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Allegory: An allegory is a narrative or artwork, where characters, events, or elements represent abstract ideas or moral qualities, used to convey philosophical or moral messages.
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Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments.

 
Author Concept Summary/Quotes Sources

Hans-Georg Gadamer on Allegory - Dictionary of Arguments

I 78
Allegory/Gadamer: The allegory originates from the theological need to eliminate the offensive and to recognize valid truths behind it in religious tradition - so originally in Homer. It gains a corresponding function in rhetorical use wherever the paraphrase and indirect statement seems more appropriate.
The allegory originally belongs to the sphere of speech, to the Logos, and is thus a rhetorical or hermeneutical figure. Instead of what is actually meant, something else, more tangible, is said, but in such a way that this nevertheless allows that other to be understood.
The symbol, on the other hand, is not limited to the sphere of the Logos. For the symbol does not, by its meaning, refer to another meaning, but its own meaningful being has 'meaning'.
I 80
The symbol is the coincidence of the sensual and the non-sensual, whereas the allegory is the meaningful reference of the sensual to the non-sensual. >Symbols/Kant
, >Symbols/Goethe, >Allegory/Schelling.
I 84
Allegory/Gadamer: [In the course of the discussion of the symbol at the beginning of the 19th century a] devaluation of the allegory ensued. >Symbols/Goethe, >Symbols/Solger, >Symbols/Kant, >Symbols/Schiller, >Symbols/Schelling, >Symbols/Gadamer.
From the beginning, the rejection of French classicism by German aesthetics since Lessing and Herder may have played a role in this(1). After all, Solger still reserves the expression of the allegorical in a very high sense for the whole of Christian art.
I 85
Friedrich Schlegel goes even further. He says: All beauty is allegory (conversation about poetry). Also Hegel's use of the term symbolic (like the one by Creuzer) is still very close to this concept of the allegorical. But this use of language by the philosophers, on which the romantic ideas about the relationship of the inexpressible to language and the discovery of the allegorical poetry is based on, is no longer held by the educational humanism of the 19th century. One invoked Weimar Classicism, and indeed, the devaluation of allegory was the dominant concern of German Classicism, which arose quite necessarily from the liberation of art from the shackles of rationalism and from the distinction of the concept of genius. The allegory is certainly not the sole preserve of genius. It is based on firm traditions and always has a certain, alleged meaning, which does not oppose the intellectual grasping of the term. On the contrary, the concept and cause of allegory is firmly connected with dogmatics (...) (...) At the moment when the essence of art broke away from all dogmatic ties and could be defined by the unconscious production of the genius, allegory had to become aesthetically questionable.
Thus we see a strong influence of Goethe's art theoretical efforts to make the symbolic into a positive and the allegorical into a negative artistic concept.


1. Here, for Klopstock (X, 254ff.), even Winckelmann appears to be in a false dependence: "The two main errors of most allegorical paintings are that they are often not understood at all, or at least with great difficulty, and that they are, by their very nature, uninteresting...". .

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Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments
The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition.

Gadamer I
Hans-Georg Gadamer
Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010

Gadamer II
H. G. Gadamer
The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986
German Edition:
Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977


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