The century after Hegel

pp. 46-68

in: Joseph Kockelmans, Heidegger on art and art works, Berlin, Springer, 1985

Abstract

After these long digressions, we can now again return to Heidegger's own essay, "Six Basic Developments in the History of Aesthetics".¹ In it Heidegger says that in the modern era art begins to lose its immediate relation to the basic task of presenting the absolute in the history of man. Thus concurrent with the foundation of aesthetics we see the decline of great art.