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 best of the Germans who attempted to develop an aesthetic theory as part of a system of philosophy was Baumgarten (Aesthetica). Adopting the Leibniz-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 Leibniz'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.
Read more about this topic: History Of Aesthetics Before The 20th Century
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