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Philosophical importance of distinguishing between the fine arts and giving different
accounts of their nature and value.
Five fine arts he distinguished are music, painting, sculpture, poetry and architecture
Greeks art
Medieval Christendom Religion
Modern world philosophy
Hegel ranks the five fine arts in a hierarchy of value. At the bottom is architecture, then
sculpture, then painting, then music, and finally, at the top, poetry.
Based on the degree to which the various forms of art are to be characterized by a
diminishing dependence on the material.
It is now possible to see why Hegel thought that the modern period would witness the end of
art.
The development of human understanding consists in a move from art to philosophy.
The development of art forms consists in a move from the most material (architecture) to the
least (poetry).
These two developments lead to a convergence. Poetry completes the movement from the
perceptual to the conceptual that is to be found within art; philosophy completes the movement
within human understanding to a wholly conceptual form of knowledge; the result is that art is
finally sublimated in philosophy.