While the current philosophical debate surrounding Hegel's aesthetics focuses heavily on the philosopher's controversial 'end of art' thesis, its participants rarely give attention to Hegel's ideas on the nature of beauty and its relation to art. This study seeks to remedy this oversight by placing Hegel's views on beauty front and center. Peters asks us to rethink the common assumption that Hegelian beauty is exclusive to art and argues that for Hegel beauty, like art, is subject to historical development. Her careful analysis of Hegel's notion of beauty not only has crucial implications for our understanding of the 'end of art' and Hegel's aesthetics in general, but also sheds light on other fields of Hegel's philosophy, in particular his anthropology and aspects of his ethical thought.

Julia Peters is Assistant Professor in Philosophy at the University of Tuebingen, Germany. She specializes in Kant and German Idealism and has published a number of articles on Hegel's Aesthetics, Anthropology and Philosophy of Mind. In addition she works on contemporary virtue ethics.

Introduction 1. The Anthropological Roots of Beauty 2. Hegel on Beauty, Nature and Art: Towards a Novel Interpretation 3. The Value of Beauty, Aesthetic Experience and the Aesthetic Human Ideal 4. The Beautiful Character and its Limits 5. Beyond Beauty: The Pain of Inner Division 6. Modern Beauty