Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (/ˈbaʊmɡɑːrtən/; German:

Alexander Gottlieb
[ˈbaʊmˌgaʁtn̩]; 17 July 1714 – 27 May[4] 1762) was a German
philosopher. He was a brother to theologian Siegmund Jakob Baumgarten
Baumgarten (1706–1757). Born 17 July 1714
Berlin, Brandenburg
Biography Died 27 May 1762
(aged 47)
Baumgarten was born in Berlin as the fifth of seven sons of the Frankfurt (Oder),
pietist pastor of the garrison, Jacob Baumgarten, and of his wife Brandenburg
Rosina Elisabeth. Both his parents died early, and he was taught Education University of Halle
by Martin Georg Christgau where he learned Hebrew and became
University of Jena
interested in Latin poetry.
(no degree)
In 1733, during his formal studies at the University of Halle, he
Era 18th-century
attended lectures on the philosophy of Christian Wolff by Johann
philosophy
Peter Reusch at the University of Jena.[5][6]
Region Western philosophy

Philosophical work School Age of

Enlightenment
While the meanings of words often change as a result of cultural Institutions University of Halle
developments, Baumgarten's reappraisal of aesthetics is often seen Alma Mater Viadrina
as a key moment in the development of aesthetic philosophy.[7] Academic Christian Wolff
Previously the word aesthetics had merely meant "sensibility" or
advisors Johann Peter
"responsiveness to stimulation of the senses" in its use by ancient
Reusch
writers. With the development of art as a commercial enterprise
linked to the rise of a nouveau riche class across Europe, the Notable Georg Friedrich
purchasing of art inevitably led to the question, "what is good students Meier
art?". Baumgarten developed aesthetics to mean the study of good Main Aesthetics
and bad "taste", thus good and bad art, linking good taste with interests
beauty.
Notable Aesthetics as the
ideas perfection of
By trying to develop an idea of good and bad taste, he also in turn
generated philosophical debate around this new meaning of sensuous
aesthetics. Without it, there would be no basis for aesthetic debate cognition[1][2]
as there would be no objective criterion, basis for comparison, or
Influences
reason from which one could develop an objective argument.
Emanuele Tesauro,[3] Gottfried
Leibniz, Christian Wolff
Views on aesthetics Influenced

Baumgarten appropriated the word aesthetics, which had always Immanuel Kant, Georg Friedrich
meant "sensation", to mean taste or "sense" of beauty. In so doing, Meier, Johann Georg Sulzer,
he gave the word a different significance, thereby inventing its Johann Joachim Winckelmann
modern usage. The word had been used differently since the time
of the ancient Greeks to mean the ability to receive stimulation from one or more of the five bodily senses.
In his Metaphysic, § 607,[8] Baumgarten defined taste, in its wider
meaning, as the ability to judge according to the senses, instead of
according to the intellect. Such a judgment of taste he saw as based
on feelings of pleasure or displeasure. A science of aesthetics would
be, for Baumgarten, a deduction of the rules or principles of artistic
or natural beauty from individual "taste". Baumgarten may have
been motivated to respond to Pierre Bonhours' (b.1666) opinion,
published in a pamphlet in the late 17th century, that Germans were
incapable of appreciating art and beauty.

Reception
In 1781, Immanuel Kant declared that Baumgarten's aesthetics
could never contain objective rules, laws, or principles of natural or
artistic beauty.

The Germans are the only people who presently

(1781) have come to use the word aesthetic[s] to
Aesthetica (1750) by Alexander
designate what others call the critique of taste. They
Gottlieb Baumgarten
are doing so on the basis of a false hope conceived by
that superb analyst Baumgarten. He hoped to bring our
critical judging of the beautiful under rational
principles, and to raise the rules for such judging to the
level of a lawful science. Yet that endeavor is futile.
For, as far as their principal sources are concerned,
those supposed rules or criteria are merely empirical.
Hence they can never serve as determinate a priori
laws to which our judgment of taste must conform. It
is, rather, our judgment of taste which constitutes the
proper test for the correctness of those rules or criteria.
Because of this it is advisable to follow either of two
alternatives. One of these is to stop using this new
name aesthetic[s] in this sense of critique of taste, and
to reserve the name aesthetic[s] for the doctrine of
sensibility that is true science. (In doing so we would
also come closer to the language of the ancients and its
meaning. Among the ancients the division of cognition
into aisthētá kai noētá [sensed or thought] was quite
famous.) The other alternative would be for the new
aesthetic[s] to share the name with speculative
philosophy. We would then take the name partly in its
transcendental meaning, and partly in the
psychological meaning. (Critique of Pure Reason, A
21, note.)

Nine years later, in his Critique of Judgment, Kant conformed to Baumgarten's new usage and employed
the word aesthetic to mean the judgment of taste or the estimation of the beautiful. For Kant, an aesthetic
judgment is subjective in that it relates to the internal feeling of pleasure or displeasure and not to any
qualities in an external object.
In 1897, Leo Tolstoy, in his What is Art?, criticized Baumgarten's book on aesthetics. Tolstoy opposed
"Baumgarten's trinity – Good, Truth and Beauty…."[9] Tolstoy asserted that "these words not only have no
definite meaning, but they hinder us from giving any definite meaning to existing art…."[9] Baumgarten, he
said, claimed that there are three ways to know perfection: "Beauty is the perfect (the absolute) perceived
by the senses. Truth is the perfect perceived by reason. The good is the perfect attained by the moral
will."[10] Tolstoy, however, contradicted Baumgarten's theory and claimed that good, truth, and beauty
have nothing in common and may even oppose each other.

…the arbitrary uniting of these three concepts served as a basis for the astonishing theory
according to which the difference between good art, conveying good feelings, and bad art,
conveying wicked feelings, was totally obliterated, and one of the lowest manifestations of art,
art for mere pleasure…came to be regarded as the highest art. And art became, not the
important thing it was intended to be, but the empty amusement of idle people. (What is Art?,
VII.)

Whatever the limitations of Baumgarten's theory of aesthetics, Frederick Copleston credits him with playing
a formative role in German aesthetics, extending Christian Wolff's philosophy to topics that Wolff did not
consider, and demonstrating the existence of a legitimate topic for philosophical analysis that could not be
reduced to abstract logical analysis.[11]

Metaphysics
For many years, Kant used Baumgarten's Metaphysica as a handbook or manual for his lectures on that
topic. Georg Friedrich Meier translated the Metaphysics from Latin to German, an endeavour which –
according to Meier – Baumgarten himself had planned, but could not find the time to execute.

Works
Dissertatio chorographica, Notiones superi et inferi, indeque adscensus et descensus, in
chorographiis sacris occurentes, evolvens (1735)
Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (https://web.archive.org/we
b/20101005090921/http://modernsource.daphnet.org/texts/Baumgarten/BauMPh) (doctoral
thesis, 1735)
De ordine in audiendis philosophicis per triennium academicum quaedam praefatus
acroases proximae aestati destinatas indicit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1738)
Metaphysica (https://books.google.com/books?id=C7tRik1BRV0C) (1739)
Ethica philosophica (https://books.google.com/books?id=kwA-AAAAcAAJ) (1740)
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten eröffnet Einige Gedancken vom vernünfftigen Beyfall auf
Academien, und ladet zu seiner Antritts-Rede [...] ein (1740)
Serenissimo potentissimo principi Friderico, Regi Borussorum marchioni brandenburgico S.
R. J. archicamerario et electori, caetera, clementissimo dominio felicia regni felicis auspicia,
a d. III. Non. Quinct. 1740 (1740)
Philosophische Briefe von Aletheophilus (1741)
Scriptis, quae moderator conflictus academici disputavit, praefatus rationes acroasium
suarum Viadrinarum reddit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1743)
Aesthetica (https://archive.org/details/aestheticascrip00baumgoog) (1750)
Initia Philosophiae Practicae. Primae Acroamatice (http://www.korpora.org/Kant/agb-initia/in
dex.html) (1760)
 Acroasis logica in Christianum L.B. de Wolff (https://books.google.com/books?id=PaE_AAA
AYAAJ) (1761, 2nd ed. 1773)
Ius naturae (posthum 1763)
Sciagraphia encyclopaedia philosophicae (ed. Johs. Christian Foerster 1769)
Philosophia generalis (ed. Johs. Christian Foerster 1770)
Alex. Gottl. Baumgartenii Praelectiones theologiae dogmaticae (ed. Salomon Semmler;
1773)
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens Metaphysik (https://books.google.com/books?id=gFD_n4B
_eU0C) (translated by Georg Friedrich Meier 1766)
Gedanken über die Reden Jesu nach dem Inhalt der evangelischen Geschichten (ed. F.G.
Scheltz & A.B. Thiele; 1796–1797)

English translations
Alexander Baumgarten, Metaphysics. A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations,
Selected Notes, and Related Materials translated and edited by Courtney D. Fugate and
John Hymers, London, New York: Bloomsbury Publishing, 2013.

Notes
1. Alexander Baumgarten, Aesthetica, 1750, §1: "Aesthetices finis est perfectio cognitionis
sensitivae".
2. Steven Nadler (ed.), A Companion to Early Modern Philosophy, John Wiley & Sons, 2008, p.
622.
3. Tedesco, Salvatore (2005). "La retorica arguta di Emanuele Tesauro e il problema del
paralogismo". Laboratorio dell'ISPF. I: 257–266. ISSN 1824-9817 (https://www.worldcat.org/i
ssn/1824-9817).
4. Jan Lekschas, The Baumgarten Family (http://www.jan.lekschas.de/?section=gene)
Archived (https://web.archive.org/web/20190124203924/https://jan.lekschas.de/?section=ge
ne) 2019-01-24 at the Wayback Machine
5. Robert Theis, Alexander Aichele (eds.), Handbuch Christian Wolff, Springer-Verlag, 2017, p.
442.
6. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) (http://www.baumgarten-alexander-gottlieb.de/l
eben/druckleben.html)
7. Caygill, Howard (1982). Aesthetics and Civil Society: Theories of Art and Society, 1640-
1790 (https://books.google.com/books?id=cOwrnQEACAAJ). University of Sussex.
8. Metaphysics: A Critical Translation with Kant's Elucidations (https://books.google.com/book
s?id=WU-rqBF6J_QC&q=607)
9. What is Art?, VII
10. What is Art?, III
11. Frederick Copleston (1946–1975). A History of Philosophy, vol. VI.

References
Chisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb"  (https://en.wikisource.org/wi
ki/1911_Encyclop%C3%A6dia_Britannica/Baumgarten,_Alexander_Gottlieb).
 Encyclopædia Britannica (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press.

Further reading
Eric Watkins (ed.), Kant's Critique of Pure Reason: Background Source Materials,
Cambridge University Press, 2009 (Chapter 3 contains a partial translation of the
'Metaphysics').

External links
Baumgarten and Kant on Metaphysics (https://www.amazon.com/Baumgarten-Kant-Metaphy
sics-Courtney-Fugate/dp/0198783884) 2018 Courtney D. Fugate (Editor), John Hymers
(Editor)
Jan Lekschas, The Baumgarten Family (https://web.archive.org/web/20190124203924/http
s://jan.lekschas.de/?section=gene) (in German)
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) (http://www.baumgarten-alexander-gottlieb.de)
(in German)

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