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Abstract

“Ode on a Grecian Urn” is an attractive site for mixing John Keats, Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel, and Karl Marx because Hegel and Marx were both philhellenes. In Hegel and Marx, the concepts of truth and beauty intertwine with the concept of freedom. Dialectical aesthetics defines beauty in terms of truth and defines art’s truth in terms of freedom. This article’s Hegelian interpretation is oriented around subjectivity and transcendence of freedom. Its Marxian interpretation is oriented around historicity and the immanence of freedom. The “negative capability” of the ode abolishes and uplifts the best of Hegelian and Marxian interpretation in aesthetic wonder with mystery.

Bio

Professor James Chambers teaches philosophy at Hebei University. His area of research is the philosophy of Hegel, Marx, and Laozi and interdisciplinary studies of philosophy, literature and history. His recent publications include the book Marx and Laozi: A Dialectical Synthesis (Palgrave Macmillan, 2023), and articles; “Dialectics of Freedom in “Ode on a Grecian Urn”: Keats, Hegel, Marx” (Clio: A Journal of Literature, History, and the Philosophy of History, 2023), “Hegel’s Metaphilosophy of Idealism” (Metaphilosophy, 2021), “Didactic Mimesis in Wordsworth’s ‘Simon Lee’” (Style, 2020; co-authored with Sun Shuting), and “Against Methodological Individualist Interpretation of Marxist Explanations of Social Phenomena” (International Critical Thought, 2018; co-authored with Cheng Zhihua). James is currently completing the first draft of a historical novel, writing an article on Hegel’s epistemology on the question of the relationship between representations and concepts, and working with East China Normal University Press Ltd. on a Chinese translation of his book.