Metamorphosis of Aesthetics

Many aesthetic lecturers feel that the subject of their lectures is not so much aesthetics as the history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, British philosophers of taste and German romantics. Does this mean that aesthetics is nourished by its own past, nourished by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that no longer inspire anyone? Don’t they open up new cognitive perspectives? Does this mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, and that its vision of art and beauty is outdated, out of date and completely useless?

Stefan Morawski in the introduction to the anthology Twilight of Aesthetics – Alleged or Authentic? he wrote that he did not know the history of aesthetic thought that would begin in the eighteenth century with Baumgarten. Today we can meet with such an approach more and more often. Many authors assume that in the second half of the 18th century, modern aesthetics was born as a science of senses, how our higher (sight, hearing) and lower senses (taste, smell, touch) contribute to our knowledge of the world.

In the introduction to the anthology cited here, Stefan Morawski divides the history of aesthetics into four periods of unequal length. The Morawski diagram seems to be a convenient starting point for defining the changing object of aesthetics. The first of the periods distinguished by Morawski is the longest one, lasting from Ancient Greece to Enlightenment, can be called the history of aesthetic thought, the second is philosophical aesthetics, the third is a time of emancipation and institutionalization of aesthetics as autonomous discipline, and the fourth period leads beyond the limits of classical aesthetics.

Many aesthetic lecturers feel that the subject of their lectures is not so much aesthetics as the history of aesthetics, the aesthetic views of Plato and Aristotle, Kant and Hegel, Hume and Burke, British philosophers of taste and German romantics. Does this mean that aesthetics is nourished by its own past, nourished by reinterpretations of its classics, defends concepts and categories that no longer inspire anyone? Don’t they open up new cognitive perspectives? Does this mean that aesthetics is dead today, like Latin or Sanskrit, and that its vision of art and beauty is outdated, out of date and completely useless?

Stefan Morawski in the introduction to the anthology Twilight of Aesthetics – Alleged or Authentic? he wrote that he did not know the history of aesthetic thought that would begin in the eighteenth century with Baumgarten. Today we can meet with such an approach more and more often. Many authors assume that in the second half of the 18th century, modern aesthetics was born as a science of senses, how our higher (sight, hearing) and lower senses (taste, smell, touch) contribute to our knowledge of the world.

In the introduction to the anthology cited here, Stefan Morawski divides the history of aesthetics into four periods of unequal length. The Morawski diagram seems to be a convenient starting point for defining the changing object of aesthetics. The first of the periods distinguished by Morawski is the longest one, lasting from Ancient Greece to Enlightenment, can be called the history of aesthetic thought, the second is philosophical aesthetics, the third is a time of emancipation and institutionalization of aesthetics as autonomous discipline, and the fourth period leads beyond the limits of classical aesthetics.