In lieu of an abstract, here is a brief excerpt of the content:

231 11 Karl Rosenkranz and the “Aesthetics of the Ugly” Margaret A. Rose Karl Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of the Ugly (Ästhetik des Hässlichen) was first published in Königsberg by the Verlag der Gebrüder Bornträger in 1853. Since then it has been republished several times in Germany in the last few decades (in, for example, 19731 as well as in 1990, 1996, and 20072 ) and been translated into languages including Italian (1986) and French (2004).3 Where many other works by nineteenth-century Hegelians on aesthetics have now been forgotten or relegated to discussions in academic journals and books, Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of the Ugly is still referred to in public discussions of contemporary art and aesthetics in Germany as a work which has focused attention on the ugly as well as the beautiful in art. Only recently, the critic Jens Biski refers in a discussion of Umberto Eco’s On Ugliness of 2007 to Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of the Ugly as having raised awareness of the ugly in aesthetics, if as the “shadow side” and “negation” of the beautiful.4 Earlier discussions of, or references to, the importance of Rosenkranz’sAesthetics of the Ugly for both nineteenth- and twentieth-century art and aesthetics as well as for the “aesthetics of the ugly” per se are to be found in works by Hans Robert Jauss, Theodor W. Adorno, and others.5 Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of the Ugly has been seen by several recent commentators as important for its turning of idealist aesthetics toward an analysis of the ugly as a part of an aesthetics of the beautiful, and is also of interest both for its analysis of the interaction of the ugly with the comic in caricature and for the importance given by it to caricature at a time when that form was the subject of political as well as aesthetic criticism. It has further been suggested that one of the impetuses behind Rosenkranz’sAesthetics of the Ugly was Hotho’s 1835 edition of Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics, which Rosenkranz had reviewed in 1836 in the Jahrbücher für wissenschaftliche Kritik. The text of this review was used for the article on “Hegel’s Aesthetics” of 1836 in Rosenkranz ’s Critical Explanations of the Hegelian System (Kritische Erläuterungen 232 M A R G A R E T A . R O S E des Hegel’schen Systems) of 1840 (pp. 177–217), which also states (p. 202) that the concept of humor must find its place inside the concept of the beautiful.6 Brigitte Scheer concludes her recent analysis of the Aesthetics of the Ugly by suggesting further that with Rosenkranz’s treatment of the ugly in caricature, idealistic aesthetics in the narrow sense is left behind, in spite of the binding of his theory to Hegelian metaphysics, and “the first step is made towards the full recognition [Erkennung] of the ugly in the art of the modern.”7 Hegel’s Lectures on Aesthetics had dealt with the arts from the earliest recorded times to those of the early nineteenth century,8 but had also spoken of their end and not only given poetry supremacy over music and the visual arts, but philosophy over aesthetics. As Kliche and others note in their commentaries to Rosenkranz,9 there is no systematized aesthetics of the ugly to be found in Hegel’s works, although comments on its appearance in the history of art are made.10 Art at its height was for Hegel the expression of the idea of the true, the good, and the beautiful .11 Modern art when ugly (see, for instance, Hegel’s comments on the 1828 exhibition of paintings in Berlin referred to in following passages) is inferior art. Rosenkranz’s Aesthetics of the Ugly is one attempt at an aesthetics by Hegelians after Hegel that not only takes up and challenges issues discussed in Hegel’s Aesthetics as edited by Hotho (including the inadequacy of modern caricature and wit and the supposed decline of the arts in the modern world), but also discusses artists and writers of the mid-nineteenth century who could not be covered by Hegel himself. Karl Rosenkranz (1805–1879), the official biographer of Hegel,12 is said to have become acquainted with Hegel (1770–1831) in the last year of the latter’s life. Prior to that Rosenkranz had studied theology in Berlin from April 1824 with Schleiermacher, Marheineke, and Neander, and had heard Henning lecture on Hegel...

Share