Kant and Herder on Baumgarten's Aesthetica

In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions.1 My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle preventing aesthetics from becoming an independent science of human sensi...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Journal of the history of philosophy 2006-10, Vol.44 (4), p.577-597
Main Author: Nuzzo, Angelica
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aesthetics
Logic
Philosophy
Theory
Truth
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Summary:In this essay, I elaborate the results of the hypothesis that I submit in response to these questions.1 My claim is that the mind/body dualism dominating the rationalist tradition of modern philosophy is the principal obstacle preventing aesthetics from becoming an independent science of human sensibility.1 In the rationalist tradition within which Baumgarten's work is placed, truth concerns the higher cognitive faculty. Thus, while Baumgarten's aesthetica as cognitio sensitiva leads Kant to the project of a transcendental aesthetics (i.e., to the inquiry into the a priori conditions that constitute human sensibility as necessary ingredient of our theoretical, practical, and specifically aesthetic judgments), it leads Herder to the idea of cognitio historica-a form of knowledge that is genetically based on the physiology of the human senses as its primary historical condition.77 In both cases, the relation between aesthetics and logic first established by Baumgarten is maintained but radically reformulated.
ISSN:0022-5053
1538-4586
1538-4586
DOI:10.1353/hph.2006.0070