The art of invention and the invention of art: Logic, rhetoric and aesthetics in the early German Enlightenment (Christian Wolff, Johann Christoph Gottsched, Johann Jakob Bodmer, Johann Jakob Breitinger, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten).

摘要

This work is an attempt to reassess the significance of early German Enlightenment aesthetics in the history of modern aesthetics. Against the common reading that assigns early German Enlightenment aesthetics the status of an imperfect prefiguration of Kantian and post-Kantian aesthetics, I argue that the Fruhaufklarer not only found a genuinely modern aesthetic tradition, but that they defend a consistent and original project: their aesthetics must be viewed in the context of the modern debate on the ars inveniendi initiated by Francis Bacon and developed by his early modern followers, including Christian Wolff. After examining the modern epistemological premises of the debate on invention, I investigate the contributions of Wolff and his pupils, namely Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger, as well as Johann Christoph Gottsched and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten. Wolff himself introduces a turn within the earlier debate on invention in that he includes a philosophy of the arts within his general art of invention. His pupils transpose the modern heuristic paradigm from science and philosophy to poetry and the representative arts: the poet imitates nature insofar as he unveils hidden aspects of nature. From the modern view of invention, they furthermore draw conclusions on the nature of art criticism as both a method of judgment and of invention. Baumgarten introduces a rhetorical shift within the former debate; he reintroduces a Ciceronian idea of invention concerning both logic and rhetoric within the modern logical context: the true philosopher must find arguments that are both consistent and convincing. But while Baumgarten's addition of aesthetics to logic as a second method of invention conforms to the modern paradigm of invention, it deeply changes the nature of the organon. These changes in turn affect the system itself---psychology and practical philosophy in particular. Baumgarten proposes a new division of the higher and lower faculties of the soul, and he carves out a space for art and aesthetics in practical philosophy.