DEM ENDE WIDERSTEHEN. ZU EINER ÄSTHETIK DES WIDERSTANDS BEI HEGEL.

This article challenges the widespread interpretation of Hegel as the philosopher who proclaimed the “end” or “death” of art. By reconstructing the genealogy of this narrative from Pliny and Vasari to Winckelmann, it argues that Hegel does not announce the disappearance of art as such, but rather theorizes a process of continuous historical transformations and dissolutions within art. Through a close examination of Hegel’s lectures on aesthetics and the systematic place of art within the sphere of absolute spirit, the essay demonstrates that Hegel never explicitly formulates a thesis of the end of art. Instead, what comes to an end are specific historical forms and functions of art, especially the classical unity of form and content that characterized Greek antiquity. Art itself persists as a necessary mode of human self-recognition, Bildung, and spiritual self-duplication. The article further revisits influential twentieth-century interpretations of Hegel, especially those of Benedetto Croce and Arthur C. Danto, showing how their readings contributed to the consolidation of the “end of art” paradigm. Against both cyclical models of artistic death and rebirth and theories of radical historical rupture, the essay proposes understanding Hegel’s aesthetics as an aesthetics of resilience. While art loses its status as the supreme cultural orientation of a community, it retains an irreplaceable hermeneutic and educational function. Art survives the dissolution of its historical forms because it continues to provide individuals with opportunities for reflection, self-understanding, and critical engagement with the world. Hegel’s aesthetics, therefore, should be read not as a philosophy of art’s demise, but as a theory of its enduring capacity to resist historical, social, and conceptual forms of disintegration.