Aesthetics, or Hegel

Like moral philosophy, aesthetic philosophy seems to investigate its objects regardless of the meaning and the reality question, falsifying, it seems, my hypothesis on philosophy. I argue that we can relate aesthetics to the meaning question, though we thus must consider anything a possible object of aesthetics and arts, and that we should do so, as only thus can we understand that the questions of aesthetics are fundamental and can concern everything. This consequence fits well in with the fact that in current art anything can be an artwork, as Duchamp’s ready-mades show. But if questions of aesthetics concern everything, as I presuppose, then we must assume that we can respond in a normative way to everything not only by following moral and metaphysical norms, but also by emotions, sentiments, and reflections not yet checked by morality, metaphysics, science, or another system of ideas, and that we do so in art. This assumption can be confirmed by Hegel’s aesthetics. I conclude with remarks to underline the advantage of seeing philosophy as asking two basic questions. This approach makes use of the difference between doing things heterotelically, as a means to do something else, and doing them for their own sake. If we recognize the importance, we’ll understand what belongs to an acceptable answer to the meaning question.