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UC Berkeley UC Berkeley Electronic Theses and Dissertations Title Moral Philosophy and the Origins of Modern Aesthetic Theory in Scotland and Germany Permalink https://escholarship.org/uc/item/4z7531c2 Author Grote, Simon William Publication Date 2010 Peer reviewed|Thesis/dissertation eScholarship.org Powered by the California Digital Library University of California Moral Philosophy and the Origins of Modern Aesthetic Theory in Scotland and Germany by Simon William Grote A dissertation submitted in partial satisfaction of the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy in History in the Graduate Division of the University of California, Berkeley Committee in charge: Professor Thomas A Brady, Jr., Chair Professor David Lieberman Professor Martin Jay Professor Niklaus Largier Spring 2010 Moral Philosophy and the Origins of Modern Aesthetic Theory in Scotland and Germany © 2010 by Simon William Grote All rights reserved. A B S T R A C T Moral Philosophy and the Origins of Modern Aesthetic Theory in Scotland and Germany by Simon William Grote Doctor of Philosophy in History University of California, Berkeley Professor Thomas A. Brady, Jr., Chair The aim of this dissertation is to rewrite the early history of modern aesthetic theory. The early eighteenth century is widely recognized as having been marked by innovations in thinking about art, beauty, and sense perception by a large group of well- known and lesser-known authors in many parts of Europe, among the most important of whom were Anthony Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury (1671-1713) in England, Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746) in Ireland and Scotland, and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-62) in Brandenburg-Prussia. But no significant, historically- informed, comparative study of the emergence of aesthetic theory as a pan-European phenomenon has ever been undertaken. Rather, historians of aesthetic theory have long tended to summarize the eighteenth century as a series of preludes to the achievements of Immanuel Kant in his 1790 Critique of Judgment. Narratives of this type are not necessarily false, but they almost invariably obscure the contemporary significance of the treatises they regard as “aesthetic” and the purposes of those treatises’ authors. Nor have they tended to take account of the theological and philosophical contexts crucial to explaining why aesthetic theories arose. 1 As an alternative, I present the early history of aesthetic theory as part of the histories of moral philosophy, natural law, and theology, by analyzing discussions and controversies surrounding the work of Shaftesbury, Hutcheson, Baumgarten, and the little-known William Cleghorn (1719-54), a Scottish follower of Shaftesbury. I argue that their aesthetic theories should be seen as a multi-generational effort to solve a problem about what they called the “foundation of morality.” They developed their aesthetic theories as challenges to the idea, espoused by their critics among contemporary natural law theorists and Lutheran and Presbyterian theologians, that the human will is naturally radically corrupt, and that moral behavior must therefore be understood as merely an expression of educated selfishness. They sought to explain how cultivating the powers of the human soul associated with sensation, through the contemplation of beauty, including in well-made works of art and literature, is an essential part of moral education and allows naturally self-interested human beings to transcend their own self- interest. From an historical perspective, in other words, the origins of modern aesthetic theory should be sought in seventeenth- and eighteenth-century challenges to the Augustinian legacy of early modern Protestantism, in the long history of reactions to the natural law theories of Thomas Hobbes and Samuel Pufendorf (among others), and in the characteristically eighteenth-century search for a morally sound basis of a cohesive, flourishing society. 2 To my father and in memory of my mother i T A B L E O F C O N T E N T S Acknowledgments..................................................................................................................iii Abbreviations and Transcriptions.........................................................................................v Introduction..............................................................................................................................1 Chapter 1. Francis Hutcheson at the Margins of the Scottish Enlightenment.............11 Chapter 2. William Cleghorn and the Aesthetic Foundation of Justice.......................51 Chapter 3. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Pietist Aisthesis, and the Ethics of Aesthetics.......................................................................108 Chapter 4. Christian Wolff’s Critics and the Foundation of Morality........................141 Chapter 5. Baumgarten’s Answer....................................................................................196 Conclusion.............................................................................................................................254 Works Cited...........................................................................................................................263 ii A C K N O W L E D G M E N T S This dissertation bears witness to an education, both intellectual and sentimental, whose effects on me have been so deep and so welcome that I would happily fill page after page with names and reminiscences, showering gratitude on everyone who has had even the remotest connection with it. What restrains me is a sense of the impropriety of self-indulgence, the inadequacy of words to convey my true feelings, and a fear that my faulty memory would turn any pretense of all- inclusiveness into a source of disappointment for everyone whose name I had unfairly and unwittingly omitted. So I confine myself to mentioning, with regrettable but unavoidable brevity and blandness, and with apologies to everyone I have overlooked, some of the people and institutions who have helped me in particularly direct ways. The initial phase of my research began ten years ago, when I spent a summer in Scotland laying the foundation for an undergraduate thesis in history at Harvard University. Of all the people on whose help I relied, and whom I thanked in the pages of that thesis and thank again now, the one who has left the clearest fingerprints on this dissertation is Istvan Hont. Together with Clare Jackson, he supervised a year of research at Cambridge University, generously funded by the Gates-Cambridge Trust in 2004-5, essential to my dissertation’s second chapter. His advice and support have continued during my time in Berkeley. Ten years of guidance, challenging criticism, and flattering encouragement have earned him my gratitude. I also thank him and Isaac Nakhimovsky for inviting me back to Cambridge in 2009 to present my work. I have based the greater part of my dissertation on research I conducted in Germany over the course of two extended visits to Halle/Saale in 2007 and 2008, at the invitation of the Francke Foundations and the Interdisciplinary Center for European Enlightenment Research, funded by the Fritz Thyssen Foundation, the German Academic Exchange Service, and the Max Kade Foundation. With help from my hosts in Halle and from many new acquaintances and friends, I became aware of an academic culture and a set of scholarly conversations about Pietism and Enlightenment that have substantially shaped how I understand the significance of my work. These new friends’ and colleagues’ enthusiasm about me and my project buoyed my confidence and made every departure from Halle bittersweet. The iii archivists, librarians, and other members of the staff of the Study Center of the Francke Foundations, led so ably by Britta Klosterberg, taught me paleography and, together with their colleagues at the Halle University Archive and the University Library, helped me find almost all the materials I needed. For useful consultations about the substance of my research, I thank in particular Ulrich Barth, Frank Grunert, Hans-Joachim Kertscher, Christian Soboth, Udo Sträter, and Alexander Aichele, to whom I am especially grateful for giving me the means of sharing some fruits of my research with a larger public. For important advice on drafts of dissertation chapters and other written work, and for countless hours of invigorating conversation, I owe special thanks to Dirk Effertz, and to two dear friends: Ulrich Diehl and Kelly Whitmer. In Berkeley, many friends have given me both a welcome sense of intellectual community and concrete assistance. These include fellow members of the History Department’s intellectual history reading group; Jim Spohrer, who bought reproductions of rare sources for the University Library to support my research when time in Germany had run out; and above all Johan van der Zande, whose expert critique and open-handed praise of my work, over the course of eight years of intellectual camaraderie and friendship, have given me a sense of my worth as a scholar. The many others whom I thank for reading parts of my dissertation and offering valuable advice and other forms of support, in Berkeley and elsewhere, include Thomas Ahnert, Susanna Elm, Ellie Johnson, Tony La Vopa, Tony Long, Rebecca Lyman, Marcus Meier, Jim Moore, Martin Mulsow, Christopher Ocker, David Pugh, Jonathan Sheehan, and the members of the 2008 Transatlantic Doctoral Seminar on early modern Germany, organized by the German Historical Institute. I am particularly