Heidegger, Adorno, and the Persistence of Romanticism

Abstract

There are reasons to believe that the history of art, from romanticism to the present day, bears out Hegel's remark that art is a »thing of the past.« Arguments that now »anything goes« (A. Danto) provide theoretical grounds that support this view. But both Heidegger and Adorno suggest how Hegel's argument can yield constructive insights into art's critical capacities, even as its distance from non-art appears to vanish. Heidegger and Adorno are heirs of Hegel's romanticism, and while located intellectually within modernism both reveal how modernism is itself a continuation of romanticism. Salient points of contact between Adorno and Heidegger and also their differences, can be grasped in terms of shared romantic roots. To think of art as having a critical or disclosive power is a transformation of romantic expressivism. The conviction that art is embodied meaning and irreducible to its material elements is a development of Hegel's notion of spirit. Assessing the extent to which postmodern theory confronts or ignores these questions can also clarify its ties to romanticism.