I spent the past week reading through five core classic German philosophers in aesthetics beginning with Baumgarten, and proceeding to Kant, Schiller, Scheling and Hegel. Baumgarten, credited for first coining the term aesthetics as the philosophical study of sensual perception, paved the way for aesthetics as a discipline. It was Kant, however who, in his 1790 publication of Critique of Judgment, established aesthetics as a philosophical discipline moving it away from aesthetics as the study of formal properties of art works instead emphasizing the ontological characteristics of art work through its relation to cognition, beauty, morality and the transcendental Absolute. Someone once told me that among all
his three critiques, his last one i.e. the Critique of Judgment, was the least important. Yet, on reading Schiller, Hegel and various other secondary readings, I cannot help but see how absolutely influential Kant's ideas are. Almost every philosopher of aesthetics after Kant theorizes aesthetics based on one or another of Kant's claims or assumptions. One may ask what all this has to do with literature education today. In fact, I think Kant's critique is one of the first philosophical writings on aesthetics that is based on the significance of collective aesthetic judgment in the public sphere or what he terms "subjective universality". This subsequently paved the way for further theorizing on aesthetic and literature education. Another interesting point I found is that all five of these scholars situate their philosophy of aesthetics against scientific utilitarianism of their period. For example, Schiller states, "Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient". Much like today, they were reacting against the pragmatic-instrumental impulses of the time and in doing so, were fervently attempting to re-establish aesthetics as a core discipline.
I spent the past week reading through five core classic German philosophers in aesthetics beginning with Baumgarten, and proceeding to Kant, Schiller, Scheling and Hegel. Baumgarten, credited for first coining the term aesthetics as the philosophical study of sensual perception, paved the way for aesthetics as a discipline. It was Kant, however who, in his 1790 publication of Critique of Judgment, established aesthetics as a philosophical discipline moving it away from aesthetics as the study of formal properties of art works instead emphasizing the ontological characteristics of art work through its relation to cognition, beauty, morality and the transcendental Absolute. Someone once told me that among all
his three critiques, his last one i.e. the Critique of Judgment, was the least important. Yet, on reading Schiller, Hegel and various other secondary readings, I cannot help but see how absolutely influential Kant's ideas are. Almost every philosopher of aesthetics after Kant theorizes aesthetics based on one or another of Kant's claims or assumptions. One may ask what all this has to do with literature education today. In fact, I think Kant's critique is one of the first philosophical writings on aesthetics that is based on the significance of collective aesthetic judgment in the public sphere or what he terms "subjective universality". This subsequently paved the way for further theorizing on aesthetic and literature education. Another interesting point I found is that all five of these scholars situate their philosophy of aesthetics against scientific utilitarianism of their period. For example, Schiller states, "Utility is the great idol of the time, to which all powers do homage and all subjects are subservient". Much like today, they were reacting against the pragmatic-instrumental impulses of the time and in doing so, were fervently attempting to re-establish aesthetics as a core discipline.
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