Abstract
In the middle of the eighteenth century, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (re-)introduced the concept of aesthetics into the philosophical discipline. Based on Baumgarten’s concept of aesthetics, inter alia, Immanuel Kant as well as Johann Gottfried von Herder continued to work on the further development of this field. Both reformulated Baumgarten’s relation between aesthetics and logic. According to Kant, the combination of logic and transcendental aesthetics makes a theory of human experience possible. For Herder, aesthetics is neither concept nor judgment of taste. Rather, the understanding of aesthetics serves to transform philosophy into anthropology. Based on Baumgarten’s work on aesthetics and Kant’s partition between transcendental and anthropological aspects of human sensibility, this chapter argues that Herder’s notion of aesthetic anthropology, relating feeling and history, can be seen as an interesting point combining aesthetics, art(work) and social theory.
Access this chapter
Tax calculation will be finalised at checkout
Purchases are for personal use only
Similar content being viewed by others
Notes
- 1.
Bildung is the German concept of education and human development, based on the continental-European idea of enlightenment and its notion of emancipation that is to be realized by emphasizing maturity, reflexivity and social judgment, leading to an aesthetic and political consciousness, which is essential toward developing competencies of action.
References
Adorno, Theodor W. 1991a. Culture and administration. In The culture industry. Selected essays, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 107–131. New York: Routledge.
———. 1991b. On the Fetish character in musik and the regression of listening. In The culture industry. Selected essays, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 29–60. New York: Routledge.
———. 1994. Minima Moralia. Reflexionen aus dem beschädigten Leben. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 1997a. Aesthetic theory. London/New York: Continuum.
———. 1997b. Gesellschaft. In Soziologische Schriften I, Gesammelte Schriften 8, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 9–19. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 1997c. Theorie der Halbbildung. In Soziologische Schriften I, Gesammelte Schriften 8, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 93–121. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 1997d. Cultural criticism and society. In Prisms, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 17–34. Cambridge: MIT Press.
———. 1997e. Ohne Leitbild. In Kulturkritik und Gesellschaft I, Gesammelte Schriften 10.1, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 291–302. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 2001. Culture industry reconsidered. In The culture industry. Selected essays on mass culture, ed. Th.W. Adorno, 98–106. London/New York: Routledge.
———. 2007. Negative dialectics. New York/London: Continuum.
Ball, Hugo. 2015. Die Flucht aus der Zeit - Auszüge. In DADA total – Manifeste, Aktionen, Texte, Bilder, ed. Karl Riha, and Jörgen Schäfer, 16–32. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Bauman, Zygmunt. 1991. Modernity and the Holocaust. Oxford: Polity Press.
Baumann, Claus. 2012. Die Kunst der Avangarde und ihr Verhältnis zum Klassenkampf. In … wenn die Stunde es zuläßt.“Zur Traditionalität und Aktualität kritischer Theorie, ed. Völk, Malte et al. 315–354. Münster: Verlag Westfälisches Dampfboot.
Benjamin, Walter. 2007. Illuminations. New York: Schocken Books.
——— 2008. The work of art in the age of its technological reproducibility, and other writings on media, ed. Michael W. Jennings, Doherty Brigid, and Thomas Y. Levin. Cambridge/London: The Belknap Press of Harvard University Press.
———. 2014a. Der Sürrealismus. In Aufsätze – Essays – Vorträge. Gesammelte Schriften Bd. II-1, ed. Walter Benjamin, 295–310. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 2014b. Der Autor als Produzent. In Aufsätze – Essays – Vorträge. Gesammelte Schriften Bd. II-2, ed. Walter Benjamin, 683–701. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Bernhard, Armin. 2005. Die Infantilisierung gesellschaftlicher Erfahrung als Frage der ästhetischen Bildung. In Sozialwissenschaftliche Literatur Rundschau (SLR), 50, 73–80. Neuwied: Luchterhand.
Bolt, Mikkel. 2004. Den sidste avantgarde. Situationistisk Internationale hindsides kunst og politik. Copenhagen: Rævens Sorte Bibliotek.
Bourdieu, Pierre. 1998. Die feinen Unterschiede: Kritik der gesellschaftlichen Urteilskraft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Bürger, Peter. 1980. Theorie der Avantgarde. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 1994. Theory of the avant-garde. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press.
Debord, Guy. 2002a. The situationists and the new forms of action in politics or art (1963). In Guy Debord and the situationist international. Texts and documents, ed. Tom McDonough, 159–166. Cambridge/London: The MIT Press.
———. 2002b. The society of the spectacle. Canberra: Hobgoblin Press.
Ehrenspeck, Yvonne. 2001. Stichwort: Ästhetik und Bildung. Zeitschrift für Erziehungswissenschaft 4(Jhrg., H. 1): 5–21.
Gorz, André. 1994. Kritik der ökonomischen Vernunft. Hamburg: Rotbuch Verlag.
Grenz, Friedemann. 1974. Adornos Philosophie in Grundbegriffen. Auflösung einiger Deutungsprobleme. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Haug, Wolfgang Fritz. 1971. Kritik der Warenästhetik. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
———. 2005. New elements for a theory of commodity aesthetics. Retrieved from: http://www.wolfgangfritzhaug.inkrit.de/documents/NewElementsCommodityAesthetics.pdf
Horkheimer, Max, and Theodor W. Adorno. 2002. Dialectic of enlightenment. Philosophical fragments. Stanford: Stanford University Press.
Kandinsky, Wassily. 1955. Rückblick. Baden-Baden: Woldemar Klein Verlag.
———. 1973. Über das Geistige in der Kunst. Bern: Banteli Verlag Bern.
Kant, Immanuel. 1997. Kritik der Urteilskraft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Lefebvre, Henri. 1991. The production of space. Maiden/Oxford: Blackwell Publishing.
———. 2004. Rhythmanalysis: Space, time and everyday life. New York/London: Continuum.
Löhneysen, Wolfgang Freiherr von. 1977. Kandinsky, Wassily. In Neue Deutsche Biographie 11, 97–101 [online edition]; http://www.deutsche-biographie.de/pnd118559737.html. Last access 11 Apr 2016.
Marinetti, Filippo Tommaso. 1973. The founding and manifesto of futurism. In Documents of 20th century art: Futurist manifestos, ed. Umbro Appolonio, 19–24. New York: Viking Press.
Michel-Schertges, Dirk. 2016. Capitalism, half-bildung and social inequality. Logos – A Journal of Modern Society & Culture 15(1). http://logosjournal.com/2016/michel-schertges/. Last access 21 Mar 2016
Nuzzo, Angelica. 2006. Kant and Herder on Baumgarten’s Aesthetica. Journal of the History of Philosophy 44(4): 577–597.
Ray, Gene. 2009. Toward a critical art theory. In Art and contemporary critical practice: Reinventing institutional critique, ed. Gerald Raunig, and Gene Ray, 79–94. London: mayflaybooks.
Ross, Kristin. 2002. Lefebvre on the situationists: An interview. In Guy Debord and the situationist international. Texts and documents, ed. Tom McDonough, 267–283. Cambridge/London: The MIT Press.
Schweppenhäuser, Hermann. 1972. Tractanda. Beiträge zur kritischen Theorie der Kultur und Gesellschaft. Frankfurt/M.: Suhrkamp.
Tzara, Tristan. 2015. Manifest Dada 1918. In DADA total – Manifeste, Aktionen, Texte, Bilder, ed. Karl Riha, and Jörgen Schäfer, 35–46. Stuttgart: Reclam.
Author information
Authors and Affiliations
Editor information
Editors and Affiliations
Copyright information
© 2017 The Author(s)
About this chapter
Cite this chapter
Michel-Schertges, D. (2017). Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_16
Download citation
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_16
Published:
Publisher Name: Palgrave Macmillan, New York
Print ISBN: 978-1-137-55800-8
Online ISBN: 978-1-137-55801-5
eBook Packages: Political Science and International StudiesPolitical Science and International Studies (R0)