Modern Aesthetics and Democratic Life

In this innovative open-access study, Jörg Schaub demonstrates that the aesthetic is essential to democratic societies’ aspiration to realize a life of equal freedom for all. Revisiting seminal eighteenth-century aesthetic treatises, Schaub advances a new interpretation of modern aesthetics and, in doing so, lays the groundwork for his original account of Hegel’s post-ideal conception of aesthetics. He argues that what lies at the core of these accounts—and gives them their cultural significa...