  The focus of modern art, therefore, does not have to be on one particular conception of human freedom rather than another. The new “holy of holies” in art is humanity itself— “Humanus”—that is, “the depths and heights of the human heart as such, mankind in its joys and sorrows, its strivings, deeds, and fates” (Aesthetics, 1: 607). Modern art, in Hegel’s view, thus enjoys an unprecedented freedom to explore “the infinity of the human heart” in manifold ways (VÄ, 181). For this reason, there is little that Hegel can say about the path that art should take in the future; that is for artists to decide.