Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1714–62)

1. The aesthetic as a ‘confused’ concept

Baumgarten accepted the fundamental rationalist, epistemological division between what is clearly and distinctly known, on the one hand, according to concepts and reason and what is known, on the other, by sense. The latter apprehension is ‘confused’ in a sense that can be traced back to medieval discussions of the problem of universals. According to medieval realism and conceptualism, only the universal deserves the definite article and provides clear, distinct apprehension. So ‘the rose’ refers not to some existing rose but to the universal type. To refer to a specific rose, one must individuate it either as ‘this rose’ when dealing with an existential application (cf. Metaphysica, para. 151) or as ‘a rose’ when dealing with an individual which may or may not actually exist. Both the individuation and its indefinite extension are dependent on sense in a way that the universal is not. Both can be said to ‘confusedly’ represent, therefore, because their referents are present only in limited perceptible and temporal forms, all of which lack some essential distinctness. In this sense, a confused presentation is not faulty or unclear; it is simply lacking in the kind of clarity which only the universal can provide. Its sensate forms limit it. Baumgarten adopted this distinction in describing aesthetic discourse. The aesthetic is sensate and confused or indistinct in this specialized sense.

It does not follow, however, that the aesthetic cannot be clear within its own cognitive sphere. Obscurity and clarity are matters of content. Something is clearer if a higher number of its sensate representations are available. So if one sees an object from all sides, for example, one sees it clearly. If one sees it only from one perspective at a distance, it is seen obscurely. The aesthetic permits an extensively clear form of representation which is determinate and individual. From the standpoint of promoting art, therefore, greater extensive clarity and determinateness are positive features, which enhance the aesthetic effect.

Baumgarten took discourse as the primary form of the aesthetic. Discourse can be construed broadly here, since Baumgarten acceded to Horace’s equation of poetry and painting (1735: 52). Representations themselves include both images derived from sense and direct sense-perception. They are combined into thematic wholes on the basis of the connection of the images and resemblance between images. Such wholes are simple or complex, but since complexity is understood as having many themes, not parts, simplicity is an aesthetic virtue. Perceptions and images (which are secondary perceptions) are confused representations because they are not abstract, intelligible forms, which alone would be conceptually distinct. But while they lack intensional clarity, they may have great extensional clarity, and may form thematic wholes based on resemblance, the connection of the images, and ordering of the sensate elements. Baumgarten applied this scheme to poetry and poetic language in his Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (1735, translated as Reflections on Poetry), and he suggested ways in which it would also apply to painting, sculpture and music. His goal was a science of the perceptual realm that would parallel the more precise sciences of metaphysics and logic.