Aesthetica by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

The theory of aesthetics started controversies over its legitimate existence as a fully developed science. Eventually, I take into account the possible implications of this position with regard to the question of the origin of aesthetics.'Aesthetics is the name of the philosophical study of art and natural beauty' (Miller, 2004). My purpose is to see how this empirical history is framed within a more systematic history which establishes its guidelines and marks its turning points. Consequently, I set out to inquire into Baumgarten's theory, in the attempt to better understand his reconstruction of the empirical history of aesthetics. Despite this apparent disagreement, my thesis is that the basic positions of the two authors are very similar and find their rationale in Baumgar-ten's peculiar treatment of the issue. While the former puts the emphasis on the modernity of aesthetics, Will seems more inclined to attribute the birth of aesthetics to ancient philosophers. In the first part, I analyze the way in which Baumgarten's aesthetic innovation has been perceived by two of his disciples, namely Georg Conrad Winckelmann and Georg Andreas Will.

The aim of this essay is to examine Baumgarten's conception on the history of aesthetics and on his role in it. I’ll be drawing on the early stages of a translation of the Aesthetica that I am currently undertaking to show that ‘thinking beautifully’ for Baumgarten involves subjective as well as objective processes and that Kant’s dismissal of his ‘futile’ attempt to provide a rational explanation of the basis of taste is overly harsh. Others have sought to question subjectivity as the absolute ground of aesthetic judgement and see the reexamination of the pre-Kantian corpus as a potential corrective. Some would argue that Kant’s third Critique has rendered any rationalist explanation of taste obsolete, and the prevalence of this view no doubt accounts for the fact that the Aesthetica remains untranslated into English. But what does it mean to think beautifully? The position I adopt in this paper is that the relation of beauty to thought lies at the core of Baumgarten’s project, and that the elucidation of what is at stake here is crucial to any assessment of the ongoing relevance of his work.

Defined as the ‘science of sensible cognition’, aesthetics involves among other things the ‘art of thinking beautifully’.

Integral to Baumgartian aesthetics is the idea of beauty, and the term appears frequently in the Aesthetica from the opening paragraph onwards. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-62) is best known for his use of the name ‘aesthetics’ to designate a field of study that has remained an important part of philosophy ever since.

Aesthetica by Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten