ABSTRACT
The works of the muse lack the force of the spirit which, from out of the crushing of the gods and of man, has engendered its certainty of itself. The broader Hegelian or post-Hegelian frame is the way in which the different periods of history are interpreted as the phased march of spirit realizing or fulfilling itself. It is difficult to set limits on any discussion of æsthetics in Nancy’s oeuvre. There is little clear boundary between his æsthetics, his phenomenology, and his philosophy of religion, for instance, in Visitation: Of Christian Painting, Noli me tangere, The Pleasure of Drawing, or elsewhere. Nancy then distinguishes the two mutually exclusive narrative developments provided by Hegel: according to the first, revealed religion will be what succeeds this aesthetic religion, with art now only having a subsidiary or illustrative role, rather than being a true manifestation of spirit.
