Heinrich Gustav Hotho

Heinrich Gustav Hotho (1802–1873) edited the lectures on aesthetics (1835–1838). His version became the standard edition and shaped the picture of Hegelian aesthetics for a century and a half.

At the same time it carries the basic problem of the friends’ edition to a particular degree: smoothing. Out of several years of lectures a “living whole” was assembled in which the development between the years disappears. Annemarie Gethmann-Siefert has demonstrated this in detail for the aesthetics.

Hotho is hard to place: editorially he worked with the Right Hegelians, but he stood close to the left centre around Michelet, to whom he was related.