We'll be thinking about some repercussions of Hegel's infamous pronouncement of the "end of art." Why does Hegel say that art "no longer counts" as the expression of truth and what does this obsolescence imply for the practice of philosophy and for political practice? We'll look at the ways in which art, according to Hegel, stages its own undoing at every stage and in every art form (sculpture, painting, music, etc.), but especially in theatre, which Hegel presents both as the "highest" art form and the scene of art's ultimate undoing. Why does theater occupy this privileged position? And what comes next? We'll be focusing on selected portions of Hegel's Aesthetics and the Phenomenology of Spirit, alongside other contemporary writings, such as Lessing, Schelling, and Hölderlin. And we'll be reading some of the plays — mostly, but not always, tragedies — they were watching (or at least reading, or imagining watching): Sophocles, Euripides, Schiller, Goethe, Diderot, Aristophanes. And finally, we'll consider the peculiar afterlife of theatre in philosophy — as a scene of pedagogy, a performance, and a political spectacle.