Art as the Absolute

Paul Gordon is Professor of Comparative Literature and Humanities at the University of Colorado, Boulder, USA. He is the author of The Critical Double: Figurative Meaning in Aesthetic Discourse (1995), Tragedy After Nietzsche: Rapturous Superabundance (2001), and Dial ‘M’ for Mother: A Freudian Hitchcock (2008).

• Preface Art as the Absolute: Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel and SchopenhauerIntroduction The Symposium on Art and the Absolute1 Kant I: The Critique of Judgment2 Kant II: The Critique of Teleological Judgment3 Fichte: On the Spirit and the Letter in Philosophy4 Schelling I: The System of Transcendental Idealism5 Schelling II: The Philosophy of Art 6 Hegel: The Encycopedia and Lectures on Aesthetics7 Schopenhauer: The World as Will and RepresentationAppendix Nietzsche’s Wrath: Nietzsche’s Critique of the Kantian AbsoluteBibliography Index

German idealism, in the boldness of its textual and systematic design, in the innovative persistence of its investigations, and in its profound, multinational repercussions, has, over the past four decades, served contemporary critical theory as a primary 'scene of interpretation.' The critical community is in Paul Gordon's considerable debt for the fresh and conclusive update delivered by Art as the Absolute on the constellation of concepts and constructs crystallizing around the Romantic figure of the artist, and on the liberties, privileges, and restrictions attending this complex and ambiguous figure. The theoretical acumen and erudition that Gordon had to derive in order to synthesize this study are prodigious; yet in its directness of approach and presentation, this current status-report is accessible to advanced scholars and motivated undergraduates alike. Gordon's fresh readings of Kant, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and Schopenhauer, among others, will reside at the theoretical cutting-edge for some time to come.