In this book, one of Italy s most important and original contemporary philosophers considers the status of art in the modern era. He takes seriously Hegel s claim that art has exhausted its spiritual vocation, that it is no longer through art that Spirit principally comes to knowledge of itself. He argues, however, that Hegel by no means proclaimed the death of art (as many still imagine) but proclaimed rather the indefinite continuation of art in what Hegel called a self-annulling mode. With astonishing breadth and originality, the author probes the meaning, aesthetics, and historical consequences of that self-annulment. In essence, he argues that the birth of modern aesthetics is the result of a series of schisms between artist and spectator, genius and taste, and form and matter, for example that are manifestations of the deeper, self-negating yet self-perpetuating movement of irony.