Aesthetics as a science

The term "aesthetics" began to be used in the middle of the 18th century. It was invented by the German philosopher Baumgarten to designate a distinct new section of philosophy. Baumgarten originates from the teachings of Leibniz, which distinguishes in the spiritual world of man three spheres - reason, feelings and will. The doctrine of the activity of reason and the actions of the will are autonomous sections in philosophy (logic and ethics). Baumgarten proves that the doctrine of feeling must be given equal rights with logic and ethics and calls it "aesthetics" (sensation, sensory perception).

image source

Baumgarten's theory of sensory perception consists of the characterization of two phenomena: the first of beauty which the philosopher defines as "perfection of sensory perception" and which acquires in him the meaning of a basic category of aesthetics comparable to the main categories of ethics and logic - good and true; secondly, art, as Baumgarten thinks beauty is the highest expression in man's artistic activity. Beauty or beauty is the first object of aesthetic science. But alongside it there are other phenomena that are inherently inherent to the wonderful, and therefore to the same extent subject to aesthetic exploration. They are usually called "aesthetic properties" or "aesthetic values". These are the exquisite, the graceful, the sublime, the heroic, the dramatic, the tragic, etc., for their antipodes - the infamous, the ugly, the inferior, the comical and the immaculate. These phenomena are so diverse that they can not be listed. Consequently, aesthetics is not just a science of the wonderful - wider and more accurate - science, exploring the whole wealth of aesthetic values ​​that one finds in the surrounding world he creates in his practical work and which is fixed in the art reflecting the world. In this sense, aesthetics can be called the science of the aesthetic transformation of the reality of man.

However, such a definition can not be exhaustive. The point is that among the many carriers of aesthetic values ​​one occupies a special position - art.The question of the relationship between beauty and art has always excited aesthetic science. It gave him a variety of answers - from absolute subordination to the art of the beautiful (in Hegel's aesthetics, which I will also look at, I hope soon) to the recognition that beauty is hostile to true art (in the teachings of L. Tolstoy). Aesthetics is revealed not only as a theory of the aesthetic transformation of the world by man, but also as a general theory of art. It explores art as the fruit of a kind of human activity that gives birth to artistic values, has an artistic character, and is thus different from any other activity, however skillful it may be.

The philosophical methodology was the first method of knowledge of aesthetic laws, in which even Plato proved theoretically his necessity. He proceeds from the fact that the wonderful is the property of many and very diverse objects. We really find the beautiful everywhere - in the objects of living and dead nature; in man and in human affairs; in the various objects created by the people; in the works of art. It is quite obvious, however, that the beauty of a mineral is different from the beauty of an animal, the beauty of man's face is something quite different from the beauty of his act, and the beauty of a machine is something other than the beauty of a symphony. Can aesthetics aim at exploring those peculiarities that are inherent in the beauty of any object or at least in any kind of object? Of course not. Such a task would be impossible because the forms of beauty are infinitely diverse. Therefore, aesthetics can only seek to know the general laws of beauty, the laws that define its nature, nature, origin and meaning. All these problems have a philosophical theoretical character and the categories with which aesthetics serves in their decision-categories objectively and subjectively, natural and social, content and form and the like, are philosophical categories. It is easy to explain why the aesthetic thought has evolved in the depths of philosophy for many centuries, and even when aesthetics was constructed as an independent scientific discipline, it retained its philosophical theoretical character.