HEGEL AND AESTHETICS, edited by William Maker. Albany: State University of New York Press, 2000, 209pp.


"Is Hegel's philosophy of art dead?" asks William Maker in his editorial introduction to Hegel and Aesthetics — a collection of essays presented originally at the Fourteenth Biennial (1996) Meeting of the Hegel Society of America. Maker believes that Hegel's aesthetics is worthy of rejuvenation, owing to its systematic and theoretical grounding upon the ever-important concept of freedom, and in light of Hegel's recognition that art has a practical and potentially educative role in the realization of freedom. The twelve essays in this volume intend to advance a greater appreciation of Hegel's aesthetics, and they address a diversity of issues, the critical mass of which considers the contemporary relevance of Hegel's aesthetics.