Apollo Belvedere
Circa 120–140;
copy of bronze original of ca. 350–325 BC.
Marble, 224 cm (88 in)
Over the course
of his lectures, Hegel’s approach to the philosophy of art varied, so that in
the materiel from 1818-20, for example, “the content and structure…[are both]
closely connected to the systematic position allocated to art in the Encyclopedia of 1917…[there,] Hegel
lectured on art and religion together, treating them separately for the first
time in Berlin [1920-1]” (Gaiger, 2006:161).
Hotho had access to that material, as well as his own notes from 1823,
1826, and 1828-9, but the lecture notes are themselves all much shorter, more
tentative, and more exploratory than Hotho’s volumes would indicate, suggesting
again that Hegel was still working out his philosophical aesthetics when he
died in 1831. Therefore any accurate
interpretation of Hotho’s volumes-or Knox’ translation of them-must include an
interpretation of the difference between Hegel’s own lecture notes, the student
transcripts that provided access to the last three courses, Hotho’s own way of
integrating and handling these materials, and the development of Hegel’s
philosophy of art as reflected during a particular lecture series. The differences between the source materials
and Hotho’s three volumes, then, pose the hermeneutic challenges of reinterpreting
not only Hegel’s own philosophy of art, but also the distortions caused by the
influence of those volumes (through Knox’ translation) on philosophical
aesthetics in the English speaking world: “…according to one of the leading
specialists on Hegel’s aesthetics, Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert, Hotho distorted
Hegel’s thought in various ways: he gave Hegel's account of art a much stricter
systematic structure than Hegel himself had given it, and he supplemented
Hegel's account with material of his own (PKÄ, xiii–xv).
