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Davey1989 PDF
Davey1989 PDF
BAUMGARTEN'S AESTHETICS:
A POST-GADAMERIAN REFLECTION
Nicholas Davey
INTRODUCTION
THOUGH THE rationalist ideals of clarity (dantas) and distinctness (distinctioms)
inspire Baumgarten's thinking, the opposite attributes characterize the
reception and transmission of his thought. Aesthetic liturgy may proclaim him
as the discipline's father but such a credo is wishful rather than factual. According
to Copleston, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson had previously written of aesthetics
in all but name.' Also, what is known of Baumgarten's Aesthetica is fragmentary
and incomplete. When Baumgarten died in 1762 only thefirstchapter of the first
half of the work lay complete. What is proclaimed as the Aesthettca is for the
most part founded upon earlier material such as the Meditatioties de nommllis ad
poema (1735), the Metaphysica (1739) and the Philosophia Gencrahs (1742).2 If the
sources are confused, so too is the critical literature. Crocc deprecates
Baumgarten for subordinating aesthetic experience to logic, Cassirer applauds
his validation of the autonomy of aesthetics and Gadamer is strangely negligent
of the moving spirit of the tradition of systematic aesthetics which Truth and
Method seeks to 'overcome'.3 Yet, even if sources and critical judgement were
consistent, any attempt to disinter Baumgarten's thinking would have to deflect
the onslaught Nietzsche made on histoncism in his essay 'On the Use and
Disadvantage of History'.4 If the works of the past are to be presented according
to canons of exegesis and appraisal contemporaneous with them, the resultant
understanding will be outmoded or irrelevant in the present world. Nietzsche
insists that the study of the past must rest upon present preoccupations not so
that it is formed in our image but to provide a perspective upon contemporary
preoccupations. In this context, Gadamer has spoken of understanding not as
the reconstruction of the past but as the thoughtful mediation of past and present
(TM 150). It is, accordingly, a contemporary problematic that motivates this
reflection upon Baumgarten.
Habermas' review of Gadamer's Truth and Method has provoked a debate
concerning the truth value of interpretation in aesthetics and hermeneutics now
extended far beyond the original protagonists. How can the truth of an
interpretation be determined? Can the truth-claims of a work of art be
legitimated? What guarantee can be given that the traditions which nurture
works of art are authentic? Can conflicting interpretations and truth-claims
O x f o r d University Press 1989 101 0007-0904/89 S3 00
102 BAUMGARTEN'S AESTHETICS. A POST-GADAMERIAN REFLECTION
seen that without a clear statement as to what the Anspruch auf Wahrheit in
aesthetic experience and cultural tradition is, not only docs Gadamcr's ability to
choose between competing interpretations of a work on the grounds of
appropnacy collapse, but his entire hermeneutic edifice becomes vulnerable to
the incisive critiques of such as Foucault. Can then a notion of aesthetic truth be
defended? Let us now turn to Baumgarten.
In this great field of signs, aesthetics takes a decisive step beyond rhetorics and
poetics and embraces other arts as, for example, the visual arts and music.
Hermeneutics which is necessary for the interpreting rather than merely sensitively
aware aestheticians' understanding of'sensitive and beautiful' knowledge must be
turned towards non-verbal signs. Seen from the vantage point of 'the claim of
aesthetics', Baumgarten must have presupposed the expansion of hermeneutics.13
REFERENCES
1
F Copleston, A History of Western Philosophy thought How do we grasp this truth' Baum-
(Image Books, 1964) 'Wccertainly ought not garten the founder of philosophical aesthetics
to exaggerate the importance of Baumgarten spoke of cogtntio sensitwa or sensuous know-
In the first place, he was not the father of ledge Cognitw sensitwa means that in the
aesthetics To go no further back in history, apparent particularity of sensuous experi-
Shaftcsbury and Hutcheson, for example, ence, which we always attempt to relate to
had already written on the subject in Eng- the universal, there is something in our
land', p 139 experience of the beautiful that arrests us and
- Baumgarten's Meditationes de nonnulln ad compels us to dwell upon the individual
poenia pertinentibus has been translated by K experience itself The Relevance of the Beauti-
Aschenbrenner and W Holther under the ful and Other Essays, ed R Bernascom
title Reflections on Poetry (California U P , (Cambridge U P , 1986), p 16
1974) The texts I have used in this paper arc There is also not a great deal in the way of
(1) Baumgarten's Te.Me zur Grundlegung der secondary literature on Baumgarten but the
Asthettk, (LateinDeutsch). ubcrs u hrsgb following is certainly to be recommended
von Hans Rudolf Schweizer (Felix Meiner, (1) MaryJ Gregor, 'Baumgarten's Aesthetua',
1983), and (2) Baumgarten's Theoretische Review of Metaphysics 37 (Dec 1983), pp
Aslhetik, ubers u hrsgb von Hans Rudolf 35785, (2) Leonard P Wessel's 'Alexander
Schweizer (Felix Meiner, 1983) When cited Baumgarten's Contribution to the Develop-
in the text these volumes will be referred to as ment of Aesthetics', Journal of Aesthetics and
TGA and TA respectively and the appropri- Art Criticism, 30, (Spring 1972), pp 333-42,
ate page numbers will be given (3) Ursula Franke's Kunst als Erkennlms,
3 (Franz Sterner, 1972) and Armand Nivelle,
B Croce, Aesthetic (Peter Owen, 1972), p
Kunst und Dichtungsthconen zwischen Aufltlar-
2O4ff. E Cassirer, The Enlightenment (Yale,
ung und Klassik, (Walter de Gruyter, i960), (4)
1969), see pages 338-53 especially
Michael Jager's Kommentierende Einfulmmg in
Two of Gadamer's more substantial com-
Baumgarten's Aesthetica, (Georg Olms, 1980)
ments are (1) 'Baumgarten, for example, is 4
F Nietzsche, Untimely Meditations, trans R
quite certain that whatjudgement recognises
is the sensible individual, the unique thing Hollmgdalc, Cambridge U P , 1983)
5
and what it judges in the individual thing is its J Weinsheimer, Gadamer's Hermeneulic, A
perfection and imperfection It must be noted Reading of Truth and Method, (Yale U P .
that this definition of judgement does not 1985), p 12
simply apply a pre-given concept of the thing 6
Gadamer, The Relevance of The Beautiful and
but the sensible individual is grasped in as Other Essays, ed R. Bernascom (Cambridge
much as the agreement of the one and the U P , 1986), p 139
many is observed This is not the application 7
For Gadamer's connections with Bultmann
of the universal but the internal agreement see W Pannenberg, Theology and The Phtloso'
between distinct things As we can see, this is phy of Science, (Darton, Long and Todd,
already what Kant later calls reflectivejudge- 1976), p- 169
ment and understands as judgement accord- R J Bernstein, Beyond Objectivism and Re-
ing to real and formal appropriations A tatwism, (Blackwell, 1983), p 152
concept is not given but the object is judged 8
Interpretive Social Science (ed ) Rabinow and
immanently'. Truth and Method, trans Glen- Sullivan, (California U.P , 1979), p 154
Doepel, (Sheedand Ward, 1975), p. 30 This 9
M Foucault, The Birth of The Clinic, An
text will be referred to from now on as TM
Archaeology of Medical Perception, trans A
(2) 'In art and the beautiful we encounter a Sheridan Smith, (Harper, 1972), p xvi.
10
significance that transcends all conceptual Ibid., p xvn.
NICHOLAS DAVEY "5
11 17
See L. Wessel, 'Alexander Baumgarten's E Cassirer, o p cit , p . 341
111
Contribution to the Development of Aesthe- P a n n c n b e r g , o p . cit , p 179 Sec note 7
tics', Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, 30 above
19
(Spring 1972), p 335 L Wittgenstein, Zettel, (Blackwell, 1967),
12
W. Dilthey, Selected Writings, (Cambridge sec 231
20
U P., 1976), p 225 L Wittgenstein, o p . cit , sec 234.
13 21
M Jager, Kommentierende Einjiihmng in Baum- F. Nietzsche, The Will to Power, trans
(artcn's Aesthetica, (GeorgOlms, 1980), p 81 Kaufmann and Holhngdale, (Weidenfeld and
14
See E Cassirer, op cit , p 346, and Schiller, N i c o l s o n , 1968), sec 259
22
On the Aesthetic Education of Man, M Wilkin- G a d a m e r , in Research m Phenomenology, 9
son and L A Willoughby, (Clarendon, (1980), p 83
1985), p xxi
15
L. Wessel, op cit , p. 340. This paper was given at the Twenty-first
16
T Nagel, The View from Nowhere, (Oxford, National Conference of the British Society of
1986), p 223. Aesthetics in London in September 1987