Aaron Koller
Reassessing Baumgarten’s Contribution to Aesthetics1
DRAFT – Feb. 9, 2009
Although Alexander Baumgarten is known as the philosopher who coined the term
“aesthetics,” allegedly naming a new science,2 great controversy surrounds the significance of
his invention. Commentators widely agree that Baumgarten intended his aesthetics to encompass
a realm beyond what is accessible to reason alone, and they also agree that the significance of his
innovation depends on the success of that supposed endeavor. Those commentators who argue
that Baumgarten made his aesthetics at least partly independent of reason (Baeumler, Gross,
Guyer, Schweizer) have a generally favorable view of the project, while those who think
Baumgarten failed to escape rationalism (Cassirer, Croce) consider Baumgarten’s project a
failure, if not an outright self-contradiction (Wessell).3
The rationalism from which Baumgarten’s aesthetics either did or not did break was that
of Christian Wolff, the famous systemizer of a Leibnizian philosophy and Baumgarten’s
predecessor at the Univerity of Halle. Wolff’s concept of beauty, explained in his Psychologia
Empirica and applied in his Elementae Architecturae Civilis, is widely seen as an exemplar of
rationalism gone awry. It is thought to be purely intellectual, abstract, and devoid of feeling, and
so it is no surprise that Baumgarten would have had to reject it totally in order to say anything
1
I wish to thank Fred Beiser for providing guidance toward sources and central issues, as well as for his
comments on earlier drafts of this paper, and Kara Richardson for her comments and help with a few
difficult Latin passages.
2
Med. §116, Aes. §1.
3
Gregor is harder to pin down, because she insists that Baumgarten worked within the rationalist tradition
(“Baumgarten’s Aesthetica” in Review of Metaphysics No. 37 (Dec. 1983), pp. 364,375) but at the same
time attributes certain views to him which I believe to be inimical to rationalism, as I argue below. I am in
full agreement with her pronouncement that “There is nothing particularly original in [Baumgarten’s]
metaphysics, with its definition of beauty, or in his notion of a science of sense cognition… All this was
commonplace in the tradition of Wolff and Leibniz” (p. 382). However, this paper aims to provide a
different and much more precise account of Baumgarten’s relation to Wolff on aesthetic matters.
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significant about beauty.4 In this paper, I argue against these assumptions. The aesthetics of
Wolffian rationalism is not hopelessly abstract and lifeless, and Baumgarten did not
fundamentally reject it. He nonetheless managed to innovate significantly from within the
Wolffian system.
Both Baumgarten and Wolff understood beauty in terms of concepts borrowed from their
metaphysics and psychology—especially the concepts of perfection and sense cognition.5 As a
result, much of the debate about whether Baumgarten broke with rationalism in his aesthetics
turns on whether he added something non-rational or super-rational into these broader concepts.
I take up these issues – first metaphysical, then psychological or cognitive – in the first two parts
of this paper. I argue that Baumgarten was much less innovative in these general views than his
sympathetic readers tend to suppose, but also that they are not as damnable as others believe. In
the two subsequent sections, I address the metaphysics and cognition of beauty more
specifically. It is here, I argue, that Baumgarten made his important and even revolutionary
contributions to aesthetics from within the general Wolffian framework.
Part I – Agreement about the metaphysical background: individuality and perfection
Section 1: Individuality. One of the most pervasive reasons given for Baumgarten’s
supposed independence from Wolff is the claim that Baumgarten’s aesthetics made a place for
the individual object as such, while Wolff’s theory remained mired in empty abstractions.6
4
For clear expressions of this sentiment on both sides of the debate about Baumgarten, see Alfred
Baeumler, Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, ihre Geschichte und Systematik. Halle: M. Niemeyer, 1923, pp.
204-206; Ernst Cassirer, Freiheit und Form. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961, p.
124; and Benedetto Croce, Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic tr. Douglas Ainslie.
London: MacMillan and Co., 1922, pp. 214-215.
5
According to Baumgarten, the rationalists’ metaphysical “psychology affords sound principles” to
aesthetics (Med. §115). Although contemporary aesthetics makes use of analytical tools and theories from
metaphysics and philosophy of mind in order to investigate issues in aesthetics, it does not derive an
aesthetics from these concepts, as Wolff and Baumgarten attempted.
6
Baeumler, pp. 204-206.
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Baeumler, for example, claims that for Baumgarten, “aesthetics is…. a logic of the individual”
and that irreducible individuality as such is beautiful.7 Indeed, this view has some prima facie
support in the texts: Baumgarten insists that representations of individuals are “exceedingly
poetic” because of their “richness and liveliness”8 and writes that “the aestheticological truth of
the individual or singular thing is a perception of maximum metaphysical truth”9 He also claims
that the objects of scientific or logical thinking are universals.10 Commentators have used such
evidence to argue that Baumgarten intended his aesthetics to be a science of the irreducible and
inexhaustible richness of individuality as such, and not merely in relation to the universal truths
of logic.11
This favorable reading is challenged by one of Baumgarten’s earliest commentators, J. G.
Herder. One of the founders of the Sturm und Drang aesthetic, Herder was acutely interested in
the individual as such and the unique power of artistic genius to represent it. He is very much
dismayed by Baumgarten’s approach to aesthetics, writing that the earlier philosopher’s
excessively scientific and rule-based approach could never grasp “individualities” in their
fullness.12 In the 20th century, Cassirer and Croce agree with Herder; Cassirer complains that the
individual for Baumgarten is nothing more than “das unterste Logische,” while Croce suggests
7
Baeumler, pp. 212;224. See also Gross, Felix Aestheticus: Die Ästhetik als Lehre vom Menschen.
Würzburg: Königshausen & Neumann, 2001, p. 48; Gross, “The Neglected Programme of Aesthetics” in
The British Journal of Aesthetics vol. 42 no. 4 (Oct. 2002), p. 11; Wessell, “Alexander Baumgarten’s
Contribution to the Development of Aesthetics” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, vol. 30
no. 3 (Spring 1972), p. 339; and Schweizer, Ästhetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis. Basel:
Schwabe, 1972, p. 44.
8
Med. §19.
9
Aes. §441.
10
Aes. §560.
11
Baeumler, pp. 212,227; Hammermeister, The German Aesthetic Tradition. New York : Cambridge
University Press, 2002, p. 11; Gross, Felix p. 69.
12
Herder, Werke in zehn Bänden Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985, p. 662.
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that the individual is merely a compressed locus of abstract truths.13 Which of these two
interpretive camps is correct?
Unfortunately for Baeumler, et al., the transcendent individual runs afoul of
Baumgarten’s most fundamental metaphysical tenets, which he appropriated from Wolff. The
following four points were held in common by both Wolff and Baumgarten, and they are in fact
essential to the Wolffian tradition14 of rationalism:
1) Universals exist, but only in and through individuals, not as self-subsisting entities.15
2) There is a universal reason (principle, law, or rule16) for each and every determination (or
property) of possibility and actuality. This follows from the principle of sufficient reason,17
which both Baumgarten and Wolff explicitly endorse (and attempt to prove). Thus Baumgarten
writes, “Every determination has a principle” so that “Wherever there are determinations, there
are laws.”18 These determinations and the rules which govern them are structured hierarchically,
in the traditional sense of species, genus, etc.19 As a result, they have a real logical structure
amenable to the traditional syllogistic forms. “Universal truths are connected among
13
Cassirer, p. 126; Croce, Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic tr. Douglas Ainslie.
London: MacMillan and Co., 1922, p. 215.
14
More contentiously: the Leibnizian tradition.
15
Wolff writes, “Genera and species do not exist except in individuals. Universal things are in all singular
things” (Log. §§56-7). See also his Ont. §253 and Psy. §326. Baumgarten writes, “The universal is
representable in singular individuals in the concrete… the species is in the individual… the
determinations of the superior are in its inferior” (Met. §§150,153).
16
There does not appear to be a significant difference among the terms ratio, principium, lex, and regula;
they are used interchangeably. Both Wolff and Baumgarten say they prefer the term “law” for a nominal
statement expressing a real rule (Wolff, Ont. §509; Baumgarten, Met. §83), but this dictum is not really
observed in practice.
17
“If something is posited to be, then there something is also posited, from which it is understood why the
first thing rather is, than is not” (Wolff, Ont. §70).
18
Met. §§80;84.
19
Wolff, Ont. §253; Baumgarten, Met. §§151;154.
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themselves… so that they can be demonstrated one from another… One contains the reason why
another is true… The nexus of truths is founded in the nexus of things.”20
3) Both Wolff and Baumgarten explicitly define an individual as a thing which is “determined in
every way.”21 Baumgarten also explains that being determined in every way amounts to
consisting of a “complex of all compossible determinations,”22 so an individual is just something
of which no possible determination is left indeterminate. Along with the principle of sufficient
reason, which applies to determinations in general, it follows that there is nothing about the
individual not determined through universal laws. In this way they exclude the idea, pushed by
Herder and others, that there is an “individuality as such” which transcends universal laws.
4) For both Wolff and Baumgarten, the faculty of reason is the ability to perceive the
connections among the rule-bound determinations of things and among the rules themselves.
Baumgarten accepted Wolff’s view that “Reason is the faculty for intuiting or perceiving the
nexus of universal truths.”23 Since the individual is determined in every way through universal
laws, it follows that the faculty of reason is (at least in principle) capable of grasping the
individual in its entirety through its own resources. Therefore Herder, Croce, and Cassirer are
correct in thinking that Baumgarten’s metaphysics leaves no room for the individual as such,
provided that “as such” means “in a way not graspable through the universal logical structure of
all things, or not graspable through reason.” Of course, it possible that Baumgarten’s
metaphysics is inconsistent with his aesthetics, as Wessell believes.24 But in absence of very
20
Wolff, Psy. §482. See Met. §48 for a statement from Baumgarten.
Wolff, Ont. §227.
22
Baumgarten, Met. §148.
23
Wolff, Psy. §483. For Baumgarten’s affirmation of the same, see Met. §640. While Wolff tends to
emphasize the kind of “perception” of these truths that involving discursive syllogisms, it is obvious from
his definition that he takes reason in a rather wider sense. This more expansive sense becomes more
explicit in Baumgarten, but can be found in Wolff as well, as discussed below.
24
Wessell, p. 341
21
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strong evidence of a fundamental shift in Baumgarten’s aesthetics, this remains an unattractive
interpretation.25
Section 2: Perfection and the metaphysics of beauty. Wolff and Baumgarten provide
remarkably similar definitions of beauty, at least on the surface. Wolff defines beauty as “the
observability of perfection”26 and Baumgarten (in the Metaphysica) as “the perfection of
phenomenon [perfectio phenomenon], or perfection observable to taste in the wide sense.”27
Because both Wolff and Baumgarten understand pleasure as the intuitive (i.e., immediate and
singular) representation of perfection,28 beautiful objects please us. For this reason Wolff also
defines beauty as “the aptitude of things for producing pleasure in us,” but makes clear that “that
aptitude consists in the observability [of perfection].”29 We can take pleasure in objects which
are not truly beautiful, but such pleasure is based on our own error of opinion about the object,
not on a real perfection in the object itself.30
25
The evidence cited above in support of this view is at best conjectural. Simply because Baumgarten
advocates the representation of individuals in art, it obviously does not follow that he means “individual”
in some sense which goes beyond the sense he gives it in his metaphysics.
26
“Hinc definiri potest Pulchritudo… quod sit observabilitas perfectionis,” Psy. §545.
27
“Perfectio phaenomenon, s. gustui latius dicto observabilis, est PULCRITUDO,” Met. §662. “Taste in
the wide sense” includes sensible as well as intellectual judgment (Met. §607). (Sensible judgment is
simply “A confused judgment about the perfection of sensations” (Med. §92)). Baumgarten’s later
formulation of beauty as “the perfection of sense cognition as such” (Aes. §14) is discussed below.
28
Wolff, Psy. §511; Baumgarten, Met. §655.
29
Psy. §545.
30
Wolff, Psy. §546; cf. Baumgarten, Met. §§655;662 and Aes. §§18;27. Wolff’s cognitivist theory of
pleasure leads to some difficult questions: 1) What is the relation between pleasure qua cognition of
perfection and pleasure qua feeling? Wolff slides easily between pleasure which “is” an intution (i.e. a
cognition) to pleasure which arises [oritur] or is imbued [perfunditur] as a result of intuiting perfection
(perhaps a feeling?), but does little to reconcile these two aspects of pleasure for the skeptical. 2) If the
definition of pleasure as “intuitio perfectionis” is to be maintained, even “apparent” pleasures (pleasure
taken in an object which is not really perfect) must involve the intuition of some perfection. But what
perfection? Wolff argues that we take pleasure in the perfection of our own intellect in recognizing
imperfection (Psy. §519), but this does not cover the more pervasive and important case where we do not
recognize any imperfection and nonetheless feel pleasure. Rather than concluding that this view is
hopelessly problematic (Guyer, SEP) or worse, insist falsely that “beauty is not essentially connected with
any feeling of pleasure and delight” (Gross, “Neglected” p. 410), we should take Wolff at his word but
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Beauty, on this account, has both an objective and subjective aspect: objective, in that
“true beauty” is based on a real property of objects (their perfection), and subjective, in that an
object is only beautiful when its perfection is observable for us. In the remainder of this part, I
consider the objective concepts perfection, as well as the concept of phenomenon, which is
absent from Wolff’s definition. The subjective concept of observability is discussed in the next
part.
Baumgarten defines perfection as the agreement of many in constituting the sufficient
reason of a unity,31 while Wolff similarly defines perfection as “agreement in variety, or many
different things mutually related to each other in one.”32 A thing is a unity, according to Wolff
and Baumgarten, insofar as its determinations are inseparable, where the inseparability of
determinations means that the structure of things is such that they are posited or taken away
together, as determined by some universal principles.33 Importantly, this unity can be either or
absolute or hypothetical: absolute if the unity is unconditional (this is true of a thing’s essential
determinations, which are necessarily posited together), and hypothetical when the unity is
conditional on some contingent determinations being a certain way.34 For example, the unity of
some essential properties of a square (say, being four-sided and having equal sides and angles)
with its having a diagonal of √2 times its side is absolute, because these determinations are
absolutely inseparable. On the other hand, a wooden rod may have unity in that determining one
end to move three inches along the axis of the rod is inseparable from the other end also being
consider this aspect of his philosophy underdeveloped. Baumgarten does not develop Wolff’s theory of
pleasure beyond stating his agreement with its main principles.
31
Met. §94.
32
Ont. §503.
33
Baumgarten, Met. §§72-73. Wolff, Ont. §§328-329.
34
Met. §76. Wolff does not make this claim explicitly as Baumgarten does, but it is obvious from the fact
he allows composite things to be considered as unities (Ont. §341). See also DMet. §599, where Wolff
uses unity (Einheit) and the inseparable (Untheilbahre) interchangeably, and with respect to nature, which
is not an essential or absolute unity (but conditional on God’s act of making it so).
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determined to move three inches along the axis of the rod. But this inseparability is hypothetical,
because it depends on the determinations of the intervening parts (i.e. that they are unbroken and
inflexible). Hypothetical unity allows unity in general to be a broad concept which applies, in
varying degrees, to strict metaphysical unity of essence, to physical unity according to the
general harmony of nature, and also to unity in relation to our senses and judgment. Wherever
there is some basis for determinations being posited or taken away together, there is unity.
Because unity is a broad concept, perfection can apply to composite things with their
hypothetical unity, in addition to mathematical objects and monads with their absolute unity.35
Agreement [consensus] is order, which is the conformity of determinations to the same
principle or law: “In order, many are conjoined conforming to the same reason.”36 In other
words, the parts of an orderly thing exist and are arranged according to the same principle. Wolff
gives the example of a library, which is orderly because all its books arranged according to the
same organizational principles.37 The reasons governing the order of things are always universal
principles, not special or irreducibly unique individual principles.38
Putting these pieces together, a thing is perfect insofar as common principles in its parts
constitutes the sufficient reason of the unity or inseparability of the whole. Wolff writes that “if
many constitute one perfect thing, a general reason is necessarily given, through which it is
35
As a result, unity is a loose and ambiguous concept which applies, in varying to degrees, to strict
metaphysical unity of essence, physical unity according to the general harmony of nature, unity in relation
to our senses and judgment, etc. This is permitted because unity, like most rationalist concepts, comes in
degrees and can be “absolute” or “hypothetical.”
36
Baumgarten, Met. §§95;86. Wolff, Ont. §§472-474.
37
Ont. §475.
38
For statements of the universality or generality of the principles of order, see Baumgarten, Met. §92;
and Wolff, Ont. §§508,516, DMet. §141, and HSM §4. The idea that order and perfection are measured
according to general laws, not particular idiosyncrasies, goes back to Wolff’s personal correspondence
with Leibniz. See Leibniz’s letters to Wolff of 2 April 1715 and 18 May 1715 (Leibniz, G.W.
Philosophical Essays ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Indianapolis: Hackett, 1989, pp. 230-234).
Wolff and Baumgarten took Leibniz’s pronouncements in these letters very much to heart.
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understood why these entities rather than others constitute this unity, or, why it is composed
from these parts rather than from others.”39 This means that perfection expresses a “constituting”
relation between order and unity: a perfect thing’s unity is constituted and explained by the order
or common principles in its parts. For example, an arbitrary chunk of matter is minimally perfect
because, although it holds together physically according to very general laws, its parts have no
further common principle which mutually determine them to inseparability as a whole.40 And,
although it is extremely anachronistic, Baumgarten would approve of a fractal as a basic example
of a simple perfection: its individual pixels are arranged together as a unity because they are all
determined and arranged according to the same mathematical algorithm.41
Importantly, perfection can be either simple or composite: simple when there a single
principle which determines the manifold to unity, and composite when more than one principle
determines the manifold to unity.42 The concept of composite perfection is central to the
aesthetics of both Wolff and Baumgarten.
Perfection has three components: a manifold or variety; the unity which holds them
together, and the order which determines the manifold to its unity according to common rules.
As each of these features comes in degrees, so too does overall perfection. Baumgarten explains
that the degree of perfection is increased when 1) more or more perfect things are encompassed
39
Ont. §516.
See Wolff, DMet §§719-721 and Baumgarten, Met. §§94-95 for confirmation of this kind of claim.
41
If the fractal example is not helpful, here is alternative formulation: a thing is perfect insofar as its unity
consists in the fact that its parts cohere because they contain the reason or principle of the whole. For
example, Wolff describes the unity of our most perfect of all possible worlds in this way: “The unity or
inseparability of nature consists in the fact that each thing represents the whole” (DMet §599). In the same
way, a thing considered as a unity lacks perfection insofar as the principle of its unity is not contained in
its parts. This would be true of an arbitrary aggregate of matter.
42
Wolff, Ont. §507; Baumgarten, Met.§96.
40
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in manifold 2) the unity is greater (i.e. less hypothetical)43 3) there is greater or more robust44
agreement in the order.45
Wolff and Baumgarten were acutely aware that their concept of perfection involved
unavoidable tradeoffs in its maximization. They inherited this awareness from Leibniz, who
made this fact a cornerstone of his theodicy. Compromises in perfection become necessary in
two places: between the degree of agreement with any particular principle and the amount of
variety contained in a unity; and where multiple laws determining perfection come into conflict
with each other. For example, a window might offer the best view (one perfection of a window)
if it is much longer than it is wide, but this would violate the architectural rules of proportion
(another rule of perfection).46 In the face of such unavoidable conflicts of rules, an “exception”
must be made to one or both rules, at least to some degree. An exception, insofar as it has a
reason and is unavoidable, is not a defect but actually contributes to the greater perfection of a
thing, since it involves bringing a greater manifold to unity.47 Only determinations have no
reason in constituting the unity of the whole are true defects.48 All else being equal, it is better to
allow a thing to contain more determinations bound by more rules, rather than fewer
determinations bound more strictly. The greatest perfections are for this reason composite –
governed by many principles.49 Although he does not elaborate on it much, Wolff recognized
43
See Met. §173.
Latin “quo pluries… consentiunt,” literally “when they agree frequently.” I understand this to mark the
distinction between a fleeting and a more robustly persisting agreement.
45
Met. §185. Cf. Wolff, Ont. §§519-520,525.
46
Wolff gives a very similar example of a door, DMet. §163.
47
DMet. §170; Ont. §§513-514.
48
“A real defect is that which can be avoided” (Wolff, Ont. §512).
49
Baumgarten is most explicit about this: “The highest perfection would be maximally composite, and a
simple perfection, however great it is, is nonetheless not the greatest” (Met. §185). The idea, however, is
already implicit in the Leibnizian theodicy.
44
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that some rules are more important than others, so that perfection is maximized when exceptions
to less important rules are made before exceptions to more important rules.50
Baumgarten applies these Wolffian ideas directly to his aesthetics. He writes,
“The beauty of sensible cognition and the fineness of aesthetic objects themselves present
composite perfections, which are universal… For this reason one allows exceedingly many
exceptions, which are not counted as errors, even if they are encountered in experience, provided
only that they do not disturb the greatest possible harmony of phenomena, and therefore if they
are as minimal and unnoticeable as possible… And the exceptions, which we have indicated
[above], present no unfineness, if for example a less important rule of beauty must yield to a
more important, a less fruitful one to a more fruitful one, a nearer one to a further one, to which
it is subordinated. Therefore if one is concerned with establishing the rules of beauty in thinking,
one must be careful to consider at the same time the weight of these rules.”51
Much of the Aesthetica is dedicated to enumerating and weighing the importance of
various rules against each other. But this is a straightforward elaboration of Wolff’s views, with
nothing fundamentally novel. And the view thus far will not be very palatable to those who are
wary of the use of rules in aesthetics.
Despite all this, anti-rationalist commentators argue that Baumgarten did break with
Wolff in his understanding of perfection. Baeumler and Schweizer52 suggest that Baumgarten
invoked a special “sensible” kind of perfection, some property of perfection qua beauty which is
in principle unintelligible through universal principles. The nature of this alleged sensible
perfection is left rather unclear; Baeumler even suggests at one point that it should be understood
50
DMet. §§166-168; Ont. §515. Curiously, in this paragraph Wolff argues that more specific rules are
more important than more general rules, because specific rules govern more specific determinations
which are more closely related to the thing’s actual existence. Baumgarten takes the opposite view (Aes.
§25).
51
Aes. §§24-25.
52
Baeumler, pp. 217-218; Schweizer, p. 27. See also Gross, “Neglected” pp. 409-410, though he avoids
the term “perfection,” having an idiosyncratic understanding of it. Guyer hints at this as well,
“Baumgarten introduces the idea that the sensible imagery a work of art arouses is not just a medium,
more or less perfect, for conveying truth, but a locus of perfection in its own right” (SEP).
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as a je ne sais quoi.53 Elsewhere, he ties his alleged division between sensible and logical
perfection to Baumgarten’s actual distinction between formal and material perfection.54 These
latter concepts are not explicitly defined, but Baumgarten lists the components of each: formal
perfection includes richness, greatness, exactness, clarity and distinctness, certainty, and
liveliness, while material perfection includes amount, greatness, importance of the governing
laws, and the agreement of the manifold.55 This distinction is quite perplexing at first glance, but
as it turns out, the components of formal perfection correlate exactly with “the perfection of
every cognition” which Baumgarten had previously listed,56 and around which the entire Part 1
of the Aesthetica is structured.57 Thus, what Baumgarten calls formal perfection is just the
perfection of mental58 representation in general, while material perfection is the perfection of the
object being represented. Now, this does mean that cognition in general has its own perfection,
which is called formal. But it provides no evidence of a special kind of perfection in the object
being represented. In fact, Baumgarten’s explanation of material perfection harmonizes very well
with the general explication of perfection I have already given.59 And it remains to be seen, in
the next part of this paper, whether Baumgarten thinks there is a special, qualitatively different
perfection of cognizing aesthetically, as opposed to the perfection of cognition in general. 60,61
53
Baeumler, pp. 217-218. Gregor also makes a very vague claim to the effect that Baumgarten posited a
qualitatively different sensible perfection, “a unity-in-multiplicity of sensible qualities” (p. 370).
54
Baeumler, p. 223.
55
Aes. §§556-558. Baumgarten characteristically leaves the “of what” tacit, referring to a list of adjectives
only.
56
Aes. §22, emphasis added.
57
That is, they correspond to the lower-case Roman letter sections in the “Synopsis” of the Aesthetica.
58
Strictly speaking, formal perfection also applies to the representative power of objects, not just the
mind—e.g. the power of a poem for representing the world. This will become apparent below. See Aes.
§70 for the same list of six qualities as applied to art objects.
59
I.e., material perfection is easily parsed as the amount and magnitude of the determinations being bound
to unity, the magnitude of the laws used to bind them, and the degree of conformity to those laws.
60
My reading of the oft-cited sphere of marble example (Aes. §560) runs as follows. Baumgarten says
that we cannot strive after formal perfection without much loss of material. However, since formal
perfection is the perfection of cognition in general, this simply means that in general the better we
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Section 3: Is there a distinct sensible truth?
Along the lines of Baeumler’s suggestion that Baumgarten’s aesthetics is a special kind
of logic, Baeumler and Gross argue that “aesthetic truth,” a concept introduced in the Aesthetica,
corresponds to something in the world which cannot be grasped intellectually.62 As it turns out,
the appellation “aesthetic truth” is very misleading, for aesthetic truth is not at all a new
metaphysical notion of truth. “Metaphysical,” “objective,” “material,” or what Wolff had usually
called “transcendental” truth, is the conformity of a singular thing with a universal that is in it, in
the sense described above.63 In other words, metaphysical truth is an expression of the structure
of universals which actually exist in singular things. Logical and aesthetic truth are certain ways
that metaphysical truth appears to us; they are the two forms of “subjective truth.” “Metaphysical
understand something (whether aesthetically or intellectually), the less encompassing our cognition is. So
we can know more (geometrical) truths about a perfect sphere of marble, perceived intellectually or
aesthetically, but only by abstracting from or “throwing away” other truths about the whole marble block.
Hence, “Quid enim est abstractio, si iactura non est?” In short, this passage does not really involve the
tradeoff between aesthetic and intellectual thinking at all, but the more general tradeoff between thinking
well and thinking a lot of material.
61
Similarly, Schweizer has suggested that aesthetic objects have their own special individual unity
because they are located uniquely in time and place, tying this to Baumgarten’s approval of Aristotle’s
“three unities.” “Die ‘veritas individui’ ist an das aktuelle In-der-Erscheinung-Treten an einem
bestimmten Ort und zu einer bestimmten Zeit gebunden. Wir sprechen daher künftig nicht mehr von der
‘individuellen Wahrheit,’ sondern von der ‘Wahrheit der individuellen Erscheinung.’” (Schweizer, p. 44).
Cf. Aes. §439. But according to Baumgarten time and space are not irreducibly sensible forms, as they are
for Kant. Instead, they are the arrangements of things determined logically through the universals in
things (Met. §§238-239). thus they provide no basis for any qualitatively different metaphysical unity.
Wessell claims that Baumgarten’s introduction of the concept of the theme amounts to a special,
qualitatively different unity (p. 341). Baumgarten introduced this concept in his Meditationes: “By theme
we mean that whose representation contains the sufficient reason of other representations supplied in the
discourse, but which does not have its own sufficient reason in them” (Med. §66) Such a reason or
principle [ratio], however, is no different in kind from the principle which is always needed to account for
the unity of any perfect thing. Baeumler also suggests that Baumgarten posits a special sensible unity but
does not explain what it consists in (p. 227).
62
Baeumler, pp. 225-227; Gross, Felix p. 48.
63
Met. §92. The terms “material” and “objective” come from Aes. §423-424. For the same concept in
Wolff, see Ont. §495-498. Metaphysical truth is also understood as the order of many (i.e., the parts) in
one (i.e., the whole which answers to a universal) (Baumgarten, Met. §89; Wolff, Ont. §495). For this
reason it is closely related to perfection, although it lacks perfection’s additional element of the order
among the universals themselves; however this comes into play only in composite perfection. On this see
Wolff, DMet. §721.
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truth… sometimes chiefly appears to the intellect in the spirit, while it is distinctly perceived,
and sometimes it appears to the analog of reason and the lower cognitive faculties [i.e., sense],
either solely, or principally.”64 Thus we represent the same underlying truth through the two
parts of our cognitive faculty:65 as represented distinctly it is called “logical truth”66 and as
represented less than distinctly it is called “aesthetic truth.” So, there is no qualitative distinction
between the objects of sense and intellect. Whether a qualitative difference exists in
corresponding parts of the cognitive faculty is taken up next.
Part 2 – Baumgarten’s broad agreement with Wolff about cognition
Both Wolff and Baumgarten held the Leibnizian view that the soul is a vis
repraesentativa, a power of representing the world.67 This should be understood as the
metaphysical thesis that there is a representation relation between the contents of the mind and
the way the world is in itself, and that the mind actively represents the world.68 As a result, the
mind acts and does not merely receive impressions passively, even in sensing.69 Further, all
mental content is 1) intentionally related to some aspect of the world as it is, and therefore 2) not
merely private and subjective. Baumgarten in particular is fastidious about specifying that each
and every mental faculty “represents the world according to the position of my body.”70 That
64
Aes. §424. Cf. Handschrift §424, which is somewhat helpful here.
As Croce has already recognized, though he prematurely dismisses this view as absurd (pp. 215-216).
66
That is, logical truth in the narrow sense. Baumgarten also recognizes the concept of logical truth in the
wide sense (Aes. §423) which is just the general agreement of a representation with its object, and
therefore also includes aesthetic truth insofar as it is accurate. In order to avoid confusion, Baumgarten
decides to use the term “logical truth” for distinct representations only, and coins the new term
“aestheticological truth” (Aes. §427) for “logical truth in the wide sense.”
67
Wolff, DMet. §§773-774; Baumgarten, Met. §§506-507.
68
It should not be confused with the contemporary epistemological view called representationalism. The
rationalists’ metaphysical claim by itself is silent about how propositional beliefs can be justified by sense
experience.
69
Wolff, DMet. §223.
70
E.g., sense Met. §534, imagination §557, intellect §625.
65
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Wolff and Baumgarten share this general outlook is not explicitly challenged by any
commentators.
Both Wolff and Baumgarten distinguish sense and intellect, associating the former with
what they call the inferior part of the cognitive faculty and the latter with the superior part.71
Sense apprehends confused ideas, while the intellect apprehends distinct ideas; Baumgarten even
defines “sensible” as ideas insofar as the are confused.72 Baumgarten also names the inferior,
sensible cognitive faculty as the so-called “analogon rationis” and identifies it with aesthetics.73
Aesthetics is, in other words, the science of sensible, confused cognition, or cognition through
the analogon rationis. According to Wessell, Baeumler and Guyer,74 such an “analogon” must
be both similar to but also different from reason. All of this suggests that Baumgarten may have
committed himself to a nonrational mode of cognition (and perhaps Wolff did so as well, though
no commentators entertain that possibility). This alleged mode of cognition would perceive
something besides universal rules and determinations and the connections among them, as
described above.
On the other hand, there is strong evidence that Wolff and Baumgarten accepted the “lex
continui,” the dictum that God and nature do not make leaps. Baumgarten is most explicit:
“nature makes no leaps from obscurity into distinctness. From night to day through dawn.”75
This implies that a sharp division between a lower and higher faculty is impossible; they would
have to differ in degree along a continuum. Accordingly, other commentators believe that
Baumgarten, like Wolff, must view sensibility merely as an inferior power of manipulating
abstract, desiccated concepts; i.e., it must do the same thing that the “intellect” does, but in a
71
Wolff, Psy. §54-55; Baumgarten, Met. §521;624.
Met. §521; Aes. §17.
73
Aes. §1.
74
Wessell, pp. 338-339; Baeumler, p. 226.; Guyer, SEP (see below).
75
Aes. §7.
72
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confused and less effective manner.76 This view has the dubious benefit of Kant’s blessing: he
thought that the lex continui “left nothing for the senses but the contemptible occupation of
confusing and upsetting the representations of the [understanding]” and claims explicitly that
Baumgarten’s “attempt of bringing the critical estimation of the beautiful under the principles of
reason” was failed and hopeless.77 Indeed, a view which made the senses an unreliable tool for
manipulating abstract concepts would have little hope of yielding a plausible aesthetics.
In this part, I argue for a middle position: that Baumgarten, like Wolff before him, did
accept the lex continui, but that they also had a plausible account of sensibility which did not
make it an inferior form of abstract apprehension and manipulation. Baumgarten actually
innovated very little here beyond clarification and extension of Wolff’s published views.
Section 1: The analogon rationis. Guyer provides the most explicit account among those
who think that the “analogon rationis” is a form of cognition which structurally parallels but is
distinct from intellectual cognition.78 As he explains it, “Baumgarten… take[s] a list of the
categories of the perfections of the content of logical or scientific cognition and construct[s] a
parallel list by adding the adjective ‘sensible’ to them to arrive at a list of sensible or aesthetic
perfections… The list of the perfections of every kind of cognition that Baumgarten gives in the
first chapter of the Aesthetica is ‘wealth, magnitude, truth, clarity, [certainty (sic),] and
liveliness’… and thus beauty consists in the aesthetic versions of these perfections.” Guyer does
not explain what the sensible versions of truth or certainty, etc. amount to, and indeed leaves one
wondering how Baumgarten justifies this move. In fact there is no special “aesthetic version” of
these perfections, and Baumgarten really does intend them to be the perfections all cognition,
76
Croce, pp. 215-216; Cassirer, pp. 120-121.
KrV A276/B332; A21/B35, Guyer-Wood translation.
78
This arrangement is familiar to readers of Kant as operating in the transition from the “Table of
Judgments” (A70/B95) which operate on noumena, to the “Table of Categories” (A80/B106) which
operate on phenomena.
77
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including both aesthetic and intellectual cognition. All of these perfections79 are defined in the
Metaphysica in terms of universals and are not redefined in specially “sensible” terms in that or
any other text.80
Baeumler insists that “The representations of the imagination and of the senses are
capable of their own connection and their own unity,”81 but says almost nothing specific about
how this special unity is to be understood. Charitably, we might read him this way: that
Baumgarten’s science could be an investigation of the question: why do some confused
perceptions hold together, cohere, or have unity in relation to our senses, while others do not?
Perhaps some mental “principle of sensible unity” could be posited as the explanation, and the
science of aesthetics could be aimed at investigating this principle.
There is some truth to this suggestion. Our senses do represent some aggregates as unities
and not others, and unity is needed for perfection. Some of the specific formal elements that
Baumgarten connects to beauty, such as“lucid presentation,”82 are plausibly understood in terms
of their conferring unity to the senses. But there can be no a priori principle of unity for the
senses in Baumgarten’s system, as there is in Kant’s.83 This is because what is characteristic of
sense cognition is simply its confusion, the mental representation of what is really many as one.84
Confusion as such can have no a priori principle: we cannot know a priori whether one kind or
another of confused perception will appear to us as a unity. Rather, we must use experience –
79
More accurately: qualities which count toward the perfection of something.
Met. §§515,531.
81
Baeumler, p. 227.
82
Med. §§70-71.
83
By “a priori” is meant cognized from general principles or axioms, without the benefit of any particular
sense experience. See Met. §24 and Wolff, Psy. §434.
84
Met.§§521;510, and see below.
80
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guided by the universal principles of rationalist psychology and tempered by more specific
universal generalizations – in order to discover general principles of unity.85
In fact, Baumgarten’s analogon rationis does not anticipate a Kantian subjective unity of
sensible objects at all. Instead, as in so much else, it looks back to Wolff and Leibniz. In the
Psychologia Empirica Wolff had already described the “analogium rationis” as the faculty by
which we expect similar effects from similar causes.86 Because the causal nexus is, according to
Wolff, determined by the universal laws which exist in things, this faculty gives us a highly
confused insight into the connection among the universally ordered determinations of things. It is
precisely on that account similar to reason, “or as it were the lowest degree of reason, the nearest
rung on the way to reason, or even the beginning of reason.”87 As he explains this faculty,
“Reasoning lies hidden in the expectation of similar cases, insofar as it is explainable through a
syllogism; but the mind does not distinguish the singular propositions from each other, except
confusedly.”88 Because Wolff seemed more interested in such a faculty insofar as we shared it
with animals, he restricted the object of his analogium rationis to the connection of causal truths
alone. Under Baumgarten the notion took on a broader, but not fundamentally different
significance: an faculty to gain a confused insight into the connection of universal truths through
a lower intellectual faculty. The analogon rationis is therefore best understood as our ability to
cognize the very same structure of universal truths confusedly, rather than distinctly. Precisely
what this means, and whether it involves a deeper qualitative difference between confused and
distinct or between intellect and sense, is taken up in the following two sections.
85
Aes. §§10;73;482.
Psy. §506, also DMet §372. This provenance has already been noted by Gregor, although I do not think
that “Wolff could not… have anticipated the use to which Baumgarten would put [his] suggestion” (p.
373). Wolff in turn took the view from Leibniz, who also referred to a faculty which “bears some
resemblance to reason” (“Principles of Nature and Grace” §5, p. 208; “Monadology” §28, p. 216).
87
Wolff, DMet §872. Wolff evidently lifted his example of the dog directly from Leibniz (op. cit.).
88
Wolff, Psy. §505.
86
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Section 2: Confused vs. distinct. Following Leibniz,89 both Wolff and Baumgarten divide
representations or general mental content into clear and obscure; and clear into distinct and
confused. As we shall soon see, this taxonomy is central to both Wolff’s and Baumgarten’s
aesthetics. A clear perception of X is that which my power of representation distinguishes from
other perceptions, while an obscure perception is that which I do not distinguish from others.90
Clear perceptions are either distinct or confused. A clear perception of X is distinct if and to the
extent that I can identify (and therefore say) what makes my perception of X different from other
perceptions, and confused otherwise.91 The principle by which a thing can be distinguished from
others is called a note [nota, Kennzeichen], which is a determination of a thing according to
universal law.92 If my perception of X is clear and distinct, I can distinguish the perception from
others and also distinguish and identify the notes in X which allow me to do so.93 In a clear but
confused perception of X, I distinguish X from other things but cannot distinguish or identify the
notes in X which allow me to do so. As Wolff and Baumgarten point out, confused perceptions
always contains something obscure in them even if they are clear when considered as a whole.
Specifically, in a clear but confused perception I perceive the notes obscurely.94
If confused and distinct differ only in degree, not in kind, as I wish to maintain, then it
should be possible to define one in terms of the other along with a relevant kind of negation. For
example, we know that hot and cold as physical quantities do not differ in kind because heat can
Leibniz, “Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas,” pp. 23-27.
Baumgarten, Met. §510; Wolff, Psy. §31. There is a modal ambiguity between “can distinguish” and
“does distinguish” in these definitions. In psychological and aesthetic matters, we are almost always
interested in what I do distinguish, while what I can distinguish is more relevant to epistemology.
91
Baumgarten, Met. §510; Wolff, Psy. §39.
92
Baumgarten, Met. §67. A note is just a determination which can distinguish one thing from an other in
representation. Wolff rarely uses this term (e.g., Psy. §371), generally preferring “determination” or
“enunciabilia” (because whatever we can distinguish, we can name).
93
Baumgarten, Met. §522; Wolff, Psy. §38.
94
Baumgarten, Met. §510; Wolff, Psy. §33.
89
90
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be defined as a certain collective molecular motion and cold can be defined as the relative lack of
that very same molecular motion. In order to do this in the present case, we need first to
recognize that the concepts “clear,” “obscure,” “distinct,” “confused,” are always relative to the
part or whole being attended to.95 For example, what is perceived distinctly as a whole will be
perceived clearly as parts (i.e. notes); that thing’s parts of parts may be perceived clearly or even
obscurely, and a clear but confused perception, when considered as a whole, is nonetheless
typically part of a more encompassing perception, which is distinct because it has the clearly
perceived parts as notes.96 This fact leads Wolff to the following explanation: “Clarity always
turns out to be a degree deeper than distinctness. The first degree of clarity [i.e. something
merely clear but confused] has no distinctness, with the next degree of clarity begins the first
degree of distinctness, and so forth.”97 So clarity and distinctness do not differ in kind, but only
in degree. As for confusion, it is “a lack of a further degree of clarity, and for that reason arises
when our thoughts are obscure in relation to the parts of the manifold, which is met with in a
thing.”98 In other words, confusion is just the negation of distinctness, which itself is just the
clarity of the parts of a clear perception. There is no difference in kind. Below, I show that
Baumgarten gives a subtly but importantly different account of this single cognitive measure.
Section 3: Intellect vs. sense. Both Wolff and Baumgarten divide the cognitive faculty
into a superior and inferior faculty. The superior faculty is associated with intellect and distinct
95
This goes at least for ideas of immediately apprehended singular things. With respect to the application
of abstract representations, the concepts are relative to the species of the thing perceived. For example, I
may be able to enumerate the notes which allow me to distinguish a particular pigeon from other animals,
so my perception of the pigeon qua animal is distinct; I may be able to distinguish the same pigeon from
other birds but not explain what the difference consists in, so the same perception of the pigeon qua bird
is clear but confused; and I may not be able to distinguish that particular pigeon from other pigeons, so
the same perception of the pigeon qua pigeon is obscure.
96
Wolff, DMet. §§207;212; Psy. §41.
97
Wolff, DMet. §211.
98
Wolff, DMet. §215.
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ideas, while the inferior faculty is associated with sense and confused ideas.99 Granted that
confused and distinct lie on a single scale, sense and intellect seem to embody another, sharper
division: namely the difference between apprehending concrete individuals through sense, and
apprehending abstract general concepts through the intellect. Two-faculty commentators think
that Baumgarten’s introduction of the notion, “sense cognition, as such”100 represented a
liberation from the abstract intellectual thinking championed by Wolff,101 while one-faculty
commentators again point to Baumgarten’s commitment to the lex continui, insisting that
Baumgarten’s cognitio sensitiva must remain a form of intellectual abstraction after all. As
Cassirer sums up, “No independent organizing principle is devised, instead only a new class of
‘sensible concepts’ is presented.”102 In my view, both sides mischaracterize Wolff’s and
Baumgarten’s views.
Cassirer and Croce are mistaken if they think that the cognitive theories of Wolff and
Baumgarten are fundamentally based on abstract ideas. If we go back to their definitions, both
Wolff and Baumgarten are perfectly clear that the intellect is simply the faculty for apprehending
things distinctly.103 Neither simply identified distinct ideas with abstract general ideas or what
Wolff called “notions.”104 The mind forms notions, according to both philosophers, by
abstracting a note which is common to several individuals in order to yield ideas of species and
99
Wolff, Psy. §§54-55. He is careful to same that the distinction is only nominal or instrumental,
however: “Pars enim facultatis cognoscendi inferior & superior terminus philosophicus est, cui nulla inest
veritas.” Baumgarten uses “insofar as” [quatenus] in a critical passage on sensibility (Met. §522). Thus
even based on superficial evidence, the two-faculty reading is on shaky ground.
100
Aes. §14.
101
Baeumler, p. 225; Gross, “Neglected” p. 409; Gregor also suggests this view (p. 384).
102
Cassirer, p. 128.
103
Wolff, Psy. §275. This passage also contains an interesting discussion of the vulgar use of the term
“intellect” and its supposed opposition to sense and imagination. Baumgarten, Met. §402. Baumgarten
also introduces the notion of “intellect in the wide sense” which is just the faculty of cognition in general,
encompassing both distinct and confused ideas (Met. §519).
104
Psy. §50. NB, in his Logica and Ontologia, the term “notion” also applies to individuals. Wolff is
aware of this terminological “variation” but is unconcerned by it (ibid). Baumgarten prefers the term
“conception” [conceptio] (Met. §623).
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genera.105 Thus abstract notions are derivative mental content, and cannot be the fundamental
cognitive “units” for either Wolff or Baumgarten.106
On the other hand, Cassirer and Croce may think that distinct ideas (and by implication of
the lex continui, all other ideas as well) are inherently “abstract,” simply by virtue of the fact that
a distinct perception always involves the ability to attribute a universal determination – a note –
to the thing perceived. However, since all determinations are universally determined (according
to the principle of sufficient reason) and since the most concrete things, individuals, are things
determined in every way, there is simply nothing to be perceived except concrete complexes of
universal determinations and abstractions of universal laws from them.107 In this case the attack
begs the question against Wolff and Baumgarten’s metaphysics in assuming that there that must
be properties of concrete objects not determined by universal laws.
Does the mental activity of abstraction itself constitute something different in kind from
the mental activity of apprehending individuals through sense, as the two-faculty commentators
believe? Wolff is not as clear as one would like on this point, writing only that “When we
consider [intuemur] those which are distinguished in a perception separated from the thing
perceived, we are said to abstract from it.”108 Fortunately, Baumgarten delves further into the
psychology of abstraction. Abstraction, he agrees, is the separating of a part from its whole, but
explains that this separation is simply a matter of attending to that part more than the whole. I
attend to something simply by perceiving it more clearly than its surroundings. Because it is a
general fact about cognition that in perceiving some X more clearly, I perceive everything else
105
Wolff, Psy. §49. Baumgarten, Like ideas of individuals, notions can be obscure, clear, confused, or
distinct (Psy. §50), and it is distinct vs. confused – not general vs. individual - which marks the boundary
between the superior and inferior cognitive faculties.
106
In fact, for Baumgarten forming an abstract idea involves at least six more basic mental operations
(Met. §631). The details are partly described below.
107
See Met. §§148-154.
108
Psy. §282.
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more obscurely, attention involves obscuring what I am not presently attending to.109 Thus the
formation of abstract general ideas for Baumgarten is not a special, distinct mental act but simply
a species of the general act of attending.110 This is very different from Kant’s two-faculty view,
which is perhaps more familiar. But it is virtually identical to Hume’s one-faculty psychology of
abstraction,111 in that it only involves attention, and not the perception of some abstract general
self-subsisting object - something which does not exist in Baumgarten’s metaphysics any more
than it does in Hume’s.112,113
Section 4: Was there a shift to subjectivism? In his later Aesthetica, Baumgarten
“redefines” beauty as “the perfection of sense cognition, as such.”114 Some commentators read
this as a fundamental shift from the fully objective aesthetic of the Meditationes and
Metaphysica to a more subjective aesthetic, one which locates beauty more in the cognitive
faculties of the observer than in the object itself.115 There is, however, a much more
straightforward explanation for this new definition. Because the Aesthetica purports to give a
universal account of beauty116 – unlike the Meditations which was explicitly focused on poetry it cannot primarily treat of what makes objects beautiful in themselves. As we have seen,
perfection is a general concept of metaphysics. A poem, a piece of music, and a tree are all
perfect in the same general way that organisms and the world are, so a universal account of
109
Met. §529.
Met. §§629-631.
111
Hume, A Treatise of Human Nature sec. 1.1.7.
112
Indeed, this theory seems to sit even more comfortably with the rationalists than with Hume, because
in Wolff and Baumgarten generality is already built into the objects themselves, while in Hume the
metaphysical status of generality requires additional explanation.
113
Wolff would almost certainly have agreed with Baumgarten’s theory of abstraction, because he also
held the same theory of attention (Psy. §§235-237;256) and the same view that a clearer perception of one
thing obscures the surrounding perceptions (Psy. §§74-76). He simply neglected to apply this doctrine
explicitly to the formation of abstract ideas.
114
Aes. §14.
115
Guyer calls this a “subtle departure from Wolff” (SEP); cf. Gross, “Neglected” p. 410.
116
Aes. §§17,71.
110
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beauty would not differ from a universal account of perfection. A detailed analysis of the general
observability of perfection in general is what remained to be investigated. Of course,
observability is not distinct from the qualities of the object itself, so the objective features are
certainly not irrelevant – merely de-emphasized. This is the reason for the shift in emphasis from
the object to the cognitive act.117 The “as such” is another matter, to be discussed in Part 4 of this
paper.
Part 3: Baumgarten’s new attitude about the metaphysics of beauty
As we have seen, Baumgarten neither broke with the fundamental tenets of Wolffian
rationalism, nor altered Wolff’s general understanding of beauty as perfection insofar as it is
observable. His innovation instead comes from a shift in the kinds of reasons or principles
involved in the perfection characteristic of beauty – in what we might call his “specific
conception” of perfection.118 According to Wolff, the reasons governing perfection are chiefly
teleological, so that a thing is perfect insofar as all of its parts and their arrangement tend toward
a common end.119 As he writes, “beauty is founded in perfection, and perfection moreover
depends on ends” and that “the perfection of things is assessed from their ends,” even calling the
study of the latter “teleology.”120 Perhaps even more telling than these explicit claims, nearly all
of the examples Wolff uses in explaining perfection, including in relation to beauty, are
thoroughly teleological. Both the perfection and beauty of a clock, for example, consists in its
117
For a similar explanation of this shift, see Gregor, pp. 376-377.
Guyer (SEP) also believes Baumgarten innovated by changing the sorts of reasons which count for the
perfection of a thing. But he thinks that the move involves an increase in the role of formalism, which I
believe is a mischaracterization. Neither Wolff nor Baumgarten recognize formalism as such, understood
as the idea that only the arrangement of parts, and not their content, contributes to beauty.
119
Ont. §503.
120
EAC §14; HSM §7.
118
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conformity to the end of a clock: telling time accurately.121 This gives Wolff’s theory of beauty
the cast of an engineer’s appreciation, something which seems quite foreign to the beauty of
poetry, painting, and music. Yet two of Wolff’s examples do not entirely fit the teleological
mold.122
First, he claims that the perfection of an image consists in its similarity to its prototype,
for example a picture of grape is perfect insofar as it is similar in appearance to an actual
grape.123 Perfection grounded in similarity need not be based on the intentions of the painter.124
Second, Wolff claims that architectural elements generally ought to have small whole number
proportions, like 2:1 or 2:3, etc.125 Wolff’s rationale is that the agreement of the building with
principles of beauty should “be easily discerned by the judgment of the eyes,” and the eyes most
easily grasp simple whole number proportions. But precisely what principles of beauty are at
Ont. §506; DMet. §152-153. Other examples of Wolff’s teleological notion of perfection include the
perfections of human life (Ont. §503), society (DMet. §152), telescope lenses (Ont. §505), the eye (Ont.
§§506-507; DMet. §158), the windows of buildings (Ont. §516, DMet §§158-160,167), and buildings
themselves (Ont. §516; DMet. §170; EAC §§5,8-9).
122
Wolff also brings some non-teleological formal notions of beauty into his treatise on architecture, but
they are extremely underdeveloped in both their introduction and application. The concept of “eurythmia”
(EAC §31), for example, is derived from the experience of its being pleasing, but Wolff makes no effort
to explain this pleasingness in terms of general principles. Likewise with “symmetry,” whose definition
as “the agreement of the parts among themselves and with the whole” (EAC §24) is too vague (since as
stated it could be strictly teleological as well) and its application insufficiently grounded (e.g., EAC
§151). Most often in this work, the beauty of architectural elements obey either rules of proportion
(discussed below) or their observable suitability with their ends, e.g. a beautiful column is one that
appears to satisfy its purpose of easily bearing the weight of the building (EAC §90). Guyer believes that
Wolff has a more robust formal notion of beauty, but the only evidence he cites are passages to the effect
that beauty is pleasurable (cf. EAC §8) and that a building should be beautiful and decorative (cf. EAC
§18). But it is question-begging to assume that beauty is here understood formally, when it is understood
teleologically everywhere else; even decoration [ornatus] is explained in terms of its purpose to draw the
eyes of those going past (EAC §15). In general it cannot be claimed that Wolff had any significant formal
conception of beauty beyond the very general (and indeed definitional) view that the parts must agree
with each other in constituting the whole, along with a few platitudes which were fashionable at the time.
123
Ont. §512. The grape example is from this passage.
124
Wolff seems to quash this possibility, however, in arguing for this proposition by claiming that the
painter “must not have intended other than to represent the prototype” (Ont. §512). This would make the
teleological explanation primary. Nonetheless, it seems that the representational of perfection is also at
work.
125
EAC §§25,29.
121
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work here? Does he simply wish the viewer to notice to notice most easily that the architect had
some principle or other in mind when designing the building? Although that may be part of the
explanation, it is not all. To see this, consider the importantly different specific conception of
perfection from Wolff’s Deutsche Metaphysik:
“In a picture and generally in every thing which represents something else, all things
agree with each other when there is nothing encountered in it which would not also be found in
the represented thing, since the reason why it is [warum es ist] consists in the representation of
another thing. And for that reason the perfection of a picture and generally of a thing, which
represents something else, is its similarity with what it represents. Thus the more similarity is
encountered, the greater perfection there is.”126
The preference for integer proportion, then, is not held merely because it suits our
cognitive faculties. Rather, integer proportions are also inherently beautiful because of what they
represent to sense: geometrical truths about the world. I call this second specific conception of
perfection the representative conception, because it measures the perfection of a thing according
to how well it represents something else, as opposed to the teleological conception detailed
above. Interestingly, Wolff neglected to develop the representative conception of perfection
beyond the rather paltry examples I have given. This is precisely where Baumgarten picks up the
metaphysical reigns.
In what should be understood as a highly significant shift in attitude and emphasis but not
doctrine per se, Baumgarten jettisons the teleological conception of perfection entirely in
aesthetic matters,127 and focuses solely on the representational conception. This reorientation is
evident from his early definition of poetry as a form of discourse, where discourse is “a series of
126
DMet. §822. Note that this definition also applies to the monads that constitute the world (because they
are souls). For that reason it allows for parallel definitions of the perfection of the world: just as the world
is most perfect because it conforms perfectly with God’s ends in creating it (teleological conception), it is
also most perfect because all of the monads represent each other in perfect harmony (representational
conception).
127
As far as I am aware, Baumgarten never mentions ends, purposes or teleology with respect to anything
in his aesthetics or in any matters related to aesthetics.
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words designating connected representations,”128 to his claim that a poem resembles a picture
and both ought to clearly represent their objects,129 to the fact that beauty in the Aesthetica is
pervasively analyzed in terms of what and how the beautiful thing represents. For Baumgarten,
beautiful objects can represent many truths about the world, particularly very complex truths
which are less amenable to strict logical or scientific explanation. These include (but not limited
to) complex truths about human actions, how people live and how they ought to live.130 For
example, Baumgarten says that a beautiful object might show that a “man conducts himself
honorably, [although] I cannot provide a [strict] demonstration of it.”131 He approvingly cites
Shaftesbury’s claim that “every virtue is constituted in the love of truth”132 The perfection and
value of beautiful things therefore consist in their power to represent complex truths133 about the
world to us.
Baumgarten draws many consequences for this result, but the following three are most
important. First, and most directly, objects are beautiful insofar as they represent truth about the
world, not insofar as they represent falsity.134 This does not rule out fiction – not even fictions
which are nomologically impossible.135 But it places significant constraints on when such
devices may be deployed, typically when depicting actuality would not represent some truth
(e.g., a moral truth) as effectively and beautifully.136 Baumgarten claims that in general, the
128
Med. §1.
Med. §38-39.
130
Baumgarten writes approvingly that “the historian is allotted the task of presenting what happened, and
the poet what ought to happen, and for this reason [Aristotle] praises poetry, since it is more philosophical
than history, and speaks of more universal things, because it expresses more the particular” (Aes. §586).
131
Handschrift §423, p. 214.
132
Aes. §556.
133
The reason that beautiful objects ought to represent complex truths is rooted in our cognitive
limitations, as discussed in the following part, not in the metaphysics of beauty per se.
134
Med. §§51-64; Aes. §§431,442-444;481-502.
135
Med. §§52-53; Aes. §566.
136
This goes deeply into the details of the Aesthetica, but some of the most relevant passages are
§§486,491,493,495-500,502.
129
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objects of “poetic” or fictional aesthetic thinking should differ as little as possible from actual
objects, and only for the sake of the beauty of the whole.137 Second, objects are beautiful insofar
as they present truth in an orderly and expressive way.138 A disorderly arrangement or inelegant
expression, like a mathematical proof all of whose steps are jumbled, might represent the same
material elements of truth but not in a way amenable to our grasping them. Third, since
representing truly is a matter of agreement or similarity with the object being represented, a thing
can be beautiful in its similarity to the harmonious structure of the world, in that it represents that
harmonious structure to us. Thus the more an object imitates the general structure of the perfect
structure of nature in which each of the parts represents the whole, the more perfect it is. “The
poet is like a maker or a creator. So the poem ought to be like a world. Hence by analogy
whatever is evident to the philosophers concerning the real world [i.e. its maximal perfection],
the same ought to be thought of a poem.”139 This is the idea of the “theme,” the sufficient reason
of the whole which explains all the parts of a thing,140 and is a reiteration of the representational
concept of perfection: Not only must a beautiful object represent truths about the world, but its
parts should also represent its whole. In this way, of course, it also represents our harmonious
world all the more though its similarity.141 Each of these features of beauty deserves a much
more thorough treatment, but that is a task for another time.
137
Aes. §595. This means that the truth represented by the whole must be worth the cost of the poetic
license (i.e. falsity) allowed in the parts.
138
Med. §§69-107. Along with the representation of truth, an orderly and expressive form are the three
main topics of Baumgarten’s aesthetics. See Med. §6; Aes. §13. What I am here calling the “third
consequence” is a more general feature of beauty, which is really more directly a consequence of
perfection in general.
139
Med. §68. For the idea that the poet imitates the general nature of the world, see Med. §§108-110.
Baumgarten also cites the cosmological world-structure (Met. §§444-446) in explaining the nature of
beauty, particularly the idea that the parts get their perfection through their relation to the whole (Aes.
§§24-25). Baumgarten inherited this idea through Wolff (DMet §§599,712).
140
Med. §66.
141
Cf. Leibniz, “Monadology” §63, p. 221.
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In claiming that beauty is the perfection of phenomenon,142 Baumgarten rehabilitated the
Leibnizian idea of the phenomena bene fundata which had been downplayed by Wolff.
According to this idea, observable surface features143 represent underlying metaphysical features
to us, although imperfectly and confusedly.144 In such a phenomenon there is therefore truth
mixed with falsity, something Baumgarten recognizes is true of the way beautiful objects
represent the world. Not everything about them turns out to accurately reflect the world,
especially upon close examination, but they do represent the world to some extent and derive
their perfection from that very quality.145 Wolff does not seem to have approved of this idea. In
the key passages explicating his representational conception of perfection, Wolff claims that
sense cognitions accurately represent the world only insofar as they distinguish shape, size, and
motion, because the parts of the world (insofar as they are composite) have only those properties
to distinguish them in themselves.146 Thus only content which I resolve into shape, size, and
motion is representative of the way the world is; the rest is merely confused and false. This
doctrine amounts to a denial of the representational value of phenomena bene fundata, instead
insisting that a cognition is either true and representational or false, and assigning zero
representational value, rather than limited but significant representational value, to anything
other than distinct spatio-temporal cognition of composites. Baumgarten, by contrast, writes that
“we do not declare that whatever can induce a kind of falsity for any reason is to be
142
Met. §662.
Leibniz usually had time and space in mind but the same concept can be easily extended to other ideas.
144
Importantly, Baumgarten’s use of “phenomenon” in his definition of beauty does not indicate the later
Kantian distinction in kind between noumena and phenomena.
145
The truth of a cognition is its correspondence with reality and a matter of degree, Met. §515.
146
DMet. §§770-771,823-826. From §824, “Insofar as [sensations] have distinctness, they represent
things as they are; insofar as they are confused, the things are represented other than according to their
true properties.”
143
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eliminated.”147 I believe Wolff’s failure to generalize the representational conception of
perfection, as well as his predilection toward architecture, may be explained by this Cartesian
prejudice against phenomena. But Baumgarten’s return to Leibniz appears more a shift in
attitude than a fundamental shift in doctrine.148
Part 4: The value of the sensible cognition of beauty
As we have seen, Baumgarten defines beauty as “the perfection of sensible cognition, as
such [qua talis].” As many have already noticed, the “as such” indicates that Baumgarten thinks
there is something about sense cognition that is of particular interest and value—something
important which intellectual cognition lacks. But this raises a serious question, given the overall
interpretation I have been urging. If beauty is based on universal principles which are in principle
accessible to intellectual cognition, and if sense cognition involves confusion and at least some
falsity, what is the value of the sensible cognition of beauty? In other words, given that the
superior and inferior faculties have the same object, why should we bother with the inferior
faculty and beauty at all?
According to Wolff, it is just an empirical fact about human beings that we feel pleasure
only from the confused intuition of a whole, and not from a distinct comparison of the parts with
the laws to which they ought to conform.149 Since pleasure for Wolff is intimately connected to
147
Aes. §561.
Guyer claims that Baumgarten also innovated by making the subject’s reflexive observation of her
own powers of sensibility a new source of pleasure. “The satisfaction of [our] mental powers summed up
in the analogon rationis is a source of pleasure in its own right” (SEP); Hammermeister, p. 11 and
Schweizer, p. 40 make similar claims. However, once we see that aim of sensibility, just like intellect, is
to represent truths about the world, this idea is no longer original. Wolff had already written at length
about the pleasure we receive by reflexively perceiving our cognizing of truth, even explicitly connecting
this to beauty (Psy. §§532,536,550; HSM §§4,8).
149
“Certainly everyone knows that agreement with laws cannot be perceived except confusedly… for it
does not seem to be able to happen that the laws [of architecture] are applied by distinct ratiocination to
those [elements] which are observed, nor [does it happen that] determinations abstracted from the
building and related to the laws are judged to be the same” (Psy. §536).
148
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his virtue ethics as a force which moves the will, it is ethically important that we cultivate our
senses to perceive true, rather than apparent beauty.150 But this is ethical, not cognitive value.
Wolff’s examples of beauty show that he has a dim view of their cognitive value. Each of his
examples involves a principle of perfection which either could be better grasped distinctly, like
the similarity of a picture to its prototype, or it involves a simplicity which was thought to be
suitable for the weak powers of the senses, like whole number proportions in architecture. In this
way Wolff allows sense and the sensible apprehension of beauty no added cognitive value as
such – there is nothing to be gained cognitively in apprehending beauty through sense rather than
intellect.151 In this way, Wolffian sense really is a much inferior shadow of the intellect. Cassirer
attributes a very similar view to Baumgarten, claiming that he allotted to his new aesthetics
merely the task of providing concrete examples of abstract, purely intellectual principles, so that
sense can help us feel the force of general truths through examples, but not grasp and understand
them.152
In this Cassirer is incorrect. Baumgarten would not deny that sense cognition has both
ethical value and instrumental value for the intellect,153 but he went beyond Wolff in claiming
that it also has its own cognitive value which is exemplified in the sensible cognition of beauty.
In order to understand this new value, we must go back to his early division of clarity into
intensive and extensive clarity. Intensive clarity is “greater clarity of clear notes,”154 which is the
same as distinctness. Extensive clarity is “the clarity of notes in great number”,155 i.e. the number
of notes which the clear perception encompasses, without regard how clearly or distinctly those
150
See the example of sweets at Psy. §550.
Leibniz comes very close to expressing the same view, “Principles of Nature and Grace” §17, p. 212.
152
Cassirer, pp. 126-127.
153
Aes. §3.
154
Met. §531; cf. Med. §16 where this term is first introduced.
155
Ibid.
151
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notes are perceived. It should be borne in mind that in a clear but confused perception, the notes
perceived in fact sufficiently determine the perceiver to clearly perception of the whole, even if
she is not conscious of or attending to the notes themselves. Because all of the notes of a thing
are determined through universal laws, and truth is conformity with universal laws, a perception
which is extensively clearer than another encompasses more perfection, all things being equal,
even if we have less insight into this perfection.156
Now, although Wolff did not explicitly distinguish between extensive and intensive
clarity, he had already recognized that cognitions which include more content are, all else being
equal, more perfect than those including less.157 But Baumgarten noticed something important
Wolff had not: that there is a psychological tradeoff between intensive and extensive clarity. As
the mind strives after one, it loses its grip on the other. The psychological mechanism of this is
simple and highly plausible: it is attention, and the old Wolffian principle that by attending one
thing more clearly than others, the others are obscured. In order to perceive something more
intensively clearly, I need to attend more closely to its notes, but this tends to obscure the whole
and reduce the total amount that is clearly perceived in the thing. In order to perceive something
more extensively clearly, I must focus more on the whole, which obscures for me any
penetrating insight into some particular part.158 According to Baumgarten, it is extensive clarity
of representation, at which the poet or artist ought primarily to aim; she ought to prioritize
156
Ibid.
DMet. §208. This observation is noticeably downplayed and neglected in his writings; Wolff tends to
focus his attention almost entirely on what Baumgarten calls “intensive clarity.”
158
Baumgarten’s most explicit statement that there is an unavoidable tradeoff is put in terms of material
and formal perfection (Aes. §560). However, the same fact follows directly from Baumgarten’s account of
attention and abstraction. And, the reason he gives for the tradeoff between formal and material perfection
– the need to abstract from the whole – is explained in the Metaphysica in terms of clarity and attention
(§§634-636).
157
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material perfection over the formal.159 The scientist and philosopher, by contrast, ought to aim
primarily at intensive clarity or distinctness, and must more carefully preserve the formal
perfection of cognition.
So, there is a cognitive advantage in representing the world aesthetically rather than
intellectually: Aesthetic representation allows us to depict more truths and more perfection of
more complex phenomena. These truths and perfections cannot be presented in their full detail or
full rigor because our cognitive faculties are not capable of it. Baumgarten is emphasizing
something like our ability to grasp more complex information from a chart than a long series of
numbers, even though we apprehend the information less precisely—though of course applied
more widely to truths about human nature and the world. This is the true reason that the
representation of individuals is highly poetic: not because they contain something irreducibly
unique, but their extreme complexity – their being determined in every respect – makes them
particularly appropriate for the aesthetic mode of cognition, and particularly ill-suited to the
logical and scientific mode, which can only pick out (at most) a few determinations of an
individual at a time.160
Baumgarten’s insight about extensive clarity is a symptom of another shift in attitude
from Wolff. For Wolff the fundamental unit of knowledge was distinct cognition. After defining
a clear but confused perception as one which is not distinct, Wolff struggled to give a positive
account of clear cognition, finally settling on this:
“We are no less conscious to ourselves of our power of distinguishing many perceivables in one
perceiveable, than [we are] of our impotence for doing the same; indeed we are even more
conscious to ourselves of the impotence… Thus the notion of impotence involves the notion of
159
That is, the aesthetician should aim not just at a lot of notes, but at a lot of notes which constitute
perfection.
160
This general observation has been made by many commentators (e.g., Baeumler, p. 224), but always
under the assumption that aesthetic and intellectual cognition are different in kind. As I have shown, the
point goes through precisely because aesthetic and intellectual cognition differ only quantitatively.
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frustrated striving, and thus something maximally positive. That impotence is… a specific
positive difference, thus it can serve in defining [clear but] confused perception, even if distinct
perception has not yet been defined.”161
In other words, what is positive about clear cognition for Wolff is not the clarity itself but the
fact that the perception involves the recognition of a lack, something which can be remedied only
through further analysis aimed at distinctness. Baumgarten, by contrast, takes clear, not distinct
cognition as the basic element from which all the knowledge we have is built up. He does not
hesitate to define distinctness directly in terms of clarity.162 Distinctness is just intensive clarity,
which is “clarity of clear notes.” Confusion is its negation, and obscurity is the negation of firstorder clarity. Thus the whole cognitive scale can be represented purely in terms of clarity and its
negation, which a fact Baumgarten explicitly codified in his concepts of intensive and extensive
clarity.163
Baumgarten’s insistence on a science of clear, but confused ideas has led to two related
misinterpretations. First, it has been suggested that by granting cognitive value to clear but
confused perceptions, Baumgarten gives obscurity for its own sake a place in aesthetics.164
Although it is true that a clear but confused perception contains something perceived obscurely –
161
Psy. §39.
Met. §522.
163
Like Wolff, Baumgarten recognized that nearly all of our representations are confused, or merely
clear, to some degree. But rather than lamenting this as a mere defect, he believed we needed to learn to
use our powers of sense to the degree we are able in order to acquire what truths we can: “The distance
between the aestheticological truth accessible to men and the greatest logical truth, which is only
accessible to omniscience, is infinitely large on account of the malum metaphysicum. And for this reason
a healthy mind will not reach a cognition which he knows is not possible for him, even with the most
loving striving; but at the same time he will not despise every cognition as soon as he recognizes that not
everything can be accessible to him: so he ought to be content with an infinitely small part of the highest
logical truth in the widest sense [i.e. comprising both strictly logical and aesthetic truth] that he can arrive
at” (Aes. §557). Baumgarten recognized that we unavoidably encounter the world primarily sensibly, not
intellectually. But this did not prevent him from continuing to advocate for the same cognitive virtues
championed by Wolff.
164
Gregor, pp. 367-370. To be fair, Gregor does say she does not intend to make Baumgarten “an
advocate of obscurity for its own sake” (p. 368), but it is hard to square this statement with her subsequent
account of the value of obscurity.
162
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namely the underlying notes – it does not follow that Baumgarten is advocating obscurity for its
own sake. Clarity is not merely a positive degree of distinctness mixed with obscurity and
confusion. For Baumgarten clarity is the fundamental and primary positive unit of cognition in
its own right. Obscurity is its negation, and something Baumgarten specifically excludes from
aesthetics.165 He is only interested in aesthetic cognition insofar as it grasps truth, not falsity.
“Confused thinking is not recommended, except for the improvement of [all] cognition, insofar
as something confused is necessarily admixed in thought.”166,167
Second, Baumgarten is thought to exclude distinct perceptions and abstracta from
aesthetics altogether. As it turns out, there is an opposition of sorts between intellectual or
abstract thinking and aesthetic, sensible thinking. It is a fundamental psychological opposition
based on a limitation in the total amount of notes we can cognize at once: we may cognize a
wider expanse of notes clearly but confusedly, or have greater insight into smaller number of
notes, by striving for distinctness, both not both at once to an arbitrary degree. Nonetheless,
Baumgarten emphasized that there is a wide swath of overlap between clear but and confused
and distinct, even in the same cognition. Even a simple cognition such as a visual impression is
distinct to some degree, for distinctness only requires that we be able to recognize the parts so
that we could explain what makes the whole what it is. Only a uniform and unchanging color
patch that occupied the entire visual field would have no distinctness whatsoever. In fact,
Baumgarten thinks that distinctness is a virtue in art no less than in science, as long as it does not
165
Aes. §§15-16,23.
Aes. §7. Cf. Wolff, Psy. §313. Baumgarten does grant a specific kind of obscurity an instrumental
value in drawing our attention to an unfamiliar object and engendering the feeling of wonder (Med. §46).
However he also insists that this obscurity as such is not poetic (Med. §47).
167
Baumgarten also excludes obscurity from the sublime (Aes. §303), which he understands as a species
of beauty (Aes. §§281,319) that is particularly moving on account of the greatness of the represented
object (Aes. §§305-306). Cf. Burke, who around the same time wrote that beauty and the sublime differ in
kind and that obscurity is essential to the latter (Enquiry 2.3, 3.27). Thanks to Fred Beiser for drawing my
attention to this important contrast.
166
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interfere with extensive clarity. Distinctness is a general cognitive virtue which also applies to
aesthetic cognition,168 and it ought only be sacrificed for a greater reason, namely that doing so
allows one to represent more material perfection. Thus the dictum that the artist should strive
primarily for extensively clear representations of maximum material perfection comes into play
only insofar a tradeoff must be made.
Much the same goes for abstract thinking. While Baumgarten does hold that all things
being equal, individuals are most worthy of poetic representation because they contain the most
notes, he recognizes that it is often appropriate to depict abstracta aesthetically as well.
Relatively inferior abstracta, being highly determined themselves, occupy a middle ground
between fully determinate individuals and highly abstract metaphysical concepts. These are also
suitable for aesthetic representation.169
Conclusion
In conclusion, Baumgarten’s contribution to aesthetics does not involve a fundamental
shift away from Wolffian rationalism. Rather, it encompasses two highly significant shifts of
emphasis, as well as a significant elaboration of the consequences which Wolff had failed to
draw out. The first shift involved dropping the teleological conception of the perfection of beauty
in favor of a purely representational conception. The second shift involved showing the intrinsic
cognitive value of extensive clarity, at least where it can only be gained with the loss of intensive
clarity. These modifications to the Wolffian account yield an aesthetics which is neither
excessively abstract nor obviously sterile, and certainly worthy of further attention.
168
169
Aes. §558.
Aes. §566,570.
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References
Note: All translations from Latin and German are my own, except passages from Baumgarten’s
Meditationes (Aschenbrenner-Holther translation), Wolff’s Discursus Praeliminaris (Blackwell
translation), and Kant’s Kritik der reinen Vernunft (Guyer-Wood translation).
Baeumler, Alfred Kants Kritik der Urteilskraft, ihre Geschichte und Systematik. Halle: M.
Niemeyer, 1923
Baumgarten, Alexander Aesthetica Frankfurt, 1750. Hildesheim: Georg Olms
Verlagsbuchhandlung, 1961.
----- Metaphysica Halle: Hemmerde, 1779. Editio VII. Reprint: Hildesheim: Olms, 1963.
----- Reflections on poetry tr. Aschenbrenner and Holther. Berkeley: University of California
Press, 1954.
Cassirer, Ernst Freiheit und Form. Darmstadt: Wissenschaftliche Buchgesellschaft, 1961.
Croce, Benedetto Aesthetic as science of expression and general linguistic. London: MacMillan
and Co., 1922
Gregor, Mary “Baumgarten’s Aesthetica” in Review of Metaphysics 37 (Dec. 1983): 357-385
Gross, Steffen Felix Aestheticus: Die Ästhetik als Lehre vom Menschen. Würzburg:
Königshausen & Neumann, 2001
----- “The Neglected Programme of Aesthetics” in British Journal of Aesthetics vol. 42 no. 4,
Oct. 2002
Guyer, Paul “18th-century German Aesthetics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy,
http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetics-18th-german/
Hammermeister, Kai The German Aesthetic Tradition. New York : Cambridge University Press,
2002
Herder, Johann Gottfried Werke in zehn Bänden Vol. 1. Frankfurt: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag,
1985
Kant, Immanuel Critique of Pure Reason tr. Paul Guyer and Allen Wood. New York: Cambridge
University Press, 2000
Leibniz, G.W. Philosophical Essays ed. Roger Ariew and Daniel Garber. Indianapolis: Hackett,
1989
Poppe, Bernhard Alexander Baumgarten: Seine Bedeutung und Stellung in der LeibnizWolffischen Philosophie und seine Beziehungen zu Kant. Nebst Veröffentlichung einer
bisher unbekannten Handschrift der Ästhetik Baumgartens. Leipzig: Robert Noske, 1907
Schweizer, Hans Rudolf Ästhetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis. Basel: Schwabe,
1972
Wessell, Leonard P. Jr. “Alexander Baumgarten’s Contribution to the Development of
Aesthetics” in The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, Vol. 30 No. 3 (Spring 1972):
333-342
Wolff, Christian, Gesammelte Werke, eds. Jean École, J.E. Hofmann, and H.W. Arndt.
Hildesheim: Olms, 1965.
----- Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General, ed. Richard Blackwell. Indianapolis:
Bobbs-Merrill, 1963.
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Abbreviations used in citation:
Baumgarten
Aes. = Aesthetica
Handschrift = Notes from Baumgarten’s Aesthetica lectures, in Poppe (1907)
Med. = Reflections on Poetry
Met. = Metaphysica
Kant
KrV = Critique of Pure Reason
Wolff (from Gesammelte Werke)
Disc. = Preliminary Discourse on Philosophy in General
DMet. = Vernunftige Gedanken (2): Deutsche Metaphysik
EAC = Elementae Architecturae Civilis
HSM = Horae Subsecivae Marburgenses, Vol 1., “Trimestre Aestivum”
Log. = Philosophia Rationalis sive Logica Pars I.
Ont. = Philosophia Prima sive Ontologia
Psy. = Psychologia Empirica
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