Speaker: Berker Basmacı (New School for Social Research)
Title: Idealism, Critique, and the Problem of Modern Art in Hegel’s Aesthetics
Time/Location: Thursday, November 14, 15.30-17.00 H-232
Abstract: This talk explores the relevance of Hegelian aesthetics in addressing modernity’s existential and ethical challenges. Hegel is notorious for declaring the end of art’s highest cultural vocation in modernity, primarily because our normative self-consciousness is now rooted in abstract concepts, like human dignity, critical reason and the rule of law. It is also commonplace that, in Hegel’s aesthetics, these notions find their most adequate representation in scientific thought and philosophy and are not suitable for a sensuous display through artistic media. I claim that this view is slightly mistaken and offer an alternative way of construing Hegel’s critique of aesthetics to make room for understanding the relevance of art in modernity, precisely due to the abstract nature of our central normative conceptions. In my reading of Hegel, rather than rendering art obsolete, the structural issues in modern society and politics—such as poverty, capitalism, and war—sustain the cultural and philosophical necessity of artistic practices. Without art, our normative commitments risk becoming hollow and even contradictory in the face of the singularity of human suffering. I argue that Hegel constructs his framework of romantic aesthetics as a form of critique and reflection that displays the force of our ideals despite the non-ideal features of their concrete actuality.
Speaker Bio: Berker Basmacı is a PhD Candidate at the New School for Social Research. His work focuses on the intersections of aesthetics, logic, and philosophy of mind within German Idealism and beyond. His dissertation is on the systematic relationship between Hegel’s logic and aesthetics. Berker’s work has appeared in such journals as Idealistic Studies and the European Journal of Pragmatism and American Philosophy.