doctrine nor a prediction but a double-edged ad hominemargument. It
is double-edged because the argument has a temporal(or historical) and
a logical(or conceptual) meaning. Hegel makes use of this argument
against both Schlegel and Schelling. In its temporal reading, the argu-
ment turns against Schlegel’s project of a new mythology. In its logical
reading, the argument turns against Schelling’s claim that art is the high-
est form of human knowledge.
Hegel’s rather sober reflections on the place of art in modern life are
directed against Schlegel’s idea of a modern Kunstreligion. Schlegel
thought that modern times are in need of a new mythology that unifies
all elements of modern knowledge into one coherent whole, and that
modern art should create such a new mythology. Against this, Hegel
insists that any new mythology can play this role only when it becomes
accepted. One cannot simply impose a new mythology or a new religion
upon a group of human beings. They have to adopt it themselves. And,
for Hegel, art simply does not have the power to convert people into
believers anymore. We moderns simply “do not bend our knee any
longer” before any masterpiece whatsoever. The times when artworks
enjoyed religious adoration are past. In Hegel’s view, the only perfect
instance of a Kunstreligionis the ancient Greek and Roman religion,
with Homer and Hesiod as the fathers of mythology and with artists like
Phidias as creators of the visible gods themselves, that is, of the sacred
sculptures that were adored and prayed to in the temples. Hegel calls this
the classical‘form’ or period of art in the second, ‘special’ part of his
Lectures.
Things change in the ‘romantic’ period, i.e. in medieval and modern
art, and that change is due to Christian religion.^40 One important theo-
logical lesson for art is that God as a visible person, as Christ, has died.
Therefore, we are told by Christian theology, it is allowed to represent
God the Son in art, as long as we keep in mind that the artworks are just
representations of God and not God himself. From this it follows that
artworks cannot be objects of immediate religious adoration in ‘roman-
tic’ art. For Hegel, there is no fundamental break between medieval and
modern art in this respect. Modern culture simply holds no place for
Kunstreligion. Schlegel’s idea of a new mythology therefore rests on an
illusion.^41 So, the kind of art that ‘has come to an end’, that is ‘past and
gone’, is rather Schlegel’s own conception of art as a basis for a modern,
progressive universal religion.
Hegel is ironic in a rather subtle way here. He never mentions
Schlegel explicitly in the relevant passages. He attacks him head on in a
different context, though.^42 But it is not necessary to mention names66 Henning Tegtmeyer