The truth of art. A reflection starting from Hegel and Adorno

The aim of this paper is to focus on how the dialectical opposition of Wahrheit and Unwahrheit can be studied, both in Hegel and in Adorno, within the specific field of aesthetics. This not only to shed light on the Hegelian premises of Adorno’s aesthetics, but also to try to read Hegel’s aesthetics through an unusual perspective, as the Adornian one, which at once accepts and reverses its paradigms. Core of the comparison is the question of truth, vital for both philosophers’ dialectics, as it is articulated, in a deep and abiding connection with its dialectical opposite, the untruth, in the philosophical consideration of aesthetic phenomena. In the first part I deepen how truth and untruth of art are understood by the two authors; in the second part I consider art as a rational way of expressing truth and explore both authors’ interpretation of the relation between the aesthetic and the conceptual (or between art and philosophy); finally, in the third part I discuss the bond between art and sociohistorical dimension in order to take into account both authors’ critical question on art’s possibilities within the present world.