Æsthetic as science of sensory consciousness.
What was Æsthetic to Baumgarten? Its objects are sensible facts (ασθητά), carefully distinguished by the ancients from mental objects (νοητά);[29] hence it becomes scientia cognitionis sensitivae, theoria liberalium artium, gnoseologia inferior, ars pulcre cogitandi, ars analogi rationis[30] Rhetoric and Poetry constitute two special and interdependent disciplines which are entrusted by Æsthetic with the distinction between the various styles in literature and other small differences,[31] for the laws she herself investigates are diffused throughout all the arts like guiding-stars for these various subsidiary arts (quasi cynosura quaedam specialium)[32] and must be extracted not from isolated cases only, or from incomplete induction empirically, but from the totality of facts (falsa regula peior est quant nulla.)[33] Nor must Æsthetic be confounded with Psychology, which furnishes its presuppositions only; an independent science, it gives the norm of sensitive cognition (sensitive quid cognoscendi) and deals with "perfectio cognitionis sensitivae, qua talis," which is beauty (pulcritudo), just as the opposite, imperfection, is ugliness (deformitas)[34] From the beauty of sensitive cognition (pulcritudo cognitionis) we must exclude the beauty of objects and matter (pulcritudo obiectorum et materiae) with which it is often confused owing to habits of language, since it is easy to show that ugly things may be thought of in a beautiful manner and beautiful things in an ugly manner (quacum ob receptam rei significationem saepe sed male confunditur; possunt turpia pulcre cogitare ut talia, et pulcriora turpiter).[35] Poetical representations are confused or imaginative: distinctness, that is intellect, is not poetical. The greater the determination, the greater the poetry; individuals "omnimode determinata" are highly poetical; poetical also are images or phantasms as well as all that appertains to the senses.[36] That which judges sensible or imaginary presentations is taste, or "indicium sensuum." These, in brief, are the truths displayed by Baumgarten in his Meditationes and, with many distinctions and examples, in his Æsthetic.[37]
Cricisism of judgements based on Baumgarten.
Nearly all German critics[38] are of opinion that from his own conception of Æsthetic as the science of sensitive cognition Baumgarten should have evolved a species of inductive Logic. But he can be cleared of this accusation: a better philosopher, perhaps, than his critics, he held that an inductive Logic must always be intellectual, since it leads to abstractions and the formation of concepts. The relation existing between "cognitio confusa" and the poetical and artistic facts which belong to the realm of taste had been shown before his day, by Leibniz: neither he nor Wolff nor any other of their school ever dreamed of transforming a treatment of the "cognitio confusa" or "petites perceptions" into an inductive Logic. On the other hand, as a kind of compensation, these critics attribute to Baumgarten a merit he cannot claim, at least to the extent implied by their praises. According to them, he effected a revolution by converting[39] Leibniz' differences of degree or quantitative distinctions into a specific difference, and turning confused knowledge into something no longer negative but positive[40] by attributing a "perfectio" to sensitive cognition qua talis; and by thus destroying the unity of the Leibnitian monad and breaking up the law of continuity, founded the science of Æsthetic. Had he really accomplished such a giant stride, his claim to the title of "father of Æsthetic" would have been placed beyond question. But, in order to win this appellation, Baumgarten ought to have been successful in unravelling all those contradictions in which he was involved no less than Leibniz and all intellectualists. It is not enough to posit a "perfectio"; even Leibniz did that when he attributed claritas to confused cognition, which, when devoid of clearness, remains obscure, that is to say, imperfect. It was imperative that this perfection "qua talis" should be upheld against the "lex continui," and kept uncontaminated by any intellectualistic admixture. Otherwise he was bound to fall back into the pathless labyrinth of the "probable" which is and is not false, of the wit which is and is not intellect, of the taste which is and is not intellectual judgement, of the imagination and feeling which are and are not sensibility and material pleasure. And in that case, notwithstanding the new name: notwithstanding (as we freely admit) the greater insistence than that of Leibniz upon the sensible nature of poetry, Æsthetic, as a science, would not have been born.
Intellectualism of Baumgarten.
Now Baumgarten overcame none of the obstacles above mentioned. Unprejudiced and continued study of his works forces one to this conclusion. Already in his Meditationes he does not seem able to distinguish clearly between imagination and intellect, confused and distinct cognition. The law of continuity leads him to set up a scale of more and less: amongst cognitions, the obscure are less poetical than the confused; the distinct are not poetical, but even those of the higher kinds (that is the distinct and intellectual) are to a certain extent poetical in proportion as they are lower in their nature; compound concepts are more poetical than simple; those of larger comprehension are "extensive clariores."[41] In the Æsthetic Baumgarten expounds his thought more fully and thereby exposes its defects. If the introduction of the book leads one to believe that he sees æsthetic truth to consist in consciousness of the individual, the belief is shattered by the explanations which follow. As a good objectivist he asserts that truth in the metaphysical sense has its counterpart in the soul, namely, subjective truth, logical truth in a wide sense, or æsthetico-logical.[42] And the complete truth lies not in the genus or species, but in the individual. The genus is true, the species more true, the individual most true.[43] Formal logical truth is acquired "cum iactura," by jettisoning much great material perfection: "quid enim est abstractio, si iactura non est?"[44] So much being granted, logical truth differs from æsthetic in this: metaphysical or objective truth is presented now to the intellect, when it is logical truth in a narrow sense; now to the analogy of reason and the lower cognitive faculties, when it is æsthetic;[45] a lesser truth in exchange for the greater which man is not always able to attain, thanks to the "malum metaphysicum."[46] Thus moral truths are comprehended in one fashion by a comic poet, in another by a moral philosopher; an eclipse is described in one way by an astronomer and in another by a shepherd speaking to his friends or his sweetheart.[47] Universals even are accessible, in part at least, to the inferior faculty.[48] Take the case of two philosophers, a dogmatic and a sceptic, arguing, with an æsthete listening to them. If the arguments of either party are so balanced that the hearer cannot determine which is true and which false, this appearance is to him æsthetic truth: if one adversary succeed in overbearing the other so that one argument is shown clearly to be wrong, the error just revealed is likewise æsthetic[49] falsity. Truths strictly æsthetic are (and this is the decisive point) those which appear neither entirely true nor entirely false: probable truths. "Talia autem de quibus non complete quidem certi sumus, neque tamen falsitatem aliquam in iisdem appercipimus, sunt verisimilia. Est ergo veritas æsthetica, a potiori dicta verisimilitudo, ille veritatis gradus, qui, etiamsi non evectus sit ad completam certitudinem, tamen nihil contineat falsitatis observabilis."[50] And especially the immediate sequel: "Cujus habent spectator es auditor esve intra animum quum vident audiuntve, quasdam anticipationes, quod plerumque fit, quod fieri solet, quod in opinione positum est, quod habet ad haec in se quandam similitudinem, sive id falsum (logice et latissime), sive verum sit (logice et strictissime), quod non sit facile a nostris sensibus abhorrens: hoc illud est εἰκός et verisimile quod, Aristotele et Cicerone assentiente, sectetur æstheticus."[51] The probable embraces that which is true and certain to the intellect and the senses, that which is certain to the senses but not to the intellect, that which is probable logically and æsthetically, or logically improbable but æsthetically probable, or, finally, æsthetically improbable but on the whole probable or that whose improbability is not evident.[52] So we reach the admission of the impossible and absurd, the αδύνατον and ἄτοπον of Aristotle.
If after reading these paragraphs, highly important as revealing the true thought of Baumgarten, we turn once more to the Introduction to his work, we notice at once his commonplace and erroneous conception of the poetic faculty. To a friend who suggested that there was no need for him to concern himself with confused or inferior consciousness both because "confusio mater erroris" and because "facilitate inferior es, caro, debellandae potius sunt quam excitandae et confirmandae," Baumgarten replied that confusion is a condition wherein to find truth: that nature makes no sudden leap from obscurity to clarity: that noonday light is reached from night time through the dawn (ex node per auroram meridies): that in the case of the inferior faculties a guide, not a tyrant, is needed (imperium in facilitates inferiores poscitur, non tyrannis).[53] This is still the attitude of Leibniz, Trevisano and Bülffinger. Baumgarten is terrified lest he should be accused of treating subjects unworthy a philosopher. "Quousque tandem" (says he to himself), "dost thou, professor of theoretic and moral philosophy, dare to praise lies and mixtures of true and false as though they were noble works?"[54] And if there is one thing above all others from which he is anxious to guard himself it is sensualism, unbridled and non-moralized. The sensitive perfection of Cartesianism and Wolffianism was liable to be confused with simple pleasure, with the feeling of the perfection of our organism:[55] but Baumgarten falls into no such confusion. When in 1745 one Quistorp combated his æsthetic theory by saying that if poetry consisted in sensuous perfection it was a thing hurtful to men, Baumgarten answered disdainfully that he did not expect he should ever find time to reply to a critic of such calibre as to mistake his "oratio perfecta sensitiva" for an "oratio perfecte (that is omnino) sensitiva."[56]
New names and old meanings.
Save in its title and its first definitions Baumgarten's Æsthetic is covered with the mould of antiquity and commonplace. We have seen that he refers back to Aristotle and Cicero for the first principles of his science; in another instance he attaches his Æsthetic to the Rhetoric of antiquity, quoting the truth enunciated by Zeno the Stoic, "esse duo cogitandi genera, alterum perpetuum et latius, quod Rhetorices sit, alterum concisum et contractius, quod Dialectices," and identifying the former with the æsthetic horizon, the latter with the logical.[57] In his Meditationes he rests upon Scaliger and Vossius;[58] of modern writers beside the philosophers (Leibniz, Wolff, Bülffinger) he quotes Gottsched, Arnold,[59] Werenfels, Breitinger[60]; by means of these latter he is able to make acquaintance with discussions upon taste and imagination, even without direct acquaintance with Addison and Du Bos, as well as the Italians, whose writings had immense vogue in Germany in his day, and with whom his resemblances leap to the eye. Baumgarten always feels himself to be in perfect accord with his predecessors; never at variance with them. He never felt himself to be a revolutionary; and though some have been revolutionaries without knowing it, Baumgarten was not one of them. Baumgarten's works are but another presentation of the problem of Æsthetic still clamouring for solution in a voice so much the stronger as it uttered a commonplace: he proclaims a new science and presents it in conventional scholastic form; the babe about to be born receives the name of Æsthetic by premature baptism at his hands: and the name remains. But the new name is devoid of new matter; the philosophical armour covers no muscular body. Our good Baumgarten, full of ardour and conviction, and often curiously brisk and vivacious in his scholastic Latinism, is a most sympathetic and attractive figure in the history of Æsthetic: of the science in formation, that is to say, not of the science brought to completion: of Æsthetic condenda not condita.