A Comprehensive History of Western Aesthetics (3) Aesthetics in the 17th and 18th Centuries

Author: Fan Mingsheng
Publisher:
Publish Date: 1999-12-01
Features: In the history of Western aesthetics, the Middle Ages and the Renaissance aesthetics represent a period with the longest time span, yet relatively weak research achievements. Baumgarten's Aesthetics defines aesthetics as the science of sensitive cognition, the theory of free arts, the epistemology of class hierarchy, and the art of thinking and symbolizing beauty. According to this standard, except for the symbolic tradition of medieval exegesis to poetics and the theory of free arts that echoes the prevailing art philosophy of the Renaissance, there was essentially no aesthetics from the 5th to the late 16th century over a thousand two hundred years.