Paul Oskar Kristeller

Part II *

Journal of the History of Ideas, 13 (1)

Dedicated to Professor Hans Tietze on his 70th birthday

VI - France

During the first half of the eighteenth century the interest of amateurs, writers and philosophers in the visual arts and in music increased.  The age produced not only critical writings on these arts composed by and for laymen, 167 but also treatises in which the arts were compared with each other and with poetry, and thus finally arrived at the fixation of the modern system of the fine arts. 168  Since this system seems to emerge gradually and after many fluctuations in the writings of authors who were in part of but secondary importance, though influential, it would appear that the notion and system of the fine arts may have grown and crystallized in the conversations and discussions of cultured circles in Paris and in London, and that the formal writings and treatises merely reflect a climate of opinion resulting from such conversations. 169  A further study of letters, diaries and articles in elegant journals may indeed supplement our brief survey, which we must limit to the better known sources.

The treatise on Beauty by J. P. de Crousaz, which first appeared in 1714 and exercised a good deal of influence, is usually considered as the earliest French treatise on aesthetics. 170   It has indeed something to say on the visual arts and on poetry, and devotes a whole section to music.  Moreover, it is an important attempt to give a philosophical analysis of beauty as distinct from goodness, thus restating and developing the notions of ancient and Renaissance Platonists.  Yet the author has no system of the arts, and applies his notion of beauty without any marked distinction to the mathematical sciences and to the moral virtues and actions as well as to the arts, and

* Part I appeared in the Oct. 1951 issue.

168. Fontaine, Les doctrines d’art. Soreil, i.e. W. Folkierski, Entre le classicisme et le romantisme: Etude sur l’esthétique et les i’esthéticiens du XVIIIe siècle (Cracow-Paris, 1925).  T. M. Mustoxidi, Histoire de l’Esthétique francaise, 1700-1900 (Paris, 1920).  For music, see also Écorcheville, l.c. Hugo Goldschmidt, Die Musilcaesthetilc des 18. Jahrhunderts und ihre Beziehungen zu seinem Kunstschaffen (Zurich-Leipzig, 1915).  While these scholars discuss most of the relevant sources, none of them focuses on the problem which concerns us.

170. Traité du Beau, 2 vols. (Amsterdam, 1724).

the fluidity of his “aesthetic” thought is shown by the fact that in his second edition he substituted a chapter on the beauty of religion for the one dealing with music. 171

During the following years, the problem of the arts seems to have dominated the discussions of the Académie des Inscriptions, and several of its lectures which were printed somewhat later and exercised a good deal of influence stress the affinity between poetry, the visual arts and music. 172  These discussions no doubt influenced the important work of the Abbé Dubos that appeared first in 1719 and was reprinted many times in the original and in translations far into the second half of the century. 173  Dubos’ merits in the history of aesthetic or artistic thought are generally recognized.  It is apparent that he discusses not only the analogies between poetry and painting but also their differences, and that he is not interested in the superiority of one art over the others, as so many previous authors had been.  His work is also significant as an early, though not the first, treatment of painting by an amateur writer, and his claim that the educated public rather than the professional artist is the best judge in matters of painting as well as of poetry is quite characteristic. 174  He did not

171 “Le dernier chapître où j’avois entrepris d’établir sur mes principes les fondemens de ce que la musique a de beau… on y en a substitué un autre… C’est celui de la beauté de la religion” (preface of the second edition).  On the treatment of music in the first edition, which I have not seen, cf. H. Goldschmidt, 35-37.

173. Réflexons critiques sur la poësie et sur la peinture, 4th ed., 3 vols. (Paris, 1740). A. Lombard, L’Abbe’ Du Bog: Un initiateur de la pensée moderne (1670-1742) (thes. Paris, 1913).  Id., La Querelle des anciens et des modernes; L’Abbé du Bos (Neuchatel, 1908).   Aug. Morel, Étude sur l’Abbé Dubos (Paris, 1850).  Marcel Braunschvig, L’Abbé DuBos renovateur de la critique au XVIIIe siècle (thes. Paris, Toulouse, 1904).  P. Peteut, Jean-Baptiste Dubos (thes. Bern, 1902).  E. Teuber, “Die Kunstphilosophie des Abbé Dubos” Zeitschrift für Aesthetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft 17 (1924), 361-410.  H. Trouchon, Romantisme et Préromantisme (Paris, 1930), 128ff.

174. II, 323ff.

invent the term beaux-arts, nor was he the first to apply it to other than the visual arts, but he certainly popularized the notion that poetry was one of the beaux-arts. 175  He also has a fairly clear notion of the difference between the arts that depend on “genius” or talent and the sciences based on accumulated knowledge, 176 and it has been rightly observed that in this he continues the work of the “Moderns” in the Querelle des Anciens et des Modernes, especially of Perrault. 177  Significant also is his acquaintance with English authors such as Wotton and Addison. 178  Finally, although the title of his work refers only to poetry and painting, he repeatedly has occasion to speak also of the other visual arts as linked with painting, especially of sculpture and engraving, 179 and he discusses music so frequently 180 that his English translator chose to mention this art in the very title of the book. 181  However, Dubos is as unsystematic in his presentation and arrangement as he is interesting for the variety of his ideas, and he fails to give anywhere a precise list of the arts other than poetry and painting or to separate them consistently from other fields of professions. 182

Voltaire also in his Temple du Goût (1733) seems to link together several of the fine arts, but in an informal and rather elusive fashion which shows that he was unable or unwilling to present a clear

177. Lombard, La querelle. Id., L’Abbé Du Bos, 183ff.

181. Critical Reflections on Poetry, Painting and Music, translated by Thomas Nugent (London, 1748).

scheme. 183  More important for the history of our problem is the Essay on Beauty of Père André (1741), which exercised a good deal of influence. 184 His Cartesian background is worth noticing, although it is not enough to ascribe an aesthetics to Descartes. 185  The major sections of the work discuss visible beauty, which includes nature and the visual arts, the beauty of morals, the beauty of the works of the spirit, by which he means poetry and eloquence, and finally the beauty of music. 186  André thus moves much closer to the system of the arts than either Crousaz or Dubos had done, but in his treatise the arts are still combined with morality, and subordinated to the problem of beauty in a broader sense.

The decisive step toward a system of the fine arts was taken by the Abbé Batteux in his famous and influential treatise, Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe (1746). 187  It is true that many elements of his system were derived from previous authors, but at the same time it should not be overlooked that he was the first to set forth a clearcut system of the fine arts in a treatise devoted exclusively to this subject.  This alone may account for his claim to originality as well as for the enormous influence he exercised both in France and abroad, especially in Germany. 188  Batteux codified the modern system of the fine arts almost in its final form, whereas all previous authors had merely prepared it.  He started from the poetic theories of Aristotle and Horace, as he states in his preface, and tried to extend their principles from poetry and painting to the other arts.189  In his first chapter, Batteux gives a clear division of the arts.

183. “Nous trouvâmes un homme entouré de peintres, d’architectes, de sculpteurs, de doreurs, de faux connoisseurs, de fiateurs”(Voltaire, Le temple du gout, ed. E. Carcassonne [Paris, 1938], 66).  “On y passe facilement, / De la musique a la peinture, / De la physique au sentiment, / Du tragique au simple agrément, / De la danse a l’architecture” (ibid., 84).

184. Essai sur le Beau (Amsterdam, 1759; first ed. 1741). Cf. E. Krantz, Essai sue l’esthétique de Descartes… (Paris, 1882), 311ff. 185 Krantz, l.c.

187. Les beaux arts réduits à un même principe, new ed. (Paris, 1747; first ed., 1746).  Cf. M. Schenker, Charles Batteux und seine Nachahmungstheorie in Deutschland (Leipzig, 1909).  Eberhard Freiherr von Danckelman, Charles Batteux (thes. Rostock, 1902).

189. “Le principe de l’imitation que le philosophe grec (Aristotle) établit pour les beaux arts, m’avoit frappé.  J’en avois senti la justesse pour la peinture qui est une poesie muette…” (p. VIII).  “J’allai plus loin: j’essayai d’appliquer le même principe a la musique et a l’art de geste” (VIII f.).  He also quotes Cicero, Pro Archia, for the unity of the fine arts (p. X).

He separates the fine arts which have pleasure for their end from the mechanical arts, and lists the fine arts as follows: music, poetry, painting, sculpture and the dance. 190  He adds a third group which combines pleasure and usefulness and puts eloquence and architecture in this category.  In the central part of his treatise, Batteux tries to show that the “imitation of beautiful nature” is the principle common to all the arts, and he concludes with a discussion of the theatre as a combination of all the other arts.  The German critics of the later eighteenth century, and their recent historians, criticized Batteux for his theory of imitation and often failed to recognize that he formulated the system of the arts which they took for granted and for which they were merely trying to find different principles.  They also overlooked the fact that the much maligned principle of imitation was the only one a classicist critic such as Batteux could use when he wanted to group the fine arts together with even an appearance of ancient authority.  For the “imitative” arts were the only authentic ancient precedent for the “fine arts,” and the principle of imitation could be replaced only after the system of the latter had been so firmly established as no longer to need the ancient principle of imitation to link them together.  Diderot’s criticism of Batteux has been emphasized too much, for it concerned only the manner in which Batteux defined and applied his principle, but neither the principle itself, nor the system of the arts for which it had been designed.

As a matter of fact, Diderot and the other authors of the Encyclopédie not only followed Batteux’s system of the fine arts, but also furnished the final touch and thus helped to give it a general currency not only in France but also in the other European countries.  Montesquieu in his essay on taste written for the Encyclopédie takes the fine arts for granted. 191  Diderot, whose interests included music and the visual arts and who was also acquainted with such English authors as Shaftesbury, Addison and Hutcheson, criticizes Batteux in his Lettre sur les Sourds et Muets (1751), in which he demands a better and more detailed comparison between poetry, painting and music that would take into account the different modes of expression of those arts as they would affect their treatment of even the same subject

190. “Los autres ont pour objet le plaisir… on les appelle les beaux arts par excellence.  Tels sont la musique, poésie, la peinture, la sculpture et l’art du geste ou la danse” (p. 6).

191. Essai sur le gout (Oeuvres complètes de Montesquieu, ed. E. Laboulaye, VII [Paris, 1879], 116): “La poésie, la peinture, la sculpture, l’architecture, la musique, la danse, les différentes sortes de jeux, enfin les ouvrages de la nature et de l’art peuvent lui [to the soul] donner du plaisir…”  Cf. Edwin P. Dargan, The Aesthetic Doctrine of Montesquieu (thes. Johns Hopkins University, Baltimore, 1907), 21.

matter. 192  In the article on the Arts for the Encyclopédie, Diderot does not discuss the fine arts, but uses the old distinction between the liberal and mechanical arts and stresses the importance of the latter. 193  Yet in his article on beauty, he does discuss the fine arts, mentions Crousaz and Hutcheson and gives qualified approval to both André and Batteux, calling each of these two good works the best in its category and criticizing Batteux merely for his failure to define his concept of “beautiful nature” more clearly and explicitly. 194

Still more interesting is D’Alembert’s famous Discours préliminaire.  In his division of knowledge, purportedly based on Francis Bacon, D’Alembert makes a clear distinction between philosophy, which comprises both the natural sciences and such fields as grammar, eloquence, and history, and “those cognitions which consist of imitation,” listing among the latter painting, sculpture, architecture, poetry and music. 195  He criticizes the old distinction between the liberal and mechanical arts, and then subdivides the liberal arts into the fine arts which have pleasure for their end, and the more necessary or useful liberal arts such as grammar, logic and morals. 196  He concludes with

192. Oeuvres completes de Diderot, ed. J. Assézat, 1 (1875), 343ff.  The preface is addressed to Batteux (Lettre à l’auteur des Beaux-arts réduits a un même principe, 347).  Towards the end of his treatise, Diderot summarizes his criticism as follows: “Mais rassembler les beautés communes de la poésie, de la peinture et de la musique; en montrer les analogies; expliquer comment le poète, le peintre et le musicien rendent le même image… c’est ce qui reste a faire, et ce que je vous conseille d’ajouter à vos Beaux-arts réduits a un même principe.  Ne manquez pas non plus de mettre a la tête de cet ouvrage un chapitre sur ce que c’est que la belle nature, car je trouve des gens qui me soutiennent que, faute de l’une de ces choses, votre traité rests sans fondement; et que, faute de l’autre,  Il manque d’application” (385).  On Didorot’s aesthetic doctrines, see: Werner Leo, Diderot als Kunstphilosoph (thes. Erlangen, 1918).  R. Loyalty Cru, Diderot as a Disciple of English Thought (New York, 1913), 395ff.

193. Encyclopédie ou Dictionnaire Raisonné des sciences, des arts et des métiers I (Paris, 1751), 713ff.

195. “Des connaissances qui consistent dans l’imitation” (D’Alembert, Oeuvres [Paris, 1853], 99f. Cf. Encyciopédie I (1751), p. 1ff.).

a main division of knowledge into philosophy, history and the fine arts. 197  This treatment shows still a few signs of fluctuation and of older notions, but it sets forth the modern system of the fine arts in its final form, and at the same time reflects its genesis.  The threefold division of knowledge follows Francis Bacon, but significantly d’Alembert speaks of the five fine arts where Bacon had mentioned only poetry.  D’Alembert is aware that the new concept of the fine arts is taking the place of the older concept of the liberal arts, which he criticizes, and he tries to compromise by treating the fine arts as a subdivision of the liberal arts, thus leaving a last trace of the liberal arts that was soon to disappear.  Finally, he reveals his dependence on Batteux in certain phrases and in the principle of imitation, but against Batteux and the classical tradition he now includes architecture among the imitative arts, thus removing the last irregularity which had separated Batteux’s system from the modern scheme of the fine arts.  Thus we may conclude that the Encyclopédie, and especially its famous introduction, codified the system of the fine arts after and beyond Batteux and through its prestige and authority gave it the widest possible currency all over Europe.

After the middle of the century and after the publication of the Encyclopédie, speculation on the fine arts in France does not seem to have undergone any basic changes for some time.  The notion was popularized and stabilized through such works as Lacombe’s portable dictionary of the Fine Arts, which covered architecture, sculpture, painting, engraving, poetry and music, and through other similar works. 198  The term Beaux Arts, and “Art,” in the new sense, found its way into the dictionaries of the French language that had ignored it before.  And the Revolution gave the novel term a new institu-

197. “La peinture, la sculpture, l’architecture, la poésie, la musique et leurs différentes divisions composent la troisième distribution générale, qui naît de l’imagination, et dont les parties sont comprises sous le nom de beaux-arts” (117).

198. Jacques Lacombe, Dictionnaire portatif des Beaux-Arts ou Abrégé de ce qui concerne l’architecture, la sculpture, la peinture, la gravure, la poësie et la musique, avec la definition de ces arts, l’explication des termes et des choses qui leur appartiennent, new ed. (Paris, 1753; first ed. 1752).  The preface refers to “Le goût quo le public témoigne pour les Beaux-Arts” and to “la nécessité d’un livre qui renferme les Recherches et les Connoissances d’un amateur” (p. III).  Pierre Estève, L’esprit des Beaux Arts, 2 vols. (Paris, 1753).  P.-J.-B. Nougaret, Anecdotes des Beaux Arts, contenant tout ce que la Peinture, la Sculpture, la Gravure, l’Architecture, la Littérature, la Musique etc. et la vie des artistes offrent de plus curieux et de plus piquant, 3 vols. (Paris, 1776-80; the work actually covers only the visual arts).

tional expression when it merged several of the older Academies into the Académie des Beaux Arts. 199   Gradually, the further developments of aesthetics in Germany began to affect French philosophy and literature.  The second edition of the Encyclopédie, published in Switzerland in 1781, has additions by Suizer, including an article on aesthetics 200 and a section on Fine Arts appended to the article on Art that had not appeared in the first edition. 201  Early in the nineteenth century, the philosopher Victor Cousin, following Kant and the Scottish thinkers of the eighteenth century, as well as what he believed he found in Plato, Proclus and other classical sources, centered his philosophical system on the three concepts of the Good, the True and the Beautiful, understanding by the latter the realm of art and aesthetics. 202 Cousin’s wide influence in the later nineteenth century went a long ways toward establishing this triad in modern value theory and toward fortifying the place of aesthetics in the system of philosophical disciplines.  It also induced many thinkers and historians to interpret in terms of this scheme a number of ancient and medieval notions that resembled it superficially but had in reality a very different meaning and context.  Meanwhile, as Cousin’s doctrine was spreading among philosophers and historians, French literature and criticism had long been feeling the impact of Romanticism.  They were beginning to develop modern problems and theories concerning the arts and their interpretation, no longer related to the discussions of the eighteenth century, and were laying the ground for more recent present-day tendencies.

 Index

VII - England

200. Eneyclopédie 13 (Berne and Lausanne, 1781), 84-86:  “Esthétique… terme nouveau, inventé pour designer une science qui n’a été réduite en forme que depuis peu d’années.  C’est la philosophie des beaux-arts.”  [Aristotle did not have such a theory.]  “M. Dubos est, si je ne me trompe, le premier d’entre les modernes qui ait entrepris de déduire d’un principe général la théorie des beaux-arts, et d’en démontrer les règles… Feu M. Baumgarten… est le premier qui ait hasardé de créer sur des principes philosophiques la science générale des beaux-arts, à laquelle il a donné Je nom d’esthétique.”

202. V. Cousin, Du Vrai, du Beau et du Bien, 29th ed. (Paris, 1904; first ed., 1836, based on lectures delivered in 1817-18).  Cf. P. Janet, Victor Cousin et son oeuvre (Paris, 1885).  E. Krantz (Essai sur l’esthétique de Descartes [Paris, 1882], 312f.) emphasizes that Cousin was the first French thinker who gave a separate place to aesthetics and to beauty in his philosophical system.

century, we must discuss the history of artistic thought in England. 203  The English writers were strongly influenced by the French down to the end of the seventeenth century and later, but during the eighteenth century they made important contributions of their own and in turn influenced continental thought, especially in France and Germany.  Interest in the arts other than poetry began to rise slowly in the English literature of the seventeenth century.  Works of an encyclopedic nature show little awareness of the separate function of the fine arts, 204 whereas an author such as Henry Peacham, who continued the amateur tradition of the Renaissance, would not only write a treatise on drawing, but also recommend the cultivation of painting, music and poetry, of classical studies and the collecting of coins and other antiquities and of natural curiosities, for the education of a perfect gentleman. 205   John Evelyn, who was the model of a virtuoso, included artistic and scientific interests, 206 bbut the work of the virtuosi of the Royal Society soon led to a separation between the arts and the sciences. 207  The Querelle, which was at least partly caused by the emancipation of the natural sciences in the seventeenth century, spread from France to England.  The most important treatise in England representing the views of the Moderns, that of Wotton, tried to cover systematically all the human arts and activities, just as Perrault

203. James E. Tobin, Eighteenth Century English Literature and its Cultural Background: A Bibliography (New York, 1939), 11-16; 27-33.  John W. Draper, Eighteenth Century English Aesthetics: A Bibliography (Heidelberg, 1931). B. Sprague Allen, Tides of English Taste (1619-1800), 2 vols. (Cambridge, Mass., 1937).  F. Mirabent, La estética inglesa del siglo XVIII (Barcelona, 1927).  Karl L. F. Thielke, Literatur- und Kunstkritik in ihren Wechselbeziehungen: Em Beitrag sue englischen Aesthetik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Halle, 1935).  John W. Draper, “Aristotelian ‘Mimesis’in Eighteenth Century England,” PMLA 36 (1921), 372-400 Id., “Poetry and Music in Eighteenth Century Aesthetics,” Englische Studien 67 (1932-33), 70-85.  J. G. Robertson, Studies in the Genesis of Romantic Theory in the Eighteenth Century (Cambridge, 1923), 235ff.  Elizabeth W. Manwaring, Italian Landscape in Eighteenth Century England (New York, 1925), 14ff.  Herbert M. Schueller, “Literature and Music as Sister Arts: An Aspect of Aesthetic Theory in Eighteenth-Century Britain,” Philological Quarterly 26 (1947), 193-205.

206. The Literary Remains of John Evelyn, ed. W. Upcott (London, 1834).

207. James A. H. Murray, A New English Dictionary on Historicai Principles, vol. 10, pt. 2 (Oxford, 1928), 240f.  Several of the seventeenth-century passages given for “virtuoso” include a scientific interest.  The limitation of the term to a taste for the arts is clear in Shaftesbury, see below- Cf. Manwaring, i.e., 25.

had done, and emphasized like Perrault the fundamental difference between the sciences that had made progress since antiquity, and the arts that had not.208  A translation of one of the French works related to the Querelle, Callière’s History of the War of’ the Ancients and Moderns, was published as late as 1705, and reveals in its very title the growing sense of the affinity of the fine arts. 209  Even before the end of the seventeenth century, Dryden had translated Du Fresnoy’s poem on painting with De Piles’ commentary and had added his famous introduction on the Parallel of Painting and Poetry which popularized the notion in England. 210  This translation was still of interest to Sir Joshua Reynolds, who wrote some notes on it. 211  Early in the eighteenth century, Jonathan Richardson was praising painting as a liberal art, 212 and John Dennis in some of his critical treatises on

208. William Wotton, Reflections upon Ancient and Modern Learning, 3rd ed. (London, 1705). “… of these particulars there are two sorts: one, of those wherein the greatest part of those learned men who have compared Ancient and Modern Performances, either give up the cause to the Ancients quite, or think, at least, that the Moderns have not gone beyond them.  The other of those, where the Advocates for the Moderns think the case so clear on their side, that they wonder how any man can dispute it with them.  Poesie, Oratory, Architecture, Painting, and Statuary, are of the first sort; Natural History, Physiology, and Mathematics, with all their Dependencies, are of the second” (p. 18, end of ch. 2).  “The generality of the learned have given the Ancients the preference in those arts and sciences which have hitherto been considered: but for the precedency in those parts of learning which still remain to be enquired into, the Moderns have put in their claim, with great briskness.  Among this sort, I reckon mathematical and physical sciences, in their largest extent” (p. 74f., ch. 7).  In the first group, Wotton discusses Moral and Political knowledge, Eloquence and Poesie, grammar, architecture, statuary and painting.  The second group includes, besides the sciences, philology and theology, also gardening which is treated with agriculture (ch. 22, p. 272) and music which is placed between optics and medicine (ch. 25, p. 307).  The chapter on gardening is lacking in the first edition (London, 1694).  Wotton does once compare music with painting (“For, in making a Judgment of Music, it is much the same thing as it is in making a judgment of Pictures,” 311), but he treats music as a “physico-mathematical science, built upon fixed rules, and stated proportions” (309f.), and also in other respects his two groups do not coincide with the modern distinction between fine arts and sciences.  Wotton is obviously moving towards that distinction, but I do not see that he goes beyond Perrault in this respect, as stated by Rigault (323f.) and Bury (121f.).  No distinction between the arts and sciences is made by Sir William Temple, “An Essay upon the Ancient and Modern Learning” (1690), in Critical Essays of the Seventeenth Century, ed. J. E. Spingarn, vol. 3 (Oxford, 1909), 32-72.

210. C. A. Du Fresnoy, De arte graphica, tr. J. Dryden (London, 1695), p. I-LVIII: “Preface of the Translator, with a Parallel of Poetry and Painting.”  The Critical and Miscellaneous Prose of John Dryden, ed. E. Malone, vol. III (London, 1800), 291ff.

211. Sir Joshua Reynolds, The Literary Works II (London, 1835), 297-358 (first ed., 1783).

212. Jonathan Richardson, The Theory of Painting (first published in 1715), in his Works (London, 1792), 5ff.

poetics stressed the affinity between poetry, painting and music. 213

Of greater importance were the writings of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the most influential thinkers of the eighteenth century, not only in England but also on the continent. 214  His interest and taste for literature and the arts are well known, and his writings are full of references to the various arts and to the beauty of their works.  The ideal of the virtuoso which he embodied and advocated no longer included the sciences, as in the seventeenth century, but had its center in the arts and in the moral life. 215  Since Shaftesbury was the first major philosopher in modern Europe in whose writings the discussion of the arts occupied a prominent place, there is some reason for considering him as the founder of modern aesthetics. 216  Yet Shaftesbury was influenced primarily by Plato and Plotinus, as well as by Cicero, and he consequently did not make a clear distinction between artistic and moral beauty. 217  His moral sense still includes both ethical and aesthetic objects. 218  Moreover, although references to the particular arts are frequent in his writings, and some of his works are even entirely devoted to the subjects of painting 219 or of poetry, 220 the passages in which he mentions poetry, the visual arts and music together are not too frequent, and do not contain any more specific notions than may be found in earlier authors. 221  Poetry, especially, appears still in the company not only

213. The Critical Works of John Dennis, ed. Edward N. Hooker, vol. I (Baltimore, 1939), 201f.  (“The Advancement and Reformation of Modern Poetry,” 1701); 336 (“ The Ground of Criticism in Poetry,” 1704).

214. His importance is stressed by all historians of aesthetics.  See also E. Cassirer, Die platonische Renaissance in Engiand und die Schule von Cambridge (Leipzig, 1932), 115; 138ff.  G. Spicker, Die Phiiosophie des Grafen von Shaftesbury (Freiburg, 1872), 196ff.  Christian Friedrich Weiser, Shaftesbury und das deutsche Geistesleben (Leipzig-Berlin, 1916). L. Stuermer, Der Begriff “moral sense” in der Philosophie Shaftesbury’s (thes. Königsberg, 1928).

215. Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Characteristics, ed. John M. Robertson (London, 1900), vol. I, 214f.; II, 2521.  The Life, Unpublished Letters, and Philosophical Regimen of Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, ed. B. Rand (London, 1900), 249 (“A virtuoso to propose poetry, music, dance, picture, architecture, garden, and so on”); 4161.  (“Had Mr. Locke been a virtuoso, he would not have philosophized thus”); 478; 484; 496; 506.

219. Anthony, Earl of Shaftesbury, Second Characters, ed. B. Rand (Cambridge,1914).

of eloquence but also of history, thus reflecting the Renaissance tradition of the Studia humanitatis. 222   Almost equally influential in England as well as on the continent, at least in literary circles, was Joseph Addison.  His famous essays on imagination, which appeared in the Spectator in 1712, are remarkable not merely for their early emphasis on that faculty, but also for the manner in which he attributes the pleasures of the imagination to the various arts as well as to natural sights.  Without ever giving a definite system, he constantly refers to gardening and architecture, painting and sculpture, poetry and music, and makes it quite clear that the pleasures of the imagination are to be found in their works and products. 223

The philosophical implications of Shaftesbury’s doctrine were further developed by a group of Scottish thinkers.  Francis Hutcheson, who considered himself Shaftesbury’s pupil, modified his doctrine by distinguishing between the moral sense and the sense of beauty. 224  This distinction, which was adopted by Hume 225 and quoted by Diderot, went a long ways to prepare the separation of ethics and aesthetics, although Hutcheson still assigned the taste of poetry to the moral sense. 226  A later philosopher of the Scottish school, Thomas

222. II, 242. There seems to be a tendency in Shaftesbury to associate not only the beauty of the senses with the visual arts and music, but also the beauty of character and virtue, or moral ‘beauty, with poetry.  I, 136 (“moral artist”); 216 (“poetical and moral truth, the beauty of sentiments, the sublime of characters”); II, 318 (“ to morals, and the knowledge of what is called poetic manners and truth”); 3311.  (“a sense of that moral truth on which… poetic truth and beauty must naturally depend”).  This is not merely a residue of the old moralistic interpretation of poetry, but an attempt to correlate the emerging system of the fine arts with Plato’s ladder of beauty.  Cf. the statement of Castelvetro, above, note 92.

223. Joseph Addison, Works, ed. Tickell, II (London, 1804), 354ff. (Spectator, no. 411ff.).  Addison includes architecture, and perhaps gardening, along with natural sights, among the primary pleasures, whereas he lists as secondary pleasures the “arts of mimicry,” i.e., “statue, picture, description, or sound” (376).  Significant also is a sentence from an earlier essay, published in the Spectator, no. 29, on April 3, 1711: “that music, architecture, and painting, as well as poetry and oratory, are to deduce their laws and rules from the general sense and taste of mankind…” (ibid., I, 78).

224. Francis Hutcheson, An Inquiry into the Original of our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (Glasgow, 1772; first ed., 1725), p. XI; 8; 100.  Cf. Thomas Fowler, Shaftesbury and Hutcheson (New York, 1883).  William Robert Scott, Francis Hutcheson (Cambridge, 1900).  John J. Martin, Shaftesbury’s und Hutcheson’s Verhältnis zu Hume (thes. Halle, 1905).

Reid, introduced common sense as a direct criterion of truth, and although he was no doubt influenced by Aristotle’s notion of common sense and the Stoic and modern views on “common notions,” it has been suggested that his common sense was conceived as a counterpart to Hutcheson’s two senses. 227  Thus the psychology of the Scottish school led the way for the doctrine of the three faculties of the soul, which found its final development in Kant and its application in Cousin.

Other English authors, motivated by critical rather than philosophical interests and probably influenced by French authors, popularized the notion of the affinity between poetry, painting, and music, e.g., Charles Lamotte 228 and Hildebrand Jacobs. 229  More philosophical are the essays of James Harris, who continued Shaftesbury and had some influence on German writers.  In the first of his three essays, which are written in an elegant dialogue form but heavily annotated with references to classical authors, Harris expounds the concept of art on the basis of Aristotle and with its older comprehensive meaning.  In the second essay, he distinguishes between the necessary arts and the arts of elegance, putting under the latter category especially music, painting and poetry, and comparing these three arts with each other according to their relative merits.  The third essay deals with happiness as the art of human conduct. 230   About

227. Thomas Reid, Works, 4th ed. (Edinburgh, 1854). Matthias Keppes, Der Common Sense als Princip der gewissheit in der Philosophie des Schotten Thomas Reid (Munich, 1890), 15.  Cf. F. Ueberweg, Grundriss der Geschichte der Philosophie, III, 12th ed. (Berlin, 1924), 416. 0.  Robbins, “The Aesthetics of Thomas Reid,” The Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 5 (1942), 30-41.

228. Charles Lamotte, An Essay upon Poetry and Painting…(Dublin, 1745; first ed., 1730).

229. Hildebrand Jacobs, Of the Sister Arts; an Essay, in his Works (London, 1735), 379-419 (first ed., 1734).  “If it be allow’d with Cicero that all Arts are related, we may safely conclude, that Poetry, Painting, and Music are closely ally’d” (379).  “Poetry is much nearer ally’d to Painting, than to Music. Lyric Poetry approaches more to Music than any other Species of it, as Dramatic, and Pastoral Poetry do to Painting” (380).  “The same Rules which Aristotle lays down as necessary for the Poets to observe in the Formation of he (sic) Manners, or Characters, are equally instructive to the Painters” (401).  “That the Ancients were more excellent than we in most Parts of these Arts of Ornament, is as manifest, as that latter Ages have invented many useful Things entirely unknown to them” (412).  However, the moderns are said to be superior in music (392).  These statements are so explicit and interesting that it would be worth while to explore the influence of this author in France and Germany.

230. J(ames) H(arris), Three Treatises, the first concerning art, the second concerning music, painting, and poetry, the third concerning happiness (London, 1744).  “All arts have this in common that they respect human life.  Some contribute to [its necessities, as medicine and agriculture; others to its elegance, as music, paint­ing, and poetry” (53). These three arts are called mimetic (65; 94).]

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the same time, the poet Akenside continued the work of Addison; 231 and before the middle of the century the important French works of Dubos and Batteux were presented to English readers, the former in a translation, 232  the latter in an anonymous version or summary, entitled The Polite Arts. 233

During the second half of the eighteenth century, English writers continued to discuss the various arts.  But they were not so much interested in expounding and developing a system of the fine arts, which they took pretty much for granted, as in discussing general concepts and principles concerning the arts; e.g., Home, Burke, and Gerard; or else the relations between the particular arts; e.g., Daniel Webb or John Brown, to mention only some of the more influential

231. Mark Akenside, The Pleasures of Imagination, in his Poetical Works, ed. G. Gilfihlan (Edinburgh, 1857), 1ff.  In the preface of 1744, painting and sculpture, music and poetry are listed as imitative arts, and the poem is said to cover “all the various entertainment we meet with, either in poetry, painting, music, or any of the elegant arts” (p. 1).  In the general argument added to the edition of 1757, the pleasures of imagination are said to proceed from natural objects or “from works of art, such as a noble edifice, a musical tune, a statue, a picture, a poem,” and music, sculpture, painting and poetry are called “elegant arts” (77).

233. The Polite Arts, or, a Dissertation on Poetry, Painting, Musick, Architecture, and Eloquence (London, 1749).  The work is anonymous, and dedicated to William Cheselden.  In the copy of the Yale IJniversity Library I have used, a contemporary manuscript note at the end of the preface identifies the author as follows: “Hippesley, son of the player, & bred under Mr. Cheselden & now surgeon abroad to the African company, 1753” (p. IX).  This is obviously John Hippisley (d. 1767) son of the actor (d. 1748), to whom the following anonymous writings have been attributed: Dissertation on Comedy… (London, 1750); Essays, 1.  On the Populousness of Africa, 2. On the Trade at the Forts on the Gold Coast, 3.  On the Necessity of erecting a Fort at Cape Appollonia (London, 1764).  Cf. Dictionary of National Biography IX, 903.  The essay on The Polite Arts appears to depend closely on Batteux.  This is the division of the arts given in ch. 2: “Arts may be divided into three kinds.  The first have the Necessities of Mankind for their Object… From this the Mechanick Arts arose.  The next kind have Pleasure for their Object… They are called Polite Arts by way of Excellency, such are Musick, Poetry, Painting, Sculpture, and the Art of Gesture or Dancing.  The third kind are those which have usefulness and Pleasure at the same time for their Object: such are Eloquence and Architecture” (5-6).  A close comparison between the anonymous English essay and Batteux’s treatise shows that the former follows the latter verbatim for large sections of the text, but alters its model through numerous transpositions, omissions and additions.  The most important among the latter are two chapters on Eloquence and Architecture at the end of the English essay.

writers. 234  All these English and Scottish writers show a strong preoccupation with psychology, as might be expected from the general trend of English thought in that century.  They exercised considerable influence on the continent, especially in Germany, where many of their works appeared in translations.  It has been noted that the emphasis of writers and literary critics on the affinity between poetry and painting was followed after the middle of the century by an increasing insistence on the links between poetry and music. 235  One reason for this may have been the public attention which music received in London after the appearance of Handel, 230 just as had been the case in Paris after the success of Lulli.  On the other hand, if poetry really tended to exchange the company of painting for that of music, this merely reflects a change in style and taste from descriptive to emotional poetry that corresponds to the transition from classicism to romanticism.  A new epoch in English critical and artistic theory begins toward the very end of the century with Coleridge, who imported from Germany some of the aesthetic notions of Kant and of the early Romanticists.  The further development these ideas received through Coleridge and his English successors in the nineteenth century is beyond the scope of this paper.

234 .Henry Home, Lord Kames, Elements of Criticism (New York, 1830; first ed., 1762).  He lists poetry, painting, sculpture, music, gardening and architecture as “fine arts” (11).  E. Burke, A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful (London, 1770; first ed., 1757).  Alexander Gerard, An Essay on Taste (London, 1759).  He lists as the “finer arts “: music, painting, statuary, architecture, poetry and eloquence (189).  Daniel Webb, Observations on the Correspondence between Poetry and Music (London, 1769; cf. Hans Hecht, Daniel Webb, Hamburg, 1920).  Dr. (John) Brown, A Dissertation on the Rise, Union, and Power, the Progressions, Separations, and Corruptions, of Poetry and Musick (London, 1763; cf. Hermann M. Flasdieck, John Brown (1715-66) und seine Dissertation on Poetry and Music, Halle, 1924).  Thomas Robertson, An Inquiry into the Fine Arts (London, 1784; he quotes Batteux and Bettinelli, and lists as fine arts: music, speech, architecture, painting, sculpture, gardening, dance, eloquence, poetry and also history, cf. 14-17).  Sir William Jones, Essay II. on the Arts, commonly called Imitative, in his Poems, 2nd ed. (London, 1777), 191ff. (he also quotes Batteux and discusses especially poetry, music and painting.  James Beattie, An Essay on Poetry and Music, as they affect the Mind, 3rd ed. (London, 1779; written in 1762).  Hugh Blair, Lectures on Rhetoric and Belies Lettres (London, 1787; first ed., 1783).

236. Cf. H. Parker, The Nature of the Fine Arts (London, 1885), 18ff.

VIII - Germany

Discussion of the arts does not seem to have occupied many German writers in the seventeenth century, which was on the whole a period of cultural decline. 237  The poet Opitz showed familiarity with the parallel of poetry and painting, 238 but otherwise the Germans did not take part in the development we are trying to describe before the eighteenth century.  During the first part of that century interest in literature and literary criticism began to rise, but did not yet lead to a detailed or comparative treatment of the other arts.  However, some of the French and English writers we have, mentioned were widely read and also translated into German during the course of the century, such as Dubos and Batteux, Shaftesbury and Harris.  The critical writings of the Swiss authors, Bodmer and Breitinger, focus from the very beginning on the parallel between painting and poetry, and reflect the influence of Addison and perhaps of Dubos. 239  Even their classicist opponent, Gottsched, mentions occasionally the affinity between poetry, painting, music, and the other arts, 240 as does Johann

237. For German aesthetics in the eighteenth century, see, besides the general histories of aesthetics: F. Braitmaier, Geschichte der poetischen Theorie von den Diskursen der Mater bis auf Lessing, 2 pts. (Frauenfeld, 1888-89).  E. Gureker, Histoire des doctrines littéraires et esthétiques en Allemagne, 2 vols. (Paris, 1883-96).  Robert Sominer, Grundzüge einer Geschichte der deutschen Psychologie und Aesthetik von Wolff-Baumgarten bis Kant-Schiller (Wurzburg, 1892).  M. Dessoir, Geschichte der neueren deutschen Psychologie, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1902).  H. Goldschmidt, Die Musikaesthetik des 18. Jahrhunderts… (Zurich and Leipzig, 1915).  W. Dilthey, Das Erlebnis und die Dichtung, 4th ed, (Leipzig, 1913), 42ff.  E. Cassirer, Freiheit und Form, 2nd ed. (Berlin, 1918), 97ff.  Herman Wolf, Versuch einer Geschichte des Geniebegriffs in der deutschen Aesthetik des 18. Jahrhunderts (Heidelberg, 1923). K. Bauerhorst, Der Geniebegriff…. (thes. Breslau, 1930).  B. Rosenthal, Der Geniebegriff des Aufklärungszeitalters (Berlin, 1933).

238.. C. Borinski, Die Kunstlehre der Renaissance in Opitz’ Buch von der deutschen Poeterey (then. Munich, 1883), 44f.

239. Die Discourse der Mahlern (1721-22), ed. Th. Vetter (Frauenfeld, 1891).  The analogy between poetry and painting is stressed in discourse no. 19 (p. 91) and extended to sculpture in discourse no. 20 (97ff.).  The same analogy is stressed in the later works of Bodmer and Breitinger.  See Johann Jacob Bodmer, Critische Betrachtungen ueber die Poetischen Gemälde der Dichter (Zürich, 1741), 27ff. Johann Jacob Breitinger, Critische Dichtkunst (Zurich, 1740), 3ff. and 29ff. (where the comparison with painting is extended to history and eloquence).  Cf. R. De Reynold, Histoire littéraire de la Suisse au XVIIIe siècle, II (Lousanne, 1912): Bodmer et l’Ecole Suisse. R. Verosta, Der Phantasiebegriff bei den Schweizern Bodmer und Breitinger (progr. Vienna, 1908).  F. Braitmaier, Die poetische Theorie Gottsched’s und der Schweizer (progr. Tübingen, 1879).  F. Servaes, Die Poetik Gottscheds und der Schweizer (Strassburg, 1887).

240. Johann Christoph Gottsched, Versuch einer Critischen Dichtkunst, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1742), 98 (where poetry is compared with painting, sculpture, music and dance).

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Elias Schiegel, who is said to have been influenced by the lectures of Fraguier and other authors published in the Memoirs of the Académie des Inscriptions. 241 His brother Johann Adolf Schlegel, who was one of the translators of Batteux, added to his version several original essays in which he criticizes the theory of imitation and also presents a modified system of the fine arts. 242  Yet all these writers were primarily interested in poetics and literary criticism and drew upon the other arts only for occasional analogies.

These critical discussions among poets and literati constitute the general background for the important work of the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten and of his pupil Georg Friedrich Meier. 243

241. Johann Elias Schiegels Aesthetische und dramaturgische Schriften, ed. J. von Antoniewicz (Heilbronn, 1887).  In an essay composed in 1745, Schlegel compares poetry with architecture, painting and sculpture (97), in another essay dated 1742-43 with painting, sculpture and music (107ff.).  On his French sources, see the introduction, p. XXXVI ff. and XCV ff.

242. Herrn Abt Batteux… Einschränkung der Schönen Künste auf einen einzigen Grundsatz, tr. Johann Adolf Schiegel, 3rd ed. (Leipzig, 1770; first ed., 1751), II, 155ff.: “Abhandllung no. 5.  Von der Eintheilung der schönen Künste nach ihrer verschiednen Absicht.”  Schiegel summarizes Batteux but insists that eloquence and architecture should be included among the fine arts (157) and also adds prose poetry as well as drawing and engraving to the list (180-81).  Cf. Hugo Bieber, Johann Adolf Schiegels poetische Theorie in ihrem historischen Zusammenhange untersucht (Berlin, 1912).

243. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Aesthetica, ed. B. Croce (Bari, 1936; first ed., 1750-58).  This edition also contains (1-45) his Meditationes Philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (1735).  B. Poppe, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (thes. Münster, Borna-Leipzig, 1907), who publishes from a Berlin manuscript the text of Baumgarten’s course on Aesthetics, delivered in German, probably in 1750-51 (65ff.).  Georg Friedrich Meier, Abbildung eines Kunstrichters (Halle, 1745).  Id., Anfangsgründe alier schönen Wissenschaften, 2nd ed. (Halle, 1754-59; first ed., 1748-50).  Thomas Abbt, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens Leben und Character (Halle, 1765).  Georg Friedrich Meier, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens Leben (Halle, 1763).  Th. W. Dannel, Gottsched und seine Zeit, 2nd ed. (Leipzig, 1855), 211ff.  Carolus Raabe, A. G. Baumgarten aestheticae in disciplinae formam redactae parens et auctor (thes. Rostock, 1873).  Hans Georg Meyer, Leibniz und Baumgarten als Begründer der deutschen Aesthetik (then. Halle, 1874).  Johannes Schmidt, Leibnitz und Baumgarten, em Beitrag zur Geschichte der deutschen Aesthetik (thes. Halle, 1875).  E. Prieger, Anregung und metaphysische Grundlagen der Aesthetik von Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (thes. Berlin, 1875).  M. Bojanowski, Literarische Einflüsse bei der Entstehung von Baumgartens Aesthetik (thes. Breslau, 1910).  Ernst Bergmann, Die Begründung der deutschen Aesthetik durch Alexander Gottiieb Baumgarten und Georg Friedrich Meier (Leipzig, 1911).  A. Riemann, Die Aesthetik Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens (Halle, 1928).  Hans Georg Peters, Die Aesthetik Alexander Gottlieb Baumgartens und ihre Beziehungen sum Ethischen (Berlin, 1934).

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Baumgarten is famous for having coined the term aesthetics, but opinions differ as to whether he must be considered the founder of that discipline or what place he occupies in its history and development. The original meaning of the term aesthetics as coined by Baumgarten, which has been well nigh forgotten by now, is the theory of sensuous knowledge, as a counterpart to logic as a theory of intellectual knowledge. 244  The definitions Baumgarten gives of aesthetics show that he is concerned with the arts and with beauty as one of their main attributes, but he still uses the old term liberal arts, and he considers them as forms of knowledge. 245  The question whether Baumgarten really gave a theory of all the fine arts, or merely a poetics and rhetoric with a new name, has been debated but can be answered easily.  In his earlier work, in which he first coined the term aesthetics, Baumgarten was exclusively concerned with poetics and rhetoric. 246  In his later, unfinished work, to which he gave the title Aesthetica, Baumgarten states in his introduction that he intends to give a theory of all the arts, 247 and actually makes occasional references to the visual arts and to music. 248  This impression is confirmed by the text of Baumgarten’s lectures published only recently, 249 and

245. Ibid. See also #3 (p. 55) where the usefulness of aesthetics is thus described: “bona principia studiis omnibus artibusque liberalibus subministrare.”

246. In the Meditationes (#117, ed. Croce, p. 44-45), rhetorica generalis and poetica generalis are introduced as the main parts of aesthetica.

247. In #5 (ed. Croce, p. 56) he raises this objection against himself: “eam eandem esse cum rhetorica et poetica,” and answers thus: “latius pate... complectitur has cum allis artibus ac inter se communia.”

248. #4, p. 55 (musicus); #69, p. 76 (musici); #780, p. 461-62 (music, painting); #83, p. 82-83 (music, the dance, painting, where painting is also assigned to one of the Muses.)

249. “Die ganze Geschichte der Maler, Bildhauer, Musikverständigen, Dichter, Redner wird hierher gehören, denn alle diese verschiedenen Teile haben ihre algemeinen Regeln in der Aesthetik” (ed. Poppe, 67).  “Er [Aristotle] teilt seine Philosophie, wodurch die menschliche Kenntnis verbessert werden soll, in die Logik, Rhetorik und Poetik, die er zuerst als Wissenschaften vorträgt. Die Einteilung selbst ist unvollkommen.  Wenn ich sinnlich schön denken will, warum soll ich bloss in Prosa oder in Versen denken?  Wo bleibt der Maler und Musikus?” (69). [“... da die Erklärung auch auf Musik und Malerei gehen muss” (71). “. . . alle Künste, die man schön nennet, werden von der Kenntnis dieser Regein den grössten Nutzen haben” (75).  “Die Aesthetik geht viel weiter als die Rhetorik und Poetik” (76).  These lectures are also notable for the more frequent references to French, and English authors.]

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by the writings of his pupil Meier. 250  On the other hand, it is quite obvious, and was noted by contemporary critics, that Baumgarten and Meier develop their actual theories only in terms of poetry and eloquence and take nearly all their examples from literature. 251  Baumgarten is the founder of aesthetics in so far as he first conceived a general theory of the arts as a separate philosophical discipline with a distinctive and well-defined place in the system of philosophy.  He failed to develop his doctrine with reference to the arts other than poetry and eloquence, or even to propose a systematic list and division of these other arts.  In this latter respect, he was preceded and surpassed by the French writers, especially by Batteux and the Encyclopaedists, whereas the latter failed to develop a theory of the arts as part of a philosophical system.  It was the result of German thought and criticism during the second half of the eighteenth century that the more concrete French conception of the fine arts was utilized in a philosophical theory of aesthetics for which Baumgarten had formulated the general scope and program.

When Meier tried to answer the critics of his teacher Baumgarten, he stated that Baumgarten and himself had spoken only about literature, since they did not know enough about the other arts. 252  The broadening scope of German aesthetics after Baumgarten, which we must now try to trace, was due not only to the influence of Batteux, of the Encyclopaedists, and of other French and English writers, but also to the increasing interest taken by writers, philosophers, and the lay public in the visual arts and in music.  Winckelmann’s studies of

classical art are important for the history of our problem for the enthusiasm which he stimulated among his German readers for ancient sculpture and architecture, but not for any opinion he may have expressed on the relation between the visual arts and literature. 253  Lessing’s Laokoon (1766), too, has a notable importance, not only for its particular theories on matters of poetry and of the visual arts, but also for the very attention given to the latter by one of the most brilliant and most respected German writers of the time. 254  Yet the place of the Laokoon in the history of our problem has been misjudged. To say that the Laokoon put an end to the age-old tradition of the parallel between painting and poetry that had its ultimate roots in classical antiquity and found its greatest development in the writers of the sixteenth, seventeenth, and early eighteenth century, and thus freed poetry from the emphasis on description, is to give only one side of the picture.  It is to forget that the parallel between painting and poetry was one of the most important elements that preceded the formation of the modern system of the fine arts, though it had lost this function as a link between two different arts by the time of Lessing, when the more comprehensive system of the fine arts had been firmly established.  In so far as Lessing paid no attention to the broader system of the fine arts, especially to music, his Laokoon constituted a detour or a dead end in terms of the development leading to a comprehensive system of the fine arts.  It is significant that the Laokoon was criticized for this very reason by two prominent contemporary critics, and that Lessing in the posthumous notes for the second part of the work gave some consideration to this criticism, though we have no evidence that he actually planned to extend his analysis to music and to a coherent system of the arts. 255

The greatest contributions to the history of our problem in the interval between Baumgarten and Kant came from Mendelssohn, Sulzer, and Herder.  Mendelssohn, who was well acquainted with French and English writings on the subject, demanded in a famous article that the fine arts (painting, sculpture, music, the dance, and architecture) and belles lettres (poetry and eloquence) should be re-

duced to some common principle better than imitation, 256 and thus was the first among the Germans to formulate a system of the fine arts.  Shortly afterwards, in a book review, he criticized Baumgarten and Meier for not having carried out the program of their new science, aesthetics.  They wrote as if they had been thinking exclusively in terms of poetry and literature, whereas aesthetic principles should be formulated in such a way as to apply to the visual arts and to music as well. 257  In his annotations to Lessing’s Laokoon, published long after his death, Mendelssohn persistently criticizes Lessing for not giving any consideration to music and to the system of the arts as a whole; 258 we have seen how Lessing, in the fragmentary notes for a continuation of the Laokoon, tried to meet this criticism.  Mendelssohn also formulated a doctrine of the three faculties of the soul corresponding to the three basic realms of goodness, truth and beauty, thus continuing the work of the Scottish philosophers. 259  He did not work

What Mendelssohn had merely set forth in a general outline and program, the Swiss thinker Suizer, who was well versed in French literature but spent the greater part of his life in Northern Germany, was able to develop in a more systematic and elaborate fashion.  Sulzer began his literary activity with a few short philosophical articles in which his interest for aesthetics was already apparent, and in which he also leaned toward the conception of an aesthetic faculty of the soul separate from the intellectual and moral faculties, 260  a conception in whose development Mendelssohn and the philosopher Tetens also took their part. 261  Some years later, he was prompted by the example of Lacombe’s little dictionary of the fine arts to compile a similar

dictionary in German on a much larger scale. 262  This General Theory of the Fine Arts, which appeared in several editions, has been disparaged on account of its pedantic arrangement, for it is clear, comprehensive and learned, and had a considerable importance in its time.  The work covers all the fine arts, not only poetry and eloquence, but also music and the visual arts, and thus represents the first attempt to carry out on a large scale the program formulated by Baumgarten and Mendelssohn.  Thanks to its wide diffusion, Sulzer’s work went a long way to acquaint the German public with the idea that all the fine arts are related and connected with each other.  Suizer’s influence extended also to France, for when the great Encyclopédie was published in Switzerland in a second edition, many additions were based on his General Theory, including the article on aesthetics and the section on the Fine Arts. 263

In the decades after 1760, the interest in the new field of aesthetics spread rapidly in Germany.  Courses on aesthetics were offered at a number of universities after the example set by Baumgarten and Meier, and new tracts and textbooks, partly based on these courses, appeared almost every year. 264  These authors have been listed, but their individual contributions remain to be investigated.  The influence of the great Encyclopédie is attested by a curious engraving printed in Weimar in 1769 and attached to a famous copy of the Encyclopédie. 265  It represents the tree of the arts and sciences as

262. Aligemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste, 2nd ed., 4 vols. (Leipzig, 1777-78; first ed., 1771-74; new ed., 4 vols., 1792-99).  For his dependence on Lacombe, see his Vermischte Philosophische Schriften 2, p. 70 (“HHC – extensive German paragraph not reproduced”).  Johannes Leo, Zur Entstehungsgeschichte der “Allgemeinen Theorie der Schönen Künste” J. G. Suizers (then. Heidelberg, Berlin, 1906), 31ff. and 57.  See also: Ludwig M. Heyrn, Darstellung und Kritik der aesthetischen Ansichten Johann Georg Suizers (thes. Leipzig, 1894). Karl J. Gross, Suizers Allgemeine Theorie der Schönen Künste (thes. Berlin, 1905). 263 See above, note 200-201.

given in the text of D’Alembert’s Discours, putting the visual arts, poetry and music with their subdivisions under the general branch of imagination.  Among the minor aesthetic writers of this period, Riedel has attracted some scholarly attention, probably because he was the target of Herder’s criticism. 266   In his treatise on aesthetics, based on university lectures, Riedel gives a full discussion of all the fine arts, and also sets out with a general division of philosophical subjects into the True, the Good and the Beautiful. 267

It is interesting to note the reaction to this aesthetic literature of the leaders of the younger generation, especially of Goethe and of Herder.  Goethe in his early years published a review of Sulzer which was quite unfavorable.  Noticing the French background of Sulzer’s conception, Goethe ridicules the grouping together of all the arts which are so different from each other in their aims and means of expression, a system which reminds him of the old-fashioned system of the seven liberal arts, and adds that this system may be useful to the amateur but certainly not to the artist. 268  This reaction shows

that the system of the fine arts was something novel and not yet firmly established, and that Goethe, just like Lessing, did not take an active part in developing the notion that was to become generally accepted.  Toward the very end of his life, in the Wanderjahre, Goethe shows that he had by then accepted the system of the fine arts, for he assigns a place to each of them in his pedagogical province. 269  Yet his awareness of the older meaning of art is apparent when in a group of aphorisms originally appended to the same work he defines art as knowledge and concludes that poetry, being based on genius, should not be called an art. 270

Herder, on the other hand, took an active part in the development of the system of the fine arts and used the weight of his literary authority to have it generally accepted.  In an early but important critical work (Kritische Waelder, 1769), he dedicates the entire first section to a critique of Lessing’s Laokoon.  Lessing shows merely, he argues, what poetry is not, by comparing it with painting.  In order to see what its essence is, we should compare it with all its sister arts, such as music, the dance, and eloquence.  Quoting Aristotle and Harris, Herder stresses the comparison between poetry and music, and concludes that this problem would require another Lessing. 271  In the fourth section, he quotes Mendelssohn as well as the more important English and French authors, and presents his own system of the fine arts, which includes all the essential elements though it differs from previous authors in some detail. 272  Herder’s later contributions

I should like to conclude this survey with Kant, since he was the first major philosopher who included aesthetics and the philosophical theory of the arts as an integral part of his system.  Kant’s interest in aesthetic problems appears already in his early writing on the beautiful and sublime, which was influenced in its general conception by Burke. 273  He also had occasion to discuss aesthetic problems in several of his courses.  Notes based on these courses extant in manuscript have not been published, but have been utilized by a student of Kant’s aesthetics.  It appears that Kant cited in these lectures many authors he does not mention in his published works, and that he was thoroughly familiar with most of the French, English and German writers on aesthetics. 274  At the time when he published the Critique of Pure Reason, he still used the term aesthetics in a sense different from the common one, and explains in an interesting footnote, that he does not follow Baumgarten’s terminology since he does not believe in the possibility of a philosophical theory of the arts. 275  In the following years, however, he changed his view, and in his Critique of Judgment, which constitutes the third and concluding part of his philosophical system, the larger of its two major divisions is dedicated to aesthetics, whereas the other section deals with teleology.  The system of the three Critiques as presented in this last volume is based on a threefold division of the faculties of the mind, which adds the faculty of judgment, aesthetic and teleological, to pure and practical reason.  Aesthetics, as the philosophical theory of beauty and the arts, acquires equal standing with the theory of truth (metaphysics or epistemology) and the theory of goodness (ethics). 276

273. Beobachtungen über das Gefühl des Schönen und Erhabenen (1764), in Immanuel Kants Werke, ed. E. Cassirer, 2 (Berlin, 1922), 243-300.

In the tradition of systematic philosophy this was an important innovation, for neither Descartes nor Spinoza nor Leibniz nor any of their ancient or medieval predecessors had found a separate or independent place in their system for the theory of the arts and of beauty, though they had expressed occasional opinions on these subjects.  If Kant took this decisive step after some hesitation, he was obviously influenced by the example of Baumgarten and by the rich French, English, and German literature on the arts his century had produced, with which he was well acquainted.  In his critique of aesthetic judgment, Kant discusses also the concepts of the sublime and of natural beauty, but his major emphasis is on beauty in the arts, and he discusses many concepts and principles common to all the arts.  In section 51 he also gives a division of the fine arts: speaking arts (poetry, eloquence); plastic arts (sculpture, architecture, painting, and gardening); arts of the beautiful play of sentiments (music, and the art of color). 277  This scheme contains a few ephemeral details that were not retained by Kant’s successors. 278  However, since Kant aesthetics has occupied a permanent place among the major philosophical disciplines, and the core of the system of the fine arts fixed in the eighteenth century has been generally accepted as a matter of course by most later writers on the subject, except for variations of detail or of explanation.

As a result of such changes, both in modern artistic production and in the study of other phases of cultural history, the traditional system of the fine arts begins to show signs of disintegration.  Since the latter part of the nineteenth century, painting has moved further away from literature than at any previous time, whereas music has at times moved closer to it, and the crafts have taken great strides to recover their earlier standing as decorative arts.  A greater awareness of the different techniques of the various arts has produced dissatisfaction among artists and critics with the conventions of an aesthetic system based on a situation no longer existing, an aesthetics that is trying in vain to hide the fact that its underlying system of the fine arts is hardly more than a postulate and that most of its theories are abstracted from particular arts, usually poetry, and more or less inapplicable to the others.  The excesses of aestheticism have led to a healthy reaction which is yet far from universal.  The tendency among some, contemporary philosophers to consider Art and the aesthetic realm as a pervasive aspect of human experience rather than as the specific domain of the conventional fine arts also goes a long way to weaken the latter notion in its traditional form. 279  All these ideas are still fluid and ill defined, and it is difficult to see how far they will go in modifying or undermining the traditional status of the fine arts and of aesthetics.  In any case, these contemporary changes may help to open our eyes to an understanding of the historical origins and limitations of the modern system of the fine arts.  Conversely, such historical understanding might help to free us from certain conventional preconceptions and to clarify our ideas on the present status and future prospects of the arts and of aesthetics.

Columbia University.