Kant vs. Hegel Essay Example for Free

Kant vs. Hegel EssayHegels concept of the exacting Idea claims that there is a universal and ideal received that is continuously being revealed throughout history, in various forms of tender-hearted expression. The Absolute Idea can be interpreted as God, nature, spirit, or reality. With art, there is no such thing as device for Arts sake because art is a manifestation of the unfolding of the Absolute Idea. In Hegels Art History, the progression of art is always moving closer to ultimate reality, because spiritual realization is teleological. The Absolute is fully realized when form and content are harmonious and concrete in their depiction of spirit and man. Beauty is dependent upon these things.For Hegel, the classical period is characterized by the depiction of ideal beauty in the perfect human body in ancient Greek sculpture. However, the concreteness of the human body is later seen as limited for not representing spirit and imagination in a more abstract form. Therefo re, Hegels ideal of beauty is ever changing according to Arts development in history, and his terms. In other words, Hegel calls the shots. In demarcation line to Hegel, Kants philosophy of art was a deliberate attempt to remove personal subjectivity. Like Hegel, Kant did believe there was a universal beauty, or Absolute of something, except Kant did not have any references to measure this by.For Kant, we can only come to know what is really beautiful when one has no agenda, concept, or comparability to measure the object with. From Kants perspective, Hegel is attached to all of these things, and therefore he can not really know beauty outside of his own perception. It is an transcendental inner knowing, versus a cognitive knowing. This is significantly different from Hegels ideal of beauty, since knowing what is really beautiful can never be answered concretely, but or else intuitively.