Aesthetics plays a key though often neglected sysıematic role in the philosophies of Kanı, Schelling and Hegel. Their overall projects are nonetheless opposed in some important respecıs: while Kant attempts to secure the limits of human knowledge, Schelling and Hegel try to articulate an actually 'absolute knowledge'. I consider the treatment of art of each of these three figures as elucidating his position on the scope of knowledge. I suggest that the very limited role Kanı allots art is a direct consequence of his limits-of-knowledge position as daiming that we can presuppose but cannot cognize the actuality of the ideas of reason. Art as identity-within-difference gives a model for Schelling's 'absolute idealism', for which art is no sub...