The End of Art: Readings in a Rumor after Hegel - Softcover

Eva Geulen

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0804744246 ISBN 13: 9780804744249

Publisher: Stanford University Press, 2006

Synopsis

Since Hegel, the idea of an end of art has become a staple of aesthetic theory. This book analyzes its role and its rhetoric in Hegel, Nietzsche, Benjamin, Adorno, and Heidegger in order to account for the topic's enduring persistence. In addition to providing a general overview of the main thinkers of post-Idealist German aesthetics, the book explores the relationship between tradition and modernity. For despite the differences that distinguish one philosopher's end of art from another's, all authors treated here turn the end of art into an occasion to thematize and to reflect on the very thing that modernism cannot or should not be: tradition. As a discourse, the end of art is one of our modern traditions.

About this title

From the Back Cover:

"Geulen's book succeeds in bringing new significance, renewed continuity, and robust meaning to a large portion of this endlessly productive tradition."—xNotre Dame Philosophical Reviews
“Geulen's rich and rewarding inquiry into modern German aesthetics never loses sight of a single question: not “why is art at its end?” but rather “why is there a compulsion to say art has come to an end?” By seeking the genesis and structure of this compulsion, Geulen provides a major reassessment of the paradoxical tradition of aesthetic reflection that takes its point of departure from Hegel's difficult pronouncement that the age of great art has come to a close.” —Peter Fenves, Northwestern University

About the Author:

After having taught German for many years in the United States, most recently at New York University, Eva Geulen now teaches German at the University of Bonn, Germany. She is the author of German-language books on Adalbert Stifter (2002) and Giorgio Agamben (2005).

About this edition

• Publisher: Stanford University Press
• Publication date: 2006
• ISBN 10: 0804744246
• ISBN 13: 9780804744249
• Binding: Paperback
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 224