German Aesthetic Theories in Russia

Abstract

The branch of philosophy known as aesthetics became an independent discipline in the course of the eighteenth century. Alexander Baumgarten (1714–1762) provided the basis in his Latin book Aesthetica (1750–1758), where he defined beauty as perfection perceived by our senses. Aesthetics became a kind of guidebook to the proper use of sensual perception. Moses Mendelssohn (1729–1786) expanded and deepened aesthetic theory with a psychological analysis of the effects of art on our senses. August Schlegel named him together with Johann Georg Sulzer (1720–1779) “the noble disciple or successor of Baumgarten in Germany,” and said of Sulzer, “with barren words he insists that the purpose of the arts is only this,—to lead by means of sensual impressions to the good and the true; especially, he always refers to moral purposes.”¹ Karamzin noted in his Letters, “Aesthetics is the science of taste. It treats of sensual cognition in general. Baumgarten was the first to suggest that this be a special science separated from the others. One that occupies itself—leaving to logic the education of the highest capabilities of our soul, i.e. reason and judgment—with the improvement of emotions and everything sensual, i.e. the imagination and its effects. In one word, aesthetics teaches to enjoy the refined.”²