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 possessine 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 subiectivity 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 and
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.
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 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.
Hegel.
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 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.
Dialectic of the Hegelians.
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 F. T. Vischer (Esthetik, 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.
Schopenhauer.
The aesthetic prbolem 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 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 imoerfect manifestation or
objectification of will. In this way the beauty of nature,
somewhat slighted by Schelling and Hegel, is rehabilitated.
Herbart.
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 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 aomits,
ethical judgments are in a manner brought under an aesthetic
form. His typical example of aesthetic relations of objects
of sense-perception is that of harmony between tones. The
science of thorough-bass has, he thinks, done for music
what should be done also for other departments of aesthetic
experience. This doctrine of elementary relations is brought
into connexion with the author's psychological doctrine of
presentarions with their tendencies to mutual inhibition and
to fusion, and of the varying feeling-tones to which these
processes give rise. This mode of treating the problem of
beauty and aesthetic perception has been greatly developed
and worked up into a comrlete system of aesthetics by one of
Herbart's disciples, Robert Zimmermann (Asthetik, 1838).
Lessing.
Lessing, in his Laocoon and elsewhere, sought to deduce
the special function of an art from a consideration of
the means at its disposal. He took pains to define the
boundaries of poetry and upon the ends and appliances of
art. Among these his distinction between arts which
employ the coexistent in space and those which employ the
successive (as poetry and music) is of lasting value. In
his dramatic criticisms he similarly endeavoured to develop
clear general principles on such points as poetic truth,
improving upon Aristotle, on whose teachina he mainly relies.
Goethe. Schiller.
Goethe wrote several tracts on aesthetic topics, as well as many
aphorisms. He attempted to mediate between the claims of
ideal beauty, as taught by J. J. Winckelmann, and the aims of
dualization. Schiller (q.v.) discusses, in a number of
disconnected essays and letters some of the main questions
in the philosophy of art. He looks at art from the side
of culture and the forces of human nature, and finds in an
aesthetically cultivated soul the reconciliation of the sensual
and rational. His letters on aesthetic education (Uber die
asthetische Erzichung des Menschen, trans. by J. Weiss,
Boston, 1845) are valuable, bringing out among other points
the connexion between aesthetic activity and the universal
impulse to play (Spieltrieb.) Schiller's thoughts on aesthetic
subjects are pervaded with the spirit of Kant's philosophy.
Jean Paul.
Another example of this kind of reflective discussion of
art by literary men is afforded us in the Vorschule der
Asthetik of Jean Paul Richter. This is a rather ambitious
discussion of the sublime and ludicrous, which, however,
contains much valuable matter on the nature of humour in
romantic poetry. Among other writers who reflect more or less
philosophically on the problems to which modern poetry gives
rise are Wilhelm von Humboldt, the two Schlegels and Gervinus.
Contributions by German savants.
A word may be said in conclusion on the attempts of German
savants to apply a knowledge of physiological conditions
to the investigation of the sensuous elements of aesthetic
effect, as well as to introduce into the study of the simpler
aesthetic forms the methods of natural science. The classic
work of Helmholtz on ``Sensations of Tone'' is a highly musical
composition on physics and physiology. The endeavour to
determine with a like degree of precision the physiological
conditions of the pleasurable effects of colours and their
combinations by E. W. Brucke, Ewald Hering and more recent
investigators, has so far failed to realize the desideratum
laid down by Herbart, that there should be a theory of
colour-relations equal in completeness and exactness to that
of tone-relations. The experimental inquiry into simple
aesthetically pleasing forms was begun by G. T. Fechner in
seeking to test the soundness of Adolf Zeising's hypothesis
that the most pleasing proportion in dividing a line, say the
vertical part of a cross, is the ``golden section,'' where the
smaller division is to the larger as the latter to the sum.
He describes in his work on ``Experimental Aesthetics'' (Auf
experimentalen Asthetik) a series of experiments carried out
on a large number of persons, bearing on this point, the results
of which he considers to be in favour of Zeising's hypothesis.
Discussions of more concrete problems.
3. French Writers.--In France aesthetic speculation grew
out of the discussion by poets and critics on the relation of
modern art, and Boileau in the 17th century, the development
of the the dispute between the ``ancients'' and the `moderns''
at the end of the 17th century by B. le Bouvier de Fontenelle
and Charles Perrault, and the continuation of the discussion
as to the aims of poetry and of art generally in the 18th
century by Voltaire, Bayle, Diderot and others, not only
offer to the modern theorists valuable material in the shape
of a record by experts of their aesthetic experience, but
disclose glimpses of important aesthetic principles. A more
systematic examination of the several arts (corresponding
to that of Lessing) is to be found in the Cours de belles
lettres of Charles Batteux (1765), in which the meaning
and value of the imitation of nature by art are further
elucidated, and the arts are classified (as by Lessing)
according as they employ the forms of space or those of time.
Theories of organic beauty. Buffier.
The beginning of a more scientific investigation of beauty in
