The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment
The Art of Invention and the Invention of Art

Stefanie Buchenau explores the philosophical and conceptual origins of aesthetics and the philosophy of art.

Stefanie Buchenau (Author)

9781107541405, Cambridge University Press

Paperback / softback, published 9 July 2015

282 pages
22.9 x 15.2 x 1.5 cm, 0.38 kg

'Readers will learn much about Wolff and his school from Buchenau's engaging narrative and impeccable scholarship.' Journal of the History of Philosophy

When, in 1735, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten added a new discipline to the philosophical system, he not only founded modern aesthetics but also contributed to shaping the modern concept of art or 'fine art'. In The Founding of Aesthetics in the German Enlightenment, Stefanie Buchenau offers a rich analysis and reconstruction of the origins of this new discipline in its wider context of German Enlightenment philosophy. Present-day scholars commonly regard Baumgarten's views as an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, but Buchenau argues that Baumgarten defended a consistent and original project which must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the art of invention. Her book offers new perspectives on Kantian aesthetics and beauty in art and science.

Introduction
1. Wolff and the modern debate on a method of invention
2. Wolff on the pleasure of invention
3. Leibniz and Wolff on invention: hieroglyphs, images and poetry
4. Poetry as revelation: Bodmer, Breitinger, Gottsched on the imitation of nature
5. Invention, judgement, literary criticism
6. The rhetorical shift: Baumgarten's founding of aesthetics in the Meditationes philosophicae
7. Baumgarten's Aesthetica. Topics and the modern ars inveniendi
8. Aesthetics and anthropology
9. Aesthetics and ethics
10. 'A general heuristic is impossible'. Kant and the Wolffian ars inveniendi
Conclusion.

Subject Areas: History of ideas [JFCX], Philosophy: aesthetics [HPN], Western philosophy: Enlightenment [HPCD1], Western philosophy: c 1600 to c 1900 [HPCD]