Tatarkiewicz History Of Aesthetics Pdf 38: The Influence of Ancient, Medieval, and Modern Aesthetics on European Culture and Art

The first use of the term aesthetics in something like its modern sense is commonly attributed to Alexander Baumgarten in 1735, although earlier studies in the 18th century by writers such as the third Earl of Shaftesbury (Anthony Ashley Cooper), Joseph Addison, Jean-Baptiste Du Bos, and Francis Hutcheson mark the first systematic inquiries into aesthetics in its familiar sense as a distinct branch of philosophy. Undoubtedly the 18th century saw the flourishing of inquiries into beauty, taste, the sublime, and genius, but few would be content to start a history of aesthetics in that century. For many centuries earlier, going back to ancient Greece, there had been philosophical reflection, even if only in a piecemeal fashion, on poetry, painting, music, and the beautiful, and these reflections had an enormous influence on later philosophizing. What is noticeable, though, is that prior to the 18th century it is not always clear where the boundary lies between aesthetics, as such, conceived as a distinctively philosophical inquiry into judgments of taste and the foundations of the arts and more general theorizing about art, including, for example, treatises on the arts often aimed at practitioners themselves. This bibliography operates under a number of constraints: it is, inevitably, highly selective; it focuses primarily, although not exclusively, on Western aesthetics; it draws quite a narrow boundary around what reasonably counts as aesthetics (or the philosophy of art); the entries are in English, some because the originals were in that language, the rest being in modern translations; the editions of the selected primary texts have been chosen for their accessibility and availability; and special emphasis has been given to works from the 18th century.

There are several works that seek to survey the history of aesthetics as a whole. Beardsley 1966 remains the most readable and accessible survey, useful for dipping into for particular periods as well as for gaining an illuminating overview when read right through. Bosanquet 2005 and Gilbert and Kuhn 1939 are both authoritative and informative, if somewhat dated in their perspective. Tatarkiewicz 2006 is a monumental work, especially useful for obscure details and for original source material. Kelly 1998 is an encyclopedia covering a large range of topics in aesthetics, including informative entries on the major historical figures.

Tatarkiewicz History Of Aesthetics Pdf 38

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222 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY taken as committed to a particular interpretation and, hence, to a particular ontology. So we have a kind of interpretation in actu and an instance of point of view III. But it is not clear from his interpreters that this is what Leniewski intended. In any case, the suggestions we have about his metaphysics seem to indicate that he was a nominalist. My conclusion is that Henry must be more original than he wants to acknowledge. McGill University JOHNA. TRENTMAN TATARKIEWICZ AND THE HISTORY OF AESTHETICS When it is studied historically, the subject of aesthetics may be a different subject and have a different significance from aesthetics studied as clarification of certain kinds of concepts, or as an aspect of ontology, or of philosophy of mind, or of language analysis, etc. The historian must determine at the outset what is relevant from an historical point of view. He must answer some questions that aestheticians who look at the subject from other points of view may ignore. Shall the historian only recount, or shall he also explain? What sources yield such explanation, especially when it is causal? Shall he himself evaluate and, if so, on what grounds? Shall he look only to explicit written statements or also to the practice of artists? Shall he try to find in the practice of artists "implicit" aesthetic ideas, perhaps thus including iconography in his history? Is sociology or psychology relevant to his inquiry? Owing partly to certain methodological assumptions which many historians of aesthetics have themselves made none too clear, history of aesthtics has included subjects ranging far beyond traditional areas of so-called "philosophical aesthetics" of the past two centuries. W. Tatarkiewicz's treatment of history of aesthetics affords a prime example which may be broken down into some sample instances. "NEW" IDEAS Robert Zimmermann and Bernard Bosanquet, authors of the most prominent histories of aesthetics written in the nineteenth century, considered the period between the third and the eighteenth centuries to be a wide gap in the history of aesthetics) Zimmermann left out everything that makes up volumes 1 and 2 of Tatarkiewicz's history. Bosanquet devoted thirty pages to the aesthetics of the Middle Ages and condensed the period of 1400-1700 to fifteen pages, dealing with Dante and Shakespeare exclusively. Katharine Gilbert and Helmut Kuhn covered the aesthetics of antiquity in four chapters and the Middle Ages in one, in a book consisting of nineteen chapters altogether. 2 In his short history of aesthetics, Monroe C. Beardsley discussed the Middle Ages and Renaissance in two chapters respectively,s But in Estetyka nowoyta (Aesthetics in Modern Times), Tatarkiewicz argued thus: "The task of a historian does not only consist in finding what new ideas were born and when, but also in asserting what ideas, be they old or new, were found most appropriate for the people of the period. The history of aesthetics between the fifteenth and seventeenth centuries 1 Cf. R. Zimmermann, Geschichte der Xesthetik als philosophischer Wissenschafl (1858); B. Bosanquet,A History of Aesthetic (London, 1956),pp. 166-167. 2 A History of Aesthetics (NewYork, 1939). a Aesthetics from ClassicalGreece to the Present (NewYork, 1966). NOTES AND DISCUSSIONS 223 is instructive in this respect as it shows that classical aesthetics attracted and satisfied the majority of artists, poets, critics and philosophers, in spite of the changes that took place in social structure, in the material culture, in art and poetry. The persistence of one single aesthetic theory is so much more striking when juxtaposed with the changeability and lack of stability of both the philosophy and the art of the period.TM This view of the historian's task led Tatarkiewicz to draw connections between philosophical aesthetics and art theories and also with "implicit" aesthetics which he had found reflected in artistic practice and aesthetic taste of a particular historical period. "IMPLICIT" AESTHETICS AND THE PRACTICE OF ARTISTS The historian of aesthetics may look to the practice of artists for at least two reasons. He may regard this practice as indirect evidence of aesthetic thinking in the absence of expficit written statements, even where practice seems to conflict with expressed statements. Secondly, he...

110 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY History of Aesthetics, Vol. I. Ancient Aesthetics. By Wladyslaw Tatarkiewicz. Ed. J. Harrell. Trans. Adam and Ann Czerniawski. (The Hague-Paris: Mouton and Warszawa: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970. Pp. vii-352.) History of Aesthetics, Vol. II. Medieval Aesthetics. By WladySlaw Tatarkiewicz. Ed. C. Barrett. Trans. R. M. Montgomery. (The Hague-Paris: Mouton and Warszawa: PWN-Polish Scientific Publishers, 1970. Pp. vii-315.) These two volumes of Tatarkiewicz' monumental history of aesthetics, the third volume (to 1700) of which is now being prepared for press, have been reviewed already in the major aesthetic journals in Europe and America following their publication in Polish. Since Polish is not one of my languages, I can say nothing about the adequacy of the (rather obscured) translators and their work. The editors of both volumes have done their difficult work thoroughly, though the usual inconsistencies of spelling and such creep in. British spellings of judgement, centre, and colour, for example, appear in one part of a volume, while center, color, and judgment appear in another part. These are rare and not at all irksome details. On p. 220 of volume I, Aristotle has become a Stagiryte (sic). If the editors and translators actually re-checked all of those Greek, Polish and English texts--to say nothing of the Latin--they have earned a very large debt indeed. Again, my selective ignorance eliminates me from assessment . Tatarkiewicz' historical writing is surgical and Lacon-like. His major achievement lies in refraining from philosophical animadversions and for sticking strictly to his topic, no matter how tempting the theoretic distractions. Actually one expects a history of aesthetics to find the locus of aesthetic theory in the usual systematic frameworks of outstanding philosophers, but again Tatarkiewicz knows better than to try to provide these settings. His device is to stay exactly with the texts of authors, and to provide as much evidence for his statements as a printed work will allow. His scholarship is truly prodigious, and the work will live as reference for a long time to come. But it is more than a reference. There are some remarkable novelties included that bear mention. First of all, Tatarkiewicz' opening analysis of what must be included in a history of aesthetics is penetrating and convincing. In addition to the major "dualities" of aesthetics (beauty-art, subjective-objective aesthetics, psychological-sociological aesthetics , descriptive-prescriptive aesthetics, etc.) he simply accepts the necessity to find evidence of aesthetic history among statements by artists, among the inexplicit and inarticulate art works, in the vox populi and cultural actions of people. Thus the "evidence" he adduces will often displease the theoretical purist. Next, one is impressed by the great antiquity of some key issues that are being avidly pursued today. What is impressive is not that they are being repeated now, but that modern writers so rarely recognize (or acknowledge) their historical sources---or seem to care to. A careful study of this history might do much to reduce the growing volume in aesthetics----or at least to change the direction of emphasis significantly. One is surprised to note which figures emerge as of first rate importance in the history of aesthetics, important for different reasons. These figures stand out: Democritus, Plotinus, Aristotle, Vitruvius, the Pseudo-Dionysius, Johannes Scotus Erigena, to select only a few. The first Polish philosopher, Vitelo, anticipates much modern psychologizing in advancing the work of Alhazen. Ockham, not so surprising, contributes major advances, as do Augustine and Aquinas. BOOK REVIEWS 111 One fascinating item is the author's extensive account of the most violent and extended controversy in the history of aesthetics---the veneration of images and the disputes between the Iconoclasts and the Iconophiles. This sometimes physical battle raged for over 100 years! The Byzantine society, obviously, took art seriously. Tatarkiewicz' great labor is an object lesson in historiography and bibliographic technique. At one and the same time it demonstrates how much of value remains to be discovered by careful adherence to the detail of scholarship, while it also displays how much fruitful scholarship depends upon a brilliant and profoundly informed mind. Such a work, in short, could only have descended from a fully mature...

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