Back to NEH conference home page

Seminar Topic

The eighteenth century is frequently identified as the age of enlightenment, and also as the century of taste, the period in which philosophical aesthetics developed as a full-fledged, independent field of study. In the broadest terms, the aim of this seminar is to bring these two intellectual phenomena and those who study them into closer communication, and thereby to enrich and complicate conceptions both of eighteenth century aesthetics and of the Enlightenment. We propose to do so by engaging in intense study of extremely influential, but currently (relatively) neglected works in philosophical aesthetics in the Enlightenment period: Francis Hutcheson's inquiry into beauty and design; Alexander Gerard's essays on taste and genius; Henry Home, Lord Kames' Elements of Criticism; Thomas Reid's works on taste; Archibald Alison's Essays on the Nature and Principles of Taste; and essays in aesthetics by Moses Mendelssohn, Johann Georg Sulzer, and Johann Herder.

In their investigations of aesthetic experience and art, these philosophers articulate complex theories of human sensibility, both of the "lower" cognitive faculties (sensation and imagination), and of emotions and passions, often claiming to identify therein natural, biological origins and standards for aesthetic and artistic value, and for other human values as well. These works not only present rich, theoretical debates concerning the nature of aesthetic experience, artistic genius, the status of the classical canon, and the relationship between art, morality and politics, but also thereby enrich and complicate conceptions of Enlightenment scientific and political projects. In emphasizing the value of sensibility, for example, these works complicate the received view of the Enlightenment as celebratory of human reason alone, and in arguing that aesthetic experience constitutes a sphere both of individual freedom (of the imagination) and social coherence (sympathy), they may suggest that aesthetic experience and art are both consonant with the individualist politics of the enlightenment, and a possible melioration of the social fragmentation such politics threatens.

Seminar Schedule

We have organized the seminar readings (outlined below) both chronologically and thematically: proceeding from cognitive theories of aesthetic appreciation, to theories that stress the emotional character of aesthetic experience, to the historicist expansion and rationalist criticism of these theories by German Enlightenment philosophers. Though we believe that this is a helpful structure for the sessions and readings, we wish to emphasize that the suggested themes for discussion here (and above) are just that: discussions may take varying turns, depending on participants' interests and the movement of collective discussion. Participants are, moreover, encouraged to discuss these texts – and to formulate their research projects -- with reference to other, better known philosophical, and literary works of the period (e.g., those of the third Earl of Shaftesbury, Joseph Addison, David Hume, Adam Smith, or Edmund Burke), as well as to broader historical or cultural contexts, in accord with their interests and expertise.

Week 1: the Seventh Sense and the Creative Imagination

These meetings will be devoted to the theories of taste and genius propounded by Francis Hutcheson and Alexander Gerard, according to which aesthetic appreciation is understood as a distinctive form of sense-cognition, an immediate, sensory recognition of order, harmony, etc. We will discuss this proposal, as well as the connections and distinctions to be drawn between this sort of cognitive, pleasurable experience and others – how, e.g., is aesthetic pleasure to be distinguished from pleasures in the morally good or the useful? – and the possible difficulties, and tensions within this theory, e.g.: Can this explanation for aesthetic pleasure be reconciled with Gerard's endorsement of the value of originality as definitive of artistic genius – or with his emphasis on the role of education in forming and cultivating taste?

Week 2: Aesthetic Emotions, Passions, and Morality

We turn to the theories of Kames and Alison, according to which aesthetic and artistic value is grounded not in cognitive capabilities, but in human pleasures in having, expressing, and communicating emotion. We will investigate the sophisticated distinctions drawn by these thinkers among pleasures, emotions, and passions, intended to identify the emotional responses peculiar to the appreciation of art, and to articulate different modes of aesthetic experience. We will also discuss whether these (or the previous) naturalist explanations of aesthetic pleasure can ground prescriptions for artistic practice (as these philosophers suggest that they do), or whether art therefore should be understood to serve broader moral or political purposes, e.g., by reforming politically destructive emotions or by eliciting maximally shared emotional responses that would promote populist politics. We will also consider Thomas Reid's response to his colleagues from a more traditional, Shaftesburian point of view, which reintroduces a teleological or even theological component into the Scottish scene.

Week 3: German Reception

In this week, we will turn to four German aesthetic theorists both influenced by and critical of the works studied in the previous two weeks. These responses take broadly two forms: an historicist reconfiguration of the universalist, naturalist claims of the Scottish thinkers (Herder), and a rational systematization of types of pleasures and evaluative judgments, and reinterpretation of the character of aesthetic experience (Mendelssohn, Sulzer, and Kant). These philosophers incorporate concepts and approaches from the Scottish thinkers, but also challenge their naturalist orientation, asking, e.g., whether this foundation can explain the importance of cognitive content in aesthetic experience, historical change in the arts, or the normative claims of aesthetic evaluation.