While anthropology included a vast field of approaches in the 18th century, it became more restricted around 1800. In his Anthropology From a Pragmatic Point of View (1796/97), Kant proposes a differentiated understanding of an-thropology. He distinguishes between physiological and pragmatic anthropolo-gy, arguing that the latter only focuses on a »being who acts freely and develops or can develop himself or herself as he may and should« (»was er [der Mensch]
als frei handelndes Wesen aus sich selber macht, oder machen kann und soll«).1 If we wanted to apply this notion to aesthetics, problems would arise. Aes-thetics, generally speaking, has profited from both physiological and pragmatic anthropology, though there has been a tension between the two – but no rigid distinction. Kant’s restrictive understanding of anthropology might be the rea-son why the aesthetics I am dealing with omits the term and aims to introduce other concepts instead. I shall argue that this move is characteristic of an era of thought in which established aesthetic concepts are questioned, reinvented, and balanced anew.
Since the ›invention‹ of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline, philosophy itself has changed considerably. First, systematic philosophy of Leibnizian and Wolffian origin and the rational psychology in which aesthetics was grounded had been attacked by contemporary philosophers and colleagues from the me-dical faculty. Conceptually less ambitious, so-called popular philosophy aro-se, tracing itself back to the ancient philosophy of life and to real life-issues, combined with a more or less empirical understanding of anthropology, also
1 Immanuel Kant: »Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht«. In: Ders.: Der Streit der Fakultäten; Anthropologie in pragmatischer Hinsicht. Berlin: 1968 (= Werke. Akad-emie-Textausgabe, 7) [Reprint of the 1907-edition], 117–415, here: 119. Some argu-ments presented here can also be found in Sandra Richter: A History of Poetics. German Scholarly Aesthetics and Poetics in International Context, 1770–1960. With bibliogra-phies by Anja Zenk, Jasmin Azazmah, Eva Jost, Sandra Richter. Berlin – New York 2010, 101–105.
inspired by medical research.2 Second, before and around 1800, new systems aimed to compete with one another, among them the Kantian (main impact:
1781–1804), the Fichtean (main impact: 1794–1814), the Schellingian (main impact: 1800–1840) and the Hegelian (main impact: 1818–1831). Further-more, there was Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi (main impact: 1780–1810), who contested the ›Enlightenment‹ with his renovated Spinozism and Pantheism, thereby inspiring (among others) Romantic philosophers. When these systems lost their persuasiveness, philosophers, formerly descended from one of the ma-ster thinkers, sought new horizons. In the post-Kantian camp, they set their gaze on formalism or »Erfahrungsseelenlehre« / »teachings of the experience of the soul«. The notion of »empirical aesthetics« attracted more and more at-tention in this context. Yet at the same time, it is revealing that a Janus-faced concept found its way into most of these writings, namely the double-notion of idealism and realism in all its combinations up to »Idealrealismus« / »ideal realism«. Apparently, empiricism in aesthetics could not fully convince even those who invented it.
In the light of these developments, I would like to present my case study, which progresses through the early stages of aesthetic thinking until the emer-gence of empiricism: In his Aesthetik, Friedrich Bouterwek, the focal figure of my inquiry, presents a thinking which is influenced by both idealism of various kinds and »empirical aesthetics« in the sense of ›Erfahrungsseelenlehre‹. This intermediate position is characteristic for Bouterwek’s thinking as such. A few words on Bouterwek (1766–1828): he took courses in law at the Collegium Carolinum in Brunschwick. Influenced by Johann Joachim Eschenburg, he stu-died philosophy, aesthetics and literary history at Göttingen University (with, among others, Christian Gottlob Heyne and Georg Heinrich Feder). In 1784, he changed over to literature, writing poems and a renowned epistolary novel.
He returned to his studies, however, becoming a Privatdozent for the history of literature and philosophy in Göttingen in 1797. In 1798, Bouterwek was appointed professor of philosophy in Göttingen. An adherent of Kant’s in his
2 »Vernünftige Ärzte«. Hallesche Psychomediziner und die Anfänge der Anthropologie in der deutschsprachigen Frühaufklärung. Ed. Carsten Zelle. Tübingen 2002 (= Hallesche Beiträ-ge zur Europäischen Aufklärung, 19); Carsten Zelle: »Erfahrung, Ästhetik und mittleres Maß. Die Stellung von Unzer, Krüger und E.A. Nicolai in der anthropologischen Wen-de um 1750 (mit einem Exkurs über ein Lehrgedichtfragment Moses MenWen-delssohns)«.
In: Reiz, Imagination, Aufmerksamkeit. Erregung und Steuerung von Einbildungskraft im klassischen Zeitalter (1680–1830). Ed. Jörn Steigerwald, Daniela Watzke. Würzburg 2003, 203–224.
youth, the middle-aged Bouterwek opted for Friedrich Heinrich Jacobi’s cri-tique of rationality, his defence of empiricism, and his fight against scepticism, though he later considered himself a moderate rationalist.3
Like Johann Georg Sulzer and Wilhelm Traugott Krug, Bouterwek was influential in his lifetime:4 It is likely that Heinrich Heine and Arthur Scho-penhauer attended his lectures in Göttingen, along with students from all over Europe, including Hungary. His lectures were the subject of public discussions beyond the town. Yet today Bouterwek’s aesthetics is almost forgotten, perhaps because he dismissed the idealism of the time and its schools, due to their incoherence and contradictions. He heeded Jacobi’s remark that one has to stop philosophising at some point and focus on civic beauties and virtues.5 In addition to this, the Romantics disapproved of Bouterwek, and Bouterwek disapproved of the Romantics, although he had personal contacts with August Wilhelm Schlegel.6 Bouterwek accused Schlegel of introducing inappropriate ideas and standards, such as »idolizing« (»Vergötterung«) and »mocking« (»Ver-höhnung«), into literary criticism.7 Yet at the same time, Bouterwek praised Schlegel for his reinvention of the sonnet. With his Geschichte der Poesie und Beredsamkeit seit dem Ende des 13. Jahrhunderts / History of poetry und rhetoric since the end of the 13th century (1801–1819), Bouterwek competed with Schle-gel for public attention, even sharing some of his ideas.8
3 On Bouterwek see Gustav Struck: Friedrich Bouterwek. Sein Leben, seine Schriften und seine philosophischen Lehren. [PhD-thesis]. Rostock 1919; Fritz Jurczok: Friedrich Bou-terwek als Ästhetiker [PhD-thesis]. Halle 1949; Jürgen Fohrmann: Das Projekt der deut-schen Literaturgeschichte. Entstehung und Scheitern einer nationalen Poesiegeschichtsschrei-bung zwischen Humanismus und deutschen Kaiserreich. Stuttgart–Weimar 1989, 85 f., 4 Carsten Zelle: »Encyclopédisme et esthétique. La dimension européenne de Sulzer«. In: 121.
Ferments d’ailleurs. Transferts culturels entre Lumières et romantisme. Ed. Denis Bonne-case. Grenoble 2010, 187–212; see also the contribution by Piroska Balogh and Gergely Fórizs in this volume.
5 On Bouterwek’s interest in civil society see Andrea Albrecht: Kosmopolitismus. Welt- bürgerdiskurse in Literatur, Philosophie und Publizistik um 1800. Berlin – New York 2005 (= Spectrum Literaturwissenschaft, 1), 170–179.
6 Achim Hölter: »August Wilhelm Schlegels Göttinger Mentoren«. In: Der Europäer Au-gust Wilhelm Schlegel. Romantischer Kulturtransfer – romantische Wissenswelten. Ed. York-Gothart Mix, Jochen Strobel. Berlin, New York 2010 (= Quellen und Forschungen zur Literatur- und Kulturgeschichte, 62, 296), 13–30, here: 20–21.
7 Ibid.
8 Thomas R. Hart, Jr.: »Friedrich Bouterwek, a Pioneer Historian of Spanish Literature«.
In: Comparative Literature 5/4 (1953), 352–361.
As early as 1791, Bouterwek held lectures on Kant’s philosophy, and he took them up again in 1794 while exchanging letters with Kant.9 In his Kritische Geschichte der Philosophie / Critical History of Philosophy, written in manuscript form around 1816 but in fact a document of a longer process of thought, Bouterwek characterizes Kant’s philosophy as an attempt to bring empiricism and rationalism together (much as some members of the so-called
›Kantian school‹ did, including Johann Gottfried Kiesewetter, Carl Leonhard Reinhold, Gottlob Ernst Schulze, and, to some extent, Kant’s successor Johann Friedrich Herbart).10 According to Bouterwek, cognition (»Erkenntnis«) de-parts from sensual perception; yet the phenomena (»Erscheinungen«) perceived depend on our faculty of recognition (»Erkenntnisvermögen«) and its limits.11
Bouterwek’s Aesthetik was published in three ›legal‹ editions (1806, 1815, 1824/1825), some of them rewritten to a considerable extent, with changes that even affect the frontispiece. The first title engraving (fig. 1) shows Marsyas as a civilized Pan or Bacchus with horns, a scarf around his genitals, playing two flutes, in order to excite the public. Opposite Pan, a young holy man – possibly Apollo – is seated. Behind him stands a lady, dressed up and with a lyre behind her back. The engraving is entitled »Distaste and Taste« (»Ungeschmack und Geschmack«). The second edition (fig. 2) trivializes and sexualizes the scene, undermining the title: Marsyas/Pan (distaste) loses his horns and scarf and plays one great flute probably for the young man (who has lost his aureole). The stern-looking lady (taste) places her hand on the young man’s shoulder, taking possession of him and pleading in favour of Apollo.
The intellectual background of the cover is found in Platonist aesthetics:
Bouterwek interprets Plato’s understanding of beauty as a relation of the per-fect, the true, and the good.12 Bouterwek stresses that for the Greeks beauty meant »a liberal heroism, united with the physical assets and attractiveness of a perfect hero.«13 This hedonistic version of Johann Joachim Winckelmann’s understanding of ›kalokagathia‹, the harmony of external beauty and inner morality, undermines the Classicist view by stressing a kind of ideological li-9 Michel Espagne: »Friedrich Bouterweks ›kritische Geschichte der Philosophie‹. Ein Pa-riser Manuskript«. In: Archiv für Geschichte der Philosophie 70/3 (1988), 280–304, here:
10 Ibid., 297.281.
11 Ibid.
12 Fr[iedrich] Bouterwek: Ideen zur Metaphysik des Schönen. In vier Abhandlungen. Eine Zugabe zur Aesthetik. Leipzig 1807, 47–49.
13 Ibid., 62: »Das Schöne für sie [die Griechen] war ein liberaler Heroismus, vereinigt mit den körperlichen Vorzügen und Reizen eines vollkommenen Helden.«
beralism as well as the attractive nature of the male body. Bouterwek, playing with impropriety, recommends this heroic understanding to his contempora-ries. These tendencies in the reconfiguration of the book cover indicate some changes in Bouterwek’s aesthetic theory itself: from the second edition onwards, his theorizing becomes more radical in some respect.
The first version of the book starts with some vehement polemics which, in the second and third edition, become more precise and lead to an original aesthetics. The first edition criticizes »the new metaphysics of art« (»die neue Kunstmetaphysik«) that is Kant’s transcendental philosophy of aesthetical jud-gement. Bouterwek calls Kant’s approach »a monstrous tastelessness« (»eine un-geheure Geschmacklosigkeit«).14 Kant’s Critique of Judgement, so Bouterwek’s Figure 1: Ungeschmack u.[nd] Geschmack.
Nach einem antiken Vasengemälde (Distaste and Taste. Based on an antique vase-paint-ing.) Frontispiece from Friedrich Bouter-wek: Aesthetik. Leipzig 1806.
14 Fr[iedrich] Bouterwek: Aesthetik. Leipzig 1806, vol. 1, V.
Figure 2: Frontispiece from Friedrich Bouter-wek: Aesthetik [2. Edition]. Göttingen 1815.
Drawn and engraved by Ernst Ludwig (?) Rie-penhausen.
criticism goes, stops half-way. The explanation for this lies in Kant’s definition of beauty. Bouterwek judges Kant’s concept of beauty as »purposefulness wit-hout purpose« (»Zweckmäßigkeit ohne Zweck«) in an ambivalent way. Accor-ding to Bouterwek, this »purposefulness without purpose« – as inspiring as it sounds – would, in Kant’s version, only allow for the arabesque in the arts15; some kind of »adventurous conception« (»abentheuerliche Vorstellung«).16 Yet at the same time, Bouterwek defends a specific kind of freedom: the aesthetical freedom of the audience, of its interest in the beautiful without any specific purpose that is the »aesthetic need« (»ästhetisches Bedürfniß«).17 According to Bouterwek, transcendental aesthetics is nothing more than a »philosophy of aesthetics« (»Philosophie der Ästhetik«), and not aesthetics as such. Aesthetics as such, is more or less identical with the general teaching of taste (»allgemeine Geschmackslehre«).18
In contrast with Kant, Bouterwek praises the »old empirical method« (»alte Empirie«), systems that are derived from »Erfahrungsseelenlehre« and popu-lar philosophy.19 Though not entirely satisfied with their work (Jean Paul is said to have struggled with concepts all too erudite, and he apparently tried to add various powers of the soul, in order to discover the right combination for genius)20, Bouterwek nonetheless sees Herder and Jean Paul as role models.
Against metaphysics and transcendental philosophy, Bouterwek stresses the im-portance of the »real-life« of the arts and their participants. He aims at the study of »the original needs of the human »Geist« (»der ursprünglichen Bedürfnisse des menschlichen Geistes«) or of the »immediate consciousness« (»unmittelbare[s]
Bewußtseyns«). This is supposed to lead to a more appropriate idea of the the-ory of art: 21 What is beautiful shall be beautiful only in relation to the aesthe-tic need.22 Beauty appears as a relational concept and cannot be fully defined;
there is no beauty as such.23 This view relies on the premise that beauty must
15 Bouterwek: Ideen zur Metaphysik des Schönen. (= note 12), 53–55.
16 Ibid., 49.
17 Ibid., 44.
18 Bouterwek: Aesthetik [1806] (= note 14), vol. I, 20.
19 Ibid., VI.
20 Ibid., 24: »Selbst Jean Paul Richter, der einzige Mann, der nach Herder zuerst wieder eine neue Aussicht für die Aesthetik eröffnet hat, krümmt und windet sich unter psy-chologischen Schulbegriffen von allerlei Seelenkräften, ob er gleich das Genie (denn er zog das seinige zu Rathe) nicht aus Seelenkräften zusammen addirte.«
21 Ibid., VIII f., 21. [emphasis in original].
22 Ibid., 51: »Schön aber ist etwas immer nur in Beziehung auf jenes Bedürfniß.«
23 Ibid., 51.
be »felt« (»empfunden«) and on the distinction between three »class concepts«
(»Klassenbegriffe« «) for such feelings: first, the »physical« (through organs), second, the »moral« (love and respect), third, the »intellectual« feeling. Beau-ty can either result in or cause physical or moral or intellectual sentiments.24 Yet beauty seldom occurs as physical, moral, or intellectual sentiment only.
It usually is an »amalgamation« (»Verschmelzung«) of all three sentiments in which »the human« (»das Menschliche«) appears. Natural and ideal sentiment are combined.25 This amalgamation is the precondition of philosophical aesthe-tics: Were the beautiful only physical, physiology would suffice and aesthetics would turn into a kind culinary art which caters to every animal.26 Turkeys also have a right to enjoy this kind of beauty, Bouterwek argues nicely. Were beauty identical with moral good, morals would do as Shaftesbury and Hutcheson suggest, and all good would be beautiful and vice versa. Were beauty only in-tellectual, transcendental philosophy would be appropriate, but all taste, charm and emotion would be excluded. Consequently, in Bouterwek’s view aesthetics comprises the beautiful as an object of nature as well as of art, as reflected in and through perception. Furthermore, the theory of the arts, aesthetic didactics, and analytics are also part of the spectrum.
Bouterwek makes a strong point for an aesthetics of perception, and he provides the first criterion for the beautiful: the beautiful has one purpose. It must interest us, in order to be perceived as such. For instance, there are cere-monies which have a purpose without purpose, such as »la corrida« (the bull-fight), but this causes disgust (and disgust causes disinterest, physical, moral and intellectual disinterest) and this cannot be beautiful.27 Second, the beau-tiful has to keep the imagination going; imagination is the only power of the soul which matters with respect to the beautiful.28 In addition, there are vari-ations of the beautiful: pure beauty (relying on aesthetic unity in the aesthetic
24 Ibid., VIII f., 21.
25 Ibid., 9 f., 17.
26 This argument is also an attack on Baumgarten and his school: According to them, beauty is »sensual perfection« (»sinnliche Vollkommenheit«), which does not suffice as a qualification of the beautiful. Fr[riedrich] Bouterwek: Aesthetik [2nd, corr. ed.]. Göttin-gen 1815, (2 vols.), vol. 1, 18; see also Friedrich Bouterwek: Aesthetik [3rd, newly corr.
ed.]. Göttingen 1824/1825, (2 vols.), vol. 1, 61 f.
27 Ibid., 53 f.
28 Imagination is defined as »Geistesthätigkeit in all ihren unbestimmten Functionen«;
ibid., 67.
manifold)29, sublime beauty (if through the ideal in reflection a big object be-comes endless)30, and comical beauty.31
From the second edition of his Aesthetik onwards, Bouterwek stresses the empirical interest of aesthetics and adds some Jacobian arguments in order to develop contemporary aesthetics further: following Jacobi’s defence of empiri-cism, in the second edition of his work Bouterwek calls his method »analysis of sentiment« (»Analyse des Gefühls«), and he focuses on »psychological facts«
(»psychologische Facta«), on which awareness is grounded.32 He shifts interest from the explanation of the beautiful to the study of the experience of the beautiful.33 Yet at the same time, Bouterwek stresses that aesthetics cannot dis-solve in »empirical psychology« (»empirische Psychologie«), but rather needs to fraternise with philosophy as well, though philosophy is being pushed to the background of his renovated aesthetics.34 Nonetheless, Bouterwek’s empirical psychology is still shaped by rational psychology and not derived from empiri-cal observation. Rationalism and empiricism went hand in hand.
Also, some of Bouterwek’s thoughts remain unchanged, e.g. his attacks on metaphysics and transcendentalism and his analysis of the sentiments and their relation to the beautiful. In his second edition, he formulates in a more abstract manner the notion that the foundation of the beautiful lies in the general laws of nature and the human »Geist«.35 He now presents an »absolute idea of the beautiful« (»absolute Idee des Schönen«), which is found in the movements of our psyche upon perception of the beautiful.36
Again Jacobi (or, to be more precise, Bouterwek’s understanding of Jaco-bi, which largely identifies his position with Spinoza’s) comes into play. The beautiful, in edition one characterized by the free and purposelessness interest
29 Ibid., 117.
30 Ibid., 141: »Wenn sich durch Idealität in der ästhetischen Reflexion ein großer Gegen-stand bis zum Unendlichen erweitert, heißt er erhaben.«
31 Ibid., 164: »Wenn ein Gegenstand durch eine witzige und sinnreiche oder witzig und sinnreich scheinende Composition in Verhältnisse tritt, in denen er lächerlich erscheint, so heißt die ästhetische Form desselben komisch.«
32 Ibid., V.
33 Ibid., 3: »Zu erklären, was wir empfinden, wenn wir mit recht urtheilen, das etwas schön ist, und wie sich die Empfindung des Schönen zu den natürlichen Anlagen so-wohl, als zur Entwickelung einer musterhaften Cultur des menschlichen Geistes ver-hält, ist die Aufgabe der Aesthetik.«
34 Ibid., 15. He indeed uses the notion »verschwistern«.
35 Ibid., 6.
36 Ibid., 16.
of the audience and the attractiveness of the beautiful to the imagination, now becomes a means of dialogue with the eternal: »the law of harmonious activity of all spiritual powers in free aspiration to the eternal that is not reached by any meaning«.37 Yet it is not God who is identical with this eternal. Rather, Bou-terwek has a pantheistic vision of the Divine. »[Man] is also designed to enjoy his being in the harmony of his powers«.38 Beauty is a relation between object and men. Beauty is what evokes the sentiment of joy in harmony with oneself and the object man observes as regards the eternal. Consequently, the beautiful merges with the divine. The feeling of aspiration to the eternal motivates the idea of absolute perception in our feelings.39 Aesthetics is a kind of thinking which explains the ultimate purpose of man, which is to enjoy the eternal in the beautiful. Furthermore, Bouterwek’s understanding of art is turned around:
»All beautiful art« he claims, »conveys its purpose in itself«, and he argues that the highest purpose of art renders any other purpose impossible.40 To some ex-tent, it seems, the beautiful has become part of the object. It is only logical that the border between general and specific aesthetics is almost erased. Building on this, Boutwerk expands the chapter of poetry from edition one to a whole volume in the following editions.
Even if Bouterwek rejects the rhetoric tradition, his understanding of po-etics adheres to it to some extent. Especially in the first edition, Bouterwek harshly distinguishes rhetoric from poetics, claiming that rhetoric is not part of the beautiful arts, while poetry is the »beautiful rhetoric art in the true sense«
(»schöne Redekunst im eigentlichen Sinne«).41 Only poetry, Bouterwek asserts with an emphatic turn towards autonomous aesthetics, has »its purpose in its-elf« (»ihren Zweck in sich selbst«).42 Rhetoric, however, means »negative poe-tics« (»negative Poetik«).43 The second edition withdraws this claim and speaks
37 Ibid., 50: »das Gesetz einer harmonische Thätigkeit aller geistigen Kräfte im freien
37 Ibid., 50: »das Gesetz einer harmonische Thätigkeit aller geistigen Kräfte im freien