Introduction
The Aesthetics of Being: Beauty as Intuitive Metaphysics
Published online by Cambridge University Press: 15 April 2026
Summary
The Introduction offers an overview of the main themes of the book, focusing especially on Hegel’s claim that our sensuous experience of beauty offers a distinctive access to metaphysical truth. The basic nature and parameters of this sensuous aesthetic experience – what Hegel calls “sensuous intuition” – are explored to set the stage for the analysis that follows. In anticipation of the book’s main claim about the distinctive sort of ontological truth that artworks in particular serve to reveal on Hegel’s account – namely, that they put us in touch with the transformative event of spirit’s birth in and through nature – the chapter includes a sketch of the path of the book from the ontology and aesthetics of nature through to the ontology and aesthetics of artworks.
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- Hegel's Aesthetic OntologyThe Event of Beauty, pp. 1 - 26Publisher: Cambridge University PressPrint publication year: 2026
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