![]() ![]() ![]() As expounded in the Meditationes Philosophicae de Nonnullis ad Poema Pertinentibus (1735) and the (unfinished) two-volume Aesthetica (1750, 1758), Baumgarten’s theory of knowledge, or “gnoseology,” claims that the understanding and reason can through logic refine the senses into clear and distinct ideas of perfection, and non-intellectual perception can clearly, but not distinctly, represent such ideas. While Wolff had only allowed for the cognitive perfection of the senses, Baumgarten envisioned a science of the beautiful regulated by criteria derived from the senses themselves. ![]() In 1738, Baumgarten began teaching at the university, where he published textbooks on metaphysics ( Metaphysica, 1739) and ethics ( Ethica Philosophica, 1740) and, in 1740, he took a position at Frankfurt an der Oder, where he taught until his death in 1762.īaumgarten extended Wolffian rationalism to include what he called “aesthetics,” the systematic study of the faculty of sensible knowledge. He later earned a degree in philosophy and theology at Halle, where he became a disciple of Christian Wolff. Born in Berlin, Baumgarten was educated in a Pietistic orphanage run by August Hermann Franke. Baumgarten undertook the first systematic philosophy of art. Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb (1714-1762): German Philosopher.Ī. ![]()
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