| 8063 | Baumgarten founded aesthetics in 1750 [Baumgarten, by Tolstoy] |
| Full Idea: Baumgarten founded aesthetics in the year 1750. | |
| From: report of Alexander Baumgarten (Aesthetica [1739]) by Leo Tolstoy - What is Art? Ch.2 | |
| A reaction: He gave it a label, separated it off from the rest of philosophy, and made taste the main focus. The philosophy of art goes back to at least Plato's 'Republic' and 'Symposium'. |
| 12157 | Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel gave it content [Kant, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Kant gave form and status to aesthetics, and Hegel endowed it with content. | |
| From: report of Immanuel Kant (Critique of Judgement I: Aesthetic [1790]) by Roger Scruton - Recent Aesthetics in England and America p.3 |
| 18549 | Nineteenth century aesthetics focused on art rather than nature (thanks to Hegel) [Hegel, by Scruton] |
| Full Idea: Only In the course of the nineteenth century, and in the wake of Hegel's posthumously published lectures on aesthetics, did the topic of art come to replace that of natural beauty as the core subject-matter of aesthetics. | |
| From: report of Georg W.F.Hegel (Lectures on Aesthetics [1826], 5) by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction |
| 21372 | Aesthetics concerns how we can take pleasure in an object, with no reference to the will [Schopenhauer] |
| Full Idea: The central problem of aesthetics is how satisfaction with and pleasure in an object are possible without any reference thereof to our willing. | |
| From: Arthur Schopenhauer (Parerga and Paralipomena [1851], II:415), quoted by Christopher Janaway - Schopenhauer 6 'Aesthetic' | |
| A reaction: This does seem a good distinction. We can divide pleasures into willed and unwilled. Compare thinking that some remote stranger (in a photograph) is very beautiful, with falling in love with someone. |
| 23198 | Aesthetics can be more basic than morality, in our pleasure in certain patterns of experience [Nietzsche] |
| Full Idea: Some of the aesthetic valuations are more fundamental than the moral ones e.g. the pleasure in what is ordered, surveyable, limited, in repetition. The logical, arithmetical and geometrical good feelings form the ground floor of aesthetic valuations. | |
| From: Friedrich Nietzsche (Unpublished Notebooks 1885-86 [1886], 35[02]) | |
| A reaction: Nietzsche's originality is so striking because his novel suggestions are always plausible. Lots of modern philosophers (especially, I fear, in the continental tradition) throw out startling ideas which then fail on closer inspection. |
| 12156 | Aesthetics has risen and fallen with Romanticism [Scruton] |
| Full Idea: The rise and fall (as we presently perceive them) of aesthetics have been contemporaneous with the rise and fall of Romanticism. | |
| From: Roger Scruton (Recent Aesthetics in England and America [1980], p.3) | |
| A reaction: Maybe it started a little before Romanticism, as part of the Englightenment aim of being rational about everything, and maybe it survives Romanticism because we want to be scientific about everything. |
| 8108 | Aesthetics presupposes a distinctive sort of experience, and a unified essence for art [Gardner] |
| Full Idea: Aesthetics traditionally has two presuppositions: the first is that there is a distinctive form of experience which is common to the appreciation of art and natural beauty; the second is that art has an essence or some sort of underlying unity. | |
| From: Sebastian Gardner (Aesthetics [1995], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Both must come up for discussion. I think the biggest problem for the first one is the place of sexual attraction, or even fancying a prawn sandwich. The second has been weakened by Marcel Duchamp's urinal, and modern fringe arts. |
| 20327 | Modern attention has moved from the intrinsic properties of art to its relational properties [Lamarque/Olson] |
| Full Idea: In modern discussions, rather than look for intrinsic properties of objects, including aesthetic or formal properties, attention has turned to extrinsic or relational properties, notably of a social, historical, or 'institutional' nature. | |
| From: Lamargue,P/Olson,SH (Introductions to 'Aesthetics and the Phil of Art' [2004], Pt 1) | |
| A reaction: Lots of modern branches of philosophy have made this move, which seems to me like a defeat. We want to know why things have the relations they do. Just mapping the relations is superficial Humeanism. |
| 20416 | By 1790 aestheticians were mainly trying to explain individual artistic genius [Kemp] |
| Full Idea: By 1790 the idea that a central task for the aesthetician was to explain or at least adequately to describe the phenomenon of the individual artistic genius had definitely taken hold. | |
| From: Gary Kemp (Croce and Collingwood [2012], Intro) | |
| A reaction: Hence when Kant and Hegel write about art, though are only really thinking of the greatest art (which might be in touch with the sublime or Spirit etc.). Nowadays I think we expect accounts of art to cover modest amateur efforts as well. |