indirect. But, as Hegel and Schelling claim in unison, if there were no
relation between art and religion at all, the very possibility of art would
be unintelligible. Thus, there is a sense in which art presupposes reli-
gion. It is a way of “representingthe godly,” after an image that is
already given. The religious power of art has to do with the forming
activity that art consists in and that opens up the possibility of trans-
forming religious images. Still religion is the kind of spiritual frame-
work which makes artistic content possible. When Hegel says that art
has an end, he invites us to explore precisely those limitations of art that
Schelling ignores.
If we take another look at the above quotations from the different lec-
tures on aesthetics we will find that Hegel wants to have it both ways in
each of them. He wants to attack both Schlegel and Schelling with one
double-edged argument that can be offered in short thus: Art is limited
in a logical sense because it presupposes religion. Nor can art be the
highest form of knowledge because philosophy is in that position
already. And philosophy cannot be a part of religion. Thus all hopes for
a new Kunstreligionare illusory.
One might accept the argument in its temporal, historical, anti-
Schlegel reading and still wonder if the point of Schelling’s claim is also
met. Schelling claims that art is the highest form of knowledge because
it makes the implicit perspective of any knowledge claim explicit,
whereas neither philosophy nor science can do so. And Hegel accepts
that every knowledge claim is subjective in this sense. He reminds us
again and again that we gain objective, invariant knowledge only
through all kinds of triangulations and transformations of perspectives,
that is, only through inter-subjectivity, and that a neutral ‘view from
nowhere’ is not accessible except through relating our different ‘views
from somewhere’.^47 We do this, for example, when we make sure that
we look at the sameobject from different points of view. We do this also
when we describe different traits or capacities of the sameperson. If
Hegel accepts and even stresses this point, and if he admits that philos-
ophy cannot make subjectivity explicit, how can he consistently claim
that philosophy is the highest form of knowledge? And further, if he
agrees that art is explicitly subjective, how can he consistently deny that
art is the highest form of knowledge?
Hegel might respond along the following lines: Art cannot be the
highest form of knowledge because knowledge is propositional and
assertible. But art does not make assertions, at least not immediately. It
is not explicitly conceptual but rather anschaulich, i.e. it presents or rep-
resents objects, ideals, views or perspectives. The problem of articulat-68 Henning Tegtmeyer