Romantic Art

On Hegel’s view, Christianity’s radical claim that God has appeared in a human body and in historical time revolutionizes humans’ attitude toward the divine. This development has serious consequences for art. Since myths are no longer the source of religion, art becomes superfluous. But it continues in ways that confirm humans’ growing sense of subjectivity. In early Christian paintings, we see intensely interior gazes, signaling a new depth of self within each human. In chivalric poetry, knights fight for increasingly secular goals. In Shakespeare’s plays, characters act on their own subjective aims rather than divine commands. In Hegel’s own generation, romantic novels celebrate everyday humans pursuing domestic quests, a development that Hegel warns will lead art to end in prose.