None of the most
prominent names in the period belong to philosophers of first-rate
importance, though they made so much stir in their day.
The thought of Friedrich Schleiermacher was obscured and misunderstood
amid those crowding mediocrities; yet it is perhaps the most interesting
and the most noteworthy of the period.
Schleiermacher looked upon Aesthetic as an altogether modern form of
thought. He perceived a profound difference between the "Poetics" of
Aristotle, not yet freed from empirical precepts, and the tentative of
Baumgarten in the eighteenth century. He praised Kant as having been the
first to include Aesthetic among the philosophical disciplines. He
admitted that with Hegel it had attained to the highest pinnacle, being
connected with religion and with philosophy, and almost placed upon
their level.
But he was dissatisfied with the absurdity of the attempt made by the
followers of Baumgarten to construct a science or theory of sensuous
pleasure. He disapproved of Kant's view of taste as being the principle
of Aesthetic, of Fichte's art as moral teaching, and of the vague
conception of the beautiful as the centre of Aesthetic.
He approved of Schiller's marking of the moment of spontaneity in
productive art, and he praised Schelling for having drawn attention to
the figurative arts, as being less liable than poetry to be diverted to
false and illusory moralistic ends.
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