Delivered across four Berlin lecture series and published posthumously from student notes, Hegel's Lectures on Aesthetics is the most comprehensive philosophical account of art in the modern tradition. It argues that art is the sensuous shining of the Idea — Spirit expressing itself in perceptible form — and traces the history of art through three forms: Symbolic (Eastern), Classical (Greek), and Romantic (Christian and modern). The work is best known for its provocative claim that art has passed its "highest moment," having been superseded by religion and philosophy as vehicles of absolute Spirit.
