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Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
 
 
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Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (July 17, 1714 – May 26, 1762) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 philosopher.

garten was born in Berlin
Berlin

Berlin is the Capital of Germany city and one of sixteen States of Germany of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is the country's largest city....
 as the fifth of seven sons of the pietist pastor
Pastor

The term pastor usually refers to an ordained person within a Christian church. In some countries the term is more usually used in traditional Protestant churches but is also used in reference to priests and bishops within the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity churches....
 of the garrison
Garrison

Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, of more than 50 men, but now often simply using it as a home base....
, Jacob Baumgarten and his wife Rosina Elisabeth. Both his parents died early and he was taught by Martin Georg Christgau where he learned Hebrew and got interested in Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 Poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
. Whilst words may change their meaning through cultural developments anyway, Baumgarten's reappraisal of aesthetics is often seen as the key moment in the development of aesthetic philosophy.






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Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (July 17, 1714 – May 26, 1762) was a German
Germany

Germany , officially the Federal Republic of Germany , is a country in Central Europe. It is bordered to the north by the North Sea, Denmark, and the Baltic Sea; to the east by Poland and the Czech Republic; to the south by Austria and Switzerland; and to the west by France, Luxembourg, Belgium, and the Netherlands....
 philosopher.

Biography

Baumgarten was born in Berlin
Berlin

Berlin is the Capital of Germany city and one of sixteen States of Germany of Germany. With a population of 3.4 million within its city limits, Berlin is the country's largest city....
 as the fifth of seven sons of the pietist pastor
Pastor

The term pastor usually refers to an ordained person within a Christian church. In some countries the term is more usually used in traditional Protestant churches but is also used in reference to priests and bishops within the Anglican, Roman Catholic and Orthodox Christianity churches....
 of the garrison
Garrison

Garrison is the collective term for a body of troops stationed in a particular location, originally to guard it, of more than 50 men, but now often simply using it as a home base....
, Jacob Baumgarten and his wife Rosina Elisabeth. Both his parents died early and he was taught by Martin Georg Christgau where he learned Hebrew and got interested in Latin
Latin

Latin is an Italic language, historically spoken in Latium and Ancient Rome. Through the Military history of the Roman Empire, Latin spread throughout the Mediterranean and a large part of Europe....
 Poetry
Poetry

Poetry is a form of literature art in which language is used for its aesthetics and evocative qualities in addition to, or in lieu of, its apparent meaning ....
. Whilst words may change their meaning through cultural developments anyway, Baumgarten's reappraisal of aesthetics is often seen as the key moment in the development of aesthetic philosophy. Previously the word had merely meant 'sensibility' or 'responsiveness to stimulation of the senses' in its use by ancient writers. With the development of art as a commercial enterprise linked to the rise of a nouveau riche
Nouveau riche

Nouveau riche , or new money, refers to a person who has acquired considerable wealth within his or her generation. This term is generally to emphasize that the individual was previously part of a lower socioeconomic rank, and that such wealth has provided the means for the acquisition of goods or luxuries that were previously unobt...
 class across Europe, the purchasing of art inevitably lead to the question, 'what is good art'. Baumgarten developed aesthetics to mean the study of good and bad "taste
Taste (sociology)

Taste in the general sense is the same as preference.Taste is also a sociology concept in that it is not just personal but subject to social pressures, and a particular taste can be judged "good" or "bad"....
," thus good and bad art, linking good taste with beauty.

By trying to develop an idea of good and bad taste, he also in turn generated philosophical debate around this new meaning of aesthetics. Without it, there would be no basis for aesthetic debate as there would be no objective criterion, basis for comparison, or reason from which one could develop an objective argument.

Views on aesthetics


Baumgarten re-coined the word aesthetics to mean taste or "sense" of beauty, thereby inventing its modern usage. The word had been used differently since the time of the ancient Greeks to mean the ability to receive stimulation from one or more of the five bodily senses. In his Metaphysic, § 451, Baumgarten defined taste, in its wider meaning, as the ability to judge according to the senses, instead of according to the intellect. Such a judgment of taste is based on feelings of pleasure or displeasure. A science of aesthetics would be, for Baumgarten, a deduction of the rules or principles of artistic or natural beauty from individual "taste."

Reception

In 1781, Kant declared that Baumgarten's aesthetics could never contain objective rules, laws, or principles of natural or artistic beauty.

Nine years later, in his Critique of Judgment, Kant use the word aesthetic in relation to the judgment of taste
Taste (sociology)

Taste in the general sense is the same as preference.Taste is also a sociology concept in that it is not just personal but subject to social pressures, and a particular taste can be judged "good" or "bad"....
 or the estimation of the beautiful. For Kant, an aesthetic judgment is subjective in that it relates to the internal feeling of pleasure or displeasure and not to any qualities in an external object.

See also


  • Aesthetics
    Aesthetics

    Aesthetics or esthetics is commonly known as the study of senses or sensori-emotional values, sometimes called judgments of sentiment and taste ....


Works

  • Dissertatio chorographica, Notiones superi et inferi, indeque adscensus et descensus, in chorographiis sacris occurentes, evolvens (1735)
  • Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (1735)
  • De ordine in audiendis philosophicis per triennium academicum quaedam praefatus acroases proximae aestati destinatas indicit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1738)
  • Metaphysica (1739)
  • Ethica philosophica (1740)
  • Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten eröffnet Einige Gedancken vom vernünfftigen Beyfall auf Academien, und ladet zu seiner Antritts-Rede [...] ein (1740)
  • Serenissimo potentissimo principi Friderico, Regi Borussorum marchioni brandenburgico S. R. J. archicamerario et electori, caetera, clementissimo dominio felicia regni felicis auspicia, a d. III. Non. Quinct. 1740 (1740)
  • Philosophische Briefe von Aletheophilus (1741)
  • Scriptis, quae moderator conflictus academici disputavit, praefatus rationes acroasium suarum Viadrinarum reddit Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1743)
  • Aesthetica (1750)-1758)
  • (1760)
  • Acroasis logica in Christianum L.B. de Wolff (1761)
  • Ius naturae (posthum 1763)
  • Sciagraphia encyclopaedia philosophicae (ed. Johs. Christian Foerster 1769)
  • Philosophia generalis (ed. Johs. Christian Foerster 1770)
  • Alex. Gottl. Baumgartenii Praelectiones theologiae dogmaticae (ed. Salomon Semmler (1773)
  • Metaphysica (übers. Georg Friedrich Meier 1776)
  • Gedanken über die Reden Jesu nach dem Inhalt der evangelischen Geschichten (ed. F.G. Scheltz & A.B. Thiele; 1796-1797)