosophical Review 101 (3):621.
On Beauty and Being Just.Elaine Scarry - 1999 - Princeton University Press.

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