order (τάξις), symmetry and definiteness or determinateness (το ώρισμένον). In the Poetics he adds another essential, namely, a certain magnitude; it being desirable for a synoptic view of the whole that the object should not be too large, while clearness of perception requires that it should not be too small. Aristotle’s views on art are an immense advance on those of Plato. He distinctly recognized (in the Politics and elsewhere) that its aim is immediate pleasure, as distinct from utility, which is the end of the mechanical arts. He took a higher view of artistic imitation than Plato, holding that so far from being an unworthy trick, it implied knowledge and discovery, that its objects not only comprised particular things which happen to most, but contemplated what is probable and what necessarily exists. The celebrated passage in the Poetics, where he declares poetry to be more philosophical and serious a matter (σπρυδαιότερον) than philosophy, brings out the advance of Aristotle on his predecessor. He gives us no complete classification of the fine arts, and it is doubtful how far his principles, e.g. his celebrated idea of a purification of the passions by tragedy, are to be taken as applicable to other than the poetic art.
Of the later Greek and Roman writers the Neo-Platonist Plotinus deserves to be mentioned. According to him, objective reason (νοῦς) as self-moving, becomes the formative influence which reduces dead matter to form. Matter when thus formed becomes a notion (λόγος), and its form is beauty.Plotinus. Objects are ugly so far as they are unacted upon by reason, and therefore formless. The creative reason is absolute beauty, and is called the more than beautiful. There are three degrees or stages of manifested beauty: that of human reason, which is the highest; of the human soul, which is less perfect through its connexion with a material body; and of real objects, which is the lowest manifestation of all. As to the precise forms of beauty, he supposed, in opposition to Aristotle, that a single thing not divisible into parts might be beautiful through its unity and simplicity. He gives a high place to the beauty of colours in which material darkness is overpowered by light and warmth. In reference to artistic beauty he said that when the artist has notions as models for his creations, these may become more beautiful than natural objects. This is clearly a step away from Plato’s doctrine towards our modern conception of artistic idealization.
2. German Writers.—We may pass by the few thoughts on the subject to be found among medieval writers and turn to modern theories, beginning with those of German writers as the most numerous and most elaborately set forth. The first of the Germans who attempted to develop an German writers.
(a) Systematic treatises: Baumgarten.aesthetic theory as part of a system of philosophy was Baumgarten (Aesthetica). Adopting the Leibnitz-Wolffian theory of knowledge, he sought to complete it by setting over against the clear scientific or “logical” knowledge of the understanding, the confused knowledge of the senses, to which (as we have seen) he gave the name “aesthetic.” Beauty with him thus corresponds with perfect sense-knowledge. Baumgarten is clearly an intellectualist in aesthetics, reducing taste to an intellectual act and ignoring the element of feeling. The details of his aesthetics are mostly unimportant. Arguing from Leibnitz’s theory of the world as the best possible, Baumgarten concluded that nature is the highest embodiment of beauty, and that art must seek its supreme function in the strictest possible imitation of nature.
The next important treatment of aesthetics by a philosopher is that of Kant. He deals with the “Judgment of Taste” in the Critique of the Power of Judgment (J. H. Bernard’s translation 1892), which treatise supplements the two better-known critiques (vide Kant), and by investigating the conditions of the validity of Kant.feeling mediates between their respective subjects, cognition and desire (volition). He takes an important step in denying objective existence to beauty. Aesthetic value for him is fitness to please as object of pure contemplation. This aesthetic satisfaction is more than mere agreeableness, since it must be disinterested and free—that is to say, from all concern about the real existence of the object, and about our dependence on it. He appears to concede a certain formal objectivity to beauty in his doctrine of an appearance of purposiveness (Zweckmässigkeit) in the beautiful object, this being defined as its harmony with the cognitive faculties involved in an aesthetic judgment (imagination and understanding); a harmony the consciousness of which underlies our aesthetic pleasure. Yet this part of his doctrine is very imperfectly developed. While beauty thus ceases with Kant to have objective validity and remains valid only for the contemplator, he claims for it universal subjective validity, since the object we pronounce to be beautiful is fitted to please all men. We know that this must be so from reflecting on the disinterestedness of our pleasure, on its entire independence of personal inclination. Kant insists that the aesthetic judgment is always, in logical phrase, an “individual” i.e. a singular one, of the form “This object (e.g. rose) is beautiful.” He denies that we can reach a valid universal aesthetic judgment of the form “All objects possessing such and such qualities are beautiful.” (A judgment of this form would, he considers, be logical, not aesthetic.) in dealing with beauty Kant is thinking of nature, ranking this as a source of aesthetic pleasure high above art, for which he shows something of contempt. He seems to retreat from his doctrine of pure subjectivity when he says that the highest significance of beauty is to symbolize moral good; going further than Ruskin when he attaches ideals of modesty, frankness, courage, &c., to the seven primary colours of Newton’s system. He has made a solid contribution to the theory of the sublime, and has put forth a suggestive if a rather inadequate view of the ludicrous. But his main service to aesthetics consists in the preliminary critical determination of its aim and its fundamental problems.
Schelling is the first thinker to attempt a Philosophy of Art. He develops this as the third part of his system of transcendental idealism following theoretic and practical philosophy. (See Schelling;—also Schelling’s Werke, Bd. v., and J. Watson, Schelling’s Transcendental Idealism, ch. vii., Chicago, 1882.) According to Schelling a Schelling.new philosophical significance is given to art by the doctrine that the identity of subject and object—which is half disguised in ordinary perception and volition—is only clearly seen in artistic perception. The perfect perception of its real self by intelligence in the work of art is accompanied by a feeling of infinite satisfaction. Art in thus effecting a revelation of the absolute seems to attain a dignity not merely above that of nature but above that of philosophy itself. Schelling throws but little light on the concrete forms of beauty. His classification of the arts, based on his antithesis of object and subject, is a curiosity in intricate arrangement. He applies his conception in a suggestive way to classical tragedy.
In Hegel’s system of philosophy art is viewed as the first stage of the absolute spirit. (See Hegel; also Werke, Bd. x., and Bosanquet’s Introduction to Hegel’s Philosophy of Fine Art.) In this stage the absolute is immediately present to sense-perception, an idea which shows the writer’s complete rupture with Hegel.Kant’s doctrine of the “subjectivity” of beauty. The beautiful is defined as the ideal showing itself to sense or through a sensuous medium. It is said to have its life in show or semblance (Schein) and so differs from the true, which is not really sensuous, but the universal idea contained in sense for thought. The form of the beautiful is unity of the manifold. The notion (Begriff gives necessity in mutual dependence of parts (unity), while the reality demands the semblance (Schein) of liberty in the parts. He discusses very fully the beauty of nature as immediate unity of notion and reality, and lays great emphasis on the beauty of organic life. But it is in art that, like Schelling, Hegel finds the highest revelation of the beautiful. Art makes up for the deficiencies of natural beauty by bringing the idea into clearer light, by showing the external world in its life and spiritual animation. The several species of art in the ancient and modern worlds depend on the various combinations of matter and form. He classifies the individual arts according to this same principle of the relative supremacy of form and matter, the lowest being architecture, the highest, poetry.
Curious developments of the Hegelian conception are to be found in the dialectical treatment of beauty in its relation to the ugly, the sublime, &c., by Hegel's disciples, e.g. C. H. Weisse and J. K. F. Rosenkranz. The most important product of the Hegelian School is the elaborate system of aesthetics published by Dialectic of the Hegelians.F. T. Vischer (Ästhetik, 3 Theile, 1846–1834). It illustrates the difficulties of the Hegelian thought and terminology; yet in dealing with art it is full of knowledge and highly suggestive.
The aesthetic problem is also treated by two other philosophers whose thought set out from certain tendencies in Kant’s system, viz. Schopenhauer and Herbart. Schopenhauer (see Schopenhauer, also The World as Will and Idea, translated by R. B. Haldane, esp. vol. i. pp. 219-346), abandoning also Kant’s Schopenhauer.doctrine of the subjectivity of beauty, found in aesthetic contemplation the perfect emancipation of intellect from will. In this contemplation the mind is filled with pure intellectual forms, the “Platonic Ideas” as he calls them, which are objectifications of the will at a certain grade of completeness of representation. He exalts the state of artistic contemplation as the one in which, as pure intellect set free from will, the misery of existence is surmounted and something of blissful ecstasy attained. He holds that all things are in some degree beautiful, ugliness being viewed as merely imperfect manifestation or objectification of will. In this way the beauty of nature, somewhat slighted by Schelling and Hegel, is rehabilitated.
J. F. Herbart (q.v.) struck out another way of escaping from Kant’s idea of a purely subjective beauty (Kerbach’s edition of Werke, Bd. ii. pp. 339 et seq.; Bd. iv. pp. 105 et seq., and Bd. ix. pp. 92 et seq.) He did, indeed, adopt Kant’s view of the aesthetic Judgment as singular (“individual”); though he secures a certain degree Herbart.of logical universality for it by emphasizing the point that the predicate (beauty) is permanently true of the same aesthetic object. At the same time, by referring the beauty of concrete objects to certain aesthetic relations, he virtually accepted the possibility of universal aesthetic judgments (cf. supra.) Since he thus reduces beauty to abstract relations he is known as a formalist, and the founder of the formalistic school in aesthetics. He sets out with the idea that only relations please—in the Kantian sense of producing pleasure devoid of desire; and his aim is to determine the “aesthetic elementary relations”, or the simplest relations which produce this pleasure. These include those of will, so that, as he admits, ethical judgments are in a manner brought
