After the Avant-Gardes

gious forms of expression. It has also adapted, developed and refined
them for its own, aesthetic, purposes. In short, modern art is the form of
human self-expression and self-understanding. And this is precisely what
Schelling wants to articulate when he calls art the highest formof knowl-
edge.^35 Artistic forms of expressing human knowledge (including self-
knowledge) are superior to scientific or philosophical modes of
expression for the very reasons given above. Art does not suppress the
inevitable subjectivity and perspective of its knowledge-claims.^36 It is
therefore seen as a privileged mode of expressing human knowledge. One
might call this Schelling’s version of aesthetic cognitivism.^37

2.2 HEGEL’SRESPONSE TOKUNSTRELIGION

We might now be in a better position to understand the point of Hegel’s
thesis. It is easy to overlook that the passages from the end of the lecture
manuscript from 1823 quoted above echo a remark Hegel has already
made in the introduction:

[Poetry] is the general, the all-inclusive art, the one that has reached the

highest level of spiritualization (Vergeistigung).... On this highest level,

art reaches beyond itself and becomes prose, or thought.^38

In the Hotho edition, we read:

Thus art is limited in itself and leads to higher forms of consciousness. This

limitation also determines the place that we are used to giving art in our life

today. For us, art is not the highest form of the existence of truth any

longer.^39

And later in the same paragraph:

One can reasonably hope that art will forever rise and become ever more

perfect, but its form has ceased to be the highest need of spirit (Geist). May

we find the Greek sculptures of the Gods ever so well done and God the

father, Christ and Mary ever so full of dignity and so perfectly depicted—it

is of no help. We do not bend our knee any longer. (Hegel, Ästhetik, 142)

Surprisingly enough, Hegel is quite optimistic about the future of art
here. He explicitly rejects the claim which Danto takes him to endorse:
that the end of art will come soon. Instead, he speaks about the per-
fectibility of art. But in what sense does art belong to the past, never-
theless? In my reading, Hegel’s claim about the end of art is neither a

A Prophecy Come True? Dante and Hegel on the End of Art 65