Hegel's Aesthetic Ontology

Name: Hegel's Aesthetic Ontology
Price: 64.95 AUD
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ISBN: 9781009696319

The Event of Beauty

David Ciavatta (Toronto Metropolitan University)

$64.95

Paperback

Forthcoming
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English

Cambridge University Press
31 July 2026

Philosophy; Western philosophy: Enlightenment; Philosophy: metaphysics & ontology; Philosophy: logic; Philosophy: aesthetics

Beauty is significant to us in many different registers, but perhaps the least appreciated has to do with its distinctively metaphysical significance. For Hegel, aesthetic experience offers us its own distinctive perspective on the nature of reality, and in this book David Ciavatta shows how in Hegel's ground-breaking Aesthetics, his astute observations on art and on beauty in nature relate to and illuminate wider themes in his metaphysical thought. To experience and be compelled by the beautiful is, on Hegel's account, to have an intuitive access to certain metaphysical truths concerning the kind of being we are, concerning the divine, concerning the ultimate nature of the natural and historical worlds, and concerning our proper place within and relation to reality overall. Ciavatta's study illuminates the close connection between Hegel's aesthetics and his metaphysics, and links Hegel's thought with important themes in post-Kantian continental philosophy.

By: David Ciavatta (Toronto Metropolitan University)
Imprint: Cambridge University Press
Country of Publication: United Kingdom
ISBN: 9781009696319
ISBN 10: 1009696319
Pages: 300
Publication Date: 31 July 2026
Audience: College/higher education , Further / Higher Education
Format: Paperback
Publisher's Status: Forthcoming

Introduction: The aesthetics of being: beauty as intuitive metaphysics; Part I. The Ontological Roots and Limits of Natural Beauty:1. The beauty of nonhuman nature; 2. The beauty of the human body; 3. The beauty of action and the tragedy of practical life; Part II. The Being of Art and the Poetics of the Event: 4. The ontology of the artwork and the event-character of beauty; 5. Repose or development?; 6. The poetics of the event; Works cited; Index.

David Ciavatta is a Professor in the Department of Philosophy of Toronto Metropolitan University. He is the author of Spirit, the Family, and the Unconscious in Hegel's Philosophy (2009), and of various articles and chapters on Hegel and on twentieth century phenomenology.