The Cradle of

Aesthetics
Week 1
What is aesthetics?
What is aesthetics?
When?
Where?
By whom?
Why?
Under what
conditions?
The aesthetics as an autonomous philosophical discipline
originates in the 18th Century, even though reflections about the
nature of art and beauty are as old as the philosophy itself.
 The birth of aesthetics is associated with
the traditions of British empiricism and German/French
rationalism. therefore, scholars agree that aesthetics
originates in one of those countries.
Contemporary scholars disagree, however, on which
philosopher introduced the idea of aesthetics:
A.G. Baumgarten or A.A. Cooper.
This says more about contemporary scholars
than about the origins of aesthetics.
 In this Tutorium we will focus on the question
how 18th Century philosophers conceived
aesthetics.

This may, and probably will reveal something about our

conception of aesthetics in contemporary philosophy.
 The meaning of the philosophical terms we employ
today cannot be reduced to their historical origin.
However, understanding the historical origins can tell
us a great deal about the terms we employ.
Philosophical ideas should not be taken for granted.
Philosophical theories are not the product of
productive boredom. They respond to all sorts of
conceptual problems.
Studying the history of aesthetics can point out what
these problems originally were. Then, we can ask
ourselves whether they still exist today, whether they
have changed, and evaluate whether the old ideas
introduced to solve them can still be used today.

So, why does aesthetics exist? Which problem(s) does

it address?
Beauty.
 Beauty.
A property, a feeling, a creation.
 Beauty.

Objective. Subjective. Creative.

 Beauty.

Objective. Subjective. Creative.

Work of art. Audience. Artist.

 Beauty.

Objective. Subjective. Creative.

Work of art. Audience. Artist.

Knowledge. Feeling. Imagination.

 Beauty.

Objective. Subjective. Creative.

Work of art. Audience. Artist.

Knowledge. Feeling. Imagination.

“Science of lower
“Theory of taste” “Genius theory”
cognition”
The Germans tend to emphasize the objective aspect
of aesthetic experience and the British tend to
emphasize its subjective side.
Subjective validity.

Subjective property.

Example?
Judgments about subjective properties can have
universal or intersubjective validity.
Therefore, the problem of beauty was THE problem of 18th-century
aesthetics.

In 18th Century, it was an umbrella term for ‘aesthetic value’.

It has three aspects. An object, an emotional reaction to that object, and the
creator of the object.

Every 18th Century aesthetic theory offers a more or less plausible

explanation of these phenomena and the relationship between them.

In teleological view, these efforts were finally completed in Kant’s Kritik der
Urteilskraft.

Similar to other areas of philosophy, Kant is seen as someone who managed

to reconcile the immediacy and the value of experience of empiricist
philosophy and the value of judgment and concepts of rationalist philosophy.
Why 18th Century?
1. The ‘mentalist’ paradigm allowed philosophers to pay closer attention to
the object-response relationship. How does the content of my mind relate
to the perceived and conceived objects? What does it mean to perceive
and conceive? How do I know that what I perceive corresponds to the
outside world?

Greeks had no such problem. Beauty was objective property like shape and
size. But Descartes and Locke realized that there is no guarantee that sense
data correspond to the real world. This simple realization opened the door for
many philosophical schools: empiricism, rationalism, phenomenology,
idealism, materialism, skepticism, etc.
 2. The concept of art.

The history of the concept of beauty and the concept

of art is intertwined.
3. Social and economic reasons.