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Introduction

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  05 June 2012

J. M. Bernstein
Affiliation:
New School University, New York
J. M. Bernstein
Affiliation:
New School University, New York
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Summary

… words without spirit, method without inner illumination, figures of speech without feeling …

Moses Mendelssohn

Almost from the moment that modern aesthetics took on a distinctive shape in the middle of the eighteenth century there arose claims that sought to privilege aesthetic reason or experience. In the writings collected in this volume we are offered the possibility of tracing the emergence and fate of this privilege. These writings are remarkably diverse in form, ranging from Lessing's subtle mixing of art theory with art criticism, Hamann's ‘rhapsody in cabbalistic prose’, the manifesto for a future aesthetic philosophy entitled ‘The Oldest Programme for a System of German Idealism’, through Schiller's letters to his friend, Körner, Hölderlin's to Hegel, and finally to the strange fragments, neither quite philosophy nor art, of Novalis and Friedrich Schlegel. This diversity in literary form has provided reason for philosophers to keep a cautious distance from these writings, comforting themselves with the more familiar articulations of aesthetic reason found in Kant's Critique of Judgement and Hegel's Aesthetics: Lectures on Fine Art, especially Hegel's long Introduction. While these works deserve the attention that has been paid to them, so too, I want to urge, do the writings collected herein. Their philosophical weightiness has been insufficiently appreciated. In a brief introduction, I thought the most helpful entrée into the world of these texts could be had through providing a theoretical framework that would characterize the main philosophical stakes running through them.

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Publisher: Cambridge University Press
Print publication year: 2002

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  • Introduction
  • Edited by J. M. Bernstein, New School University, New York
  • Book: Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803734.001
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  • Introduction
  • Edited by J. M. Bernstein, New School University, New York
  • Book: Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803734.001
Available formats
×

Save book to Google Drive

To save content items to your account, please confirm that you agree to abide by our usage policies. If this is the first time you use this feature, you will be asked to authorise Cambridge Core to connect with your account. Find out more about saving content to Google Drive.

  • Introduction
  • Edited by J. M. Bernstein, New School University, New York
  • Book: Classic and Romantic German Aesthetics
  • Online publication: 05 June 2012
  • Chapter DOI: https://doi.org/10.1017/CBO9780511803734.001
Available formats
×