Estetika A. G. Baumgartena

• Authors: Barbora Novotná-Březovská

Title variants

EN

The aesthetics of A. G. Baumgarten

• Languages of publication: CS

Abstracts

EN

This article is the result of the author’s inquiry into the work of the eighteenth century German philosopher and aestheticist Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. We are not concerned here so much with his key, though fragmentary, work Aesthetica, rather we seek to map the writings that led up to that work and which formed it. The periods prior to the publication of Aesthetica are covered by four texts in which the author discovers and defines the basic thoughts of “the new science of aesthetics”. Baumgarten’s theory of aesthetics is founded on Leibniz’s system of the monads, which are distinguished by the different clarity of their ideas. Baumgarten’s starting point is that ideas are the result of the epistemic power of our soul, and they are therefore crucial in any understanding of the character of knowledge in general. On the basis of a defining of the group of so-called lower epistemic powers of the soul (where, in addition to sense, there is for example to be found the poetic ability, or imagination) aesthetics arises. Baumgarten asserts (and he does so precisely in these pre-aesthetic writings) that sensory knowledge is analogical with the principles of rational knowledge. Here he is dealing with aesthetics connected not so much with the sphere of art, but rather with the very fundaments of human perception and knowing. He is concerned with aesthetics as a science.

Keywords

EN

aesthetics; Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

Discipline

• PHILOSOPHY: PHILOSOPHY

• Publisher: Institute of Philosophy, Czech Academy of Sciences
• Journal: Filosofický časopis (Philosophical Journal)
• Year: 2008
• Volume: 56
• Issue: 5
• Pages: 669-685
• Document type: ARTICLE

Contributors

author

Barbora Novotná-Březovská

• Filosofický časopis, redakce, Filosofický ústav AV ČR, v.v.i., Jilská 1, 110 00 Praha 1, Czech Republic