Religion, art and the limits of the sayable

pp. 163-169

in: Robert Grant, The politics of sex and other essays, Basingstoke, Palgrave Macmillan, 2000

Abstract

In the Middle Ages, art, science, philosophy, history and practical life were all offshoots of religion, and so regarded theoretically. Nowadays, however, they are usually treated as separate universes of discourse. The most sustained attempts to chart their boundaries have been made within the Idealist tradition. Here each is assumed to be a particular mode, or phase, of Geist (the German word for both "mind" and 'spirit"). Typical Idealist thinkers in this respect are Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Croce, Collingwood, Oakeshott and (up to a point, since he also has naturalistic leanings) Santayana.¹