Kant, Schiller, Hegel

Kant: pure beauty is non-representational, because representational art is related to a concept. Thus the beauty of a man is not pure beauty, but dependent or adherent beauty. But music without words is pure beauty.

Schiller works out the relationship between beauty and the moral life. In sharp contrast to Plato, he holds that art and beauty can be conducive to the moral life.

Hegel agrees with Schiller, but goes further in pointing out that art is the representation / embodiment / manifestation of the Idea, part therefore of the objective Geist unfolding through history. But art is the lowest type of self-manifestation of the Idea, manifesting the Idea at the level of sense; higher than art is religion, which manifests the Idea at the level of myth and story; and the highest (and this is pure Hegel) is philosophy.

Further, once the Idea embodied in art has been expressed or articulated in a philosophical way – and Hegel has done that – there follows the death of art.