Il simbolo come dispositivo estetico: Kant, il Romanticismo e Hegel

Resumen

This essay reconstructs the aesthetic function of the symbol across German classical aesthetics, moving from Kant through Romanticism to Hegel, while highlighting the decisive interpretive contribution of Paolo D’Angelo. Starting from Kant’s §59 of the Critique of Judgment, the paper examines the symbol as a mediating device between the sensible and the supersensible, capable of establishing an analogical relation between aesthetic intuition and rational ideas without abolishing their heterogeneity. It then turns to Romantic aesthetics, where the symbolic becomes the privileged form through which the infinite is intuited within the finite, transforming Kant’s transcendental problem into an ontological and poetic project of reconciliation between nature and freedom. Finally, the essay analyses Hegel’s conception of the symbol as a structure relating sensible form and spiritual meaning, emphasizing its ambiguity, immediacy, and non-arbitrary immanence. Against purely historical readings of symbolic art, the essay adopts D’Angelo’s interpretation of the symbol as a general aesthetic dispositif and epistemological category, capable of illuminating the relation between form and content throughout German idealist aesthetics. In doing so, it argues that the symbolic provides a key framework for understanding the continuity and transformation of aesthetic thought from Kant to Hegel.