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3 Epistemology 3Epistemology 3.1 Psychology 3.1.1 Cognition The ambiguity of aesthetics arisesfrom its combination of epistemology and media theory.The order of knowledge forms its epistemological basis, literature is its object,establishing its autonomyfrom logic is its goal, analogyits method, and etymologyits style. The eighteenth-century order of knowledge parcels cog- nition up into abright upperpart and adarklower part at the ground of the soul (fundus animae) – therebyrevisitingwhat Niklaus Largier analyzes as apromi- nent “trope of mystical discourse.”¹ As is well known, Baumgarten’s “science of everything that is sensate” contradictsthe topical order of the faculties of the soul, which was established by Leibniz and confirmed in Wolff’s Psychologia em- pirica (1732), by transposing the vertical spatial order into ahorizontal order in which sensation (sensatio/Empfindung) is the equal of reason. But in recon- structing the epistemology of Baumgarten’saesthetics, the scholarship often makes adecisive mistake: it attends to the cognitivefaculties (facultates cogno- scitivae) but neglects the appetitive faculties (facultates appetitivae). In the fol- lowing,Iwilldiscuss the lowercognitive faculty in relation to the appetitive fac- ulty.Incontrast to affect in the seventeenth century and feeling in the late eighteenthcentury,Baumgarten posits that both sensate cognition and sensate desire follow laws analogous to thoseofreason, making it possible to analyze the formal processes of both. His aesthetics thus does not give emphatic irratio- nality the role that it will later have in the eighteenth centuryintheorieslike Her- der’s. Baumgartendifferentiates between higher cognitive faculties (facultates cog- noscitivae superiores) and lower cognitive faculties (facultates cognoscitivae in- feriores). He articulates this distinctionindetail in the Metaphysica,but it is al- readypresent in the Meditationes,wherehedistinguishes between thingsknown (noeta) and thingsperceived(aistheta), and determines that “things known are to be known by the superior faculty as the object of logic; things perceived [are to be known by the inferior faculty,asthe object] of the science of perception, or Niklaus Largier, “The Plasticity of the Soul: Mystical Darkness,Touch, and Aesthetic Experi- ence,” MLN 125.3(2010): 537. See also Hans Adler, “Fundus Animae – der Grund der Seele: Zur Gnoseologie des Dunklen in der Aufklärung,” Deutsche Vierteljahrsschrift fürLiteraturwissen- schaft und Geistesgeschichte 62.2 (1988): 197–220. OpenAccess. ©2020Frauke Berndt, published by De Gruyter. This work is licensed under the CreativeCommons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivatives 4.0 License. https://doi.org/10.1515/9783110624519-004 3.1 Psychology 29 aesthetic” (MED §116;Sint ergo νοητα cognoscenda facultatesuperioreobiec- tum logices, αισϑητα επιϛημης αισϑητιϰης sive AESTHETICAE).² He thus under- stands sensation “as an organ of cognition independent from reason” that rep- resents “the connections of thingsinits ownparticularway.”³ In this conception of sensation, the discipline of psychologyisresponsible for articulating the laws of “representing”⁴ or “appropriating the world sensate- ly.”⁵ In part 3ofthe Metaphysica on psychology(psychologia) – where Baum- garten treats both empirical and rational (speculative) psychology – he derives the following series of sensate faculties (facultates sentiendi) from the different characteristics of sensations: (1) the inferior faculty for knowingthe correspondences of things (§572, 279), to which per- tains asensitive wit (§575); (2) the inferior faculty for knowingthe differences of things (§572, 279), to which pertains sensitive acumen (§575); (3) sensitive memory (§579, 306); (4) the faculty of invention (§589); (5) the faculty of judging(§606,94), thus sensitive judg- ment (§607) and that of the senses (§608); (6) the expectation of similar cases (§610,612); and (7) the sensitive faculty of characterization (§619,347). All of these, insofar as they are similar to reasoninrepresentingthe nexus of things,constitutethe ANALOGUE OF REA- SON (§70), or the collection of the soul’sfaculties for representinganexus confusedly. 1) inferior facultas identitates rerumcognoscendi, §. 572, 279quo ingenium sensitivum, §. 575. 2) inferior facultas diversitates rerumcognoscendi, §. 572, 279. quo acumen sensiti- vum pertinet,§.575.3)memoria sensitiva, §. 579, 306.4)facultas fingendi, §. 589.5)facultas diiudicandi, §. 606,94. quo iudicium sensitivum, §. 607. &sensuum, §. 608. 6) exspectatio casuum similium,§.610,612. 7) facultas characteristica sensitiva, §. 619, 347. Hae omnes, quatenus in repraesentando rerum nexu rationi similes sunt,constituuntANALOGON RA- TIONIS,§.70. complexum facultatum animae nexum confuse repraesentantium. (MET §640;see also AE §§ 30 –37) Baumgartenthen organizes the third part of the Metaphysica,which is based on this list of faculties, as follows: See Hans Adler and Lynn L. Wolff, eds., Aisthesis und Noesis:ZweiErkenntnisformen vom 18. Jahrhundert bis zur Gegenwart (Munich: Wilhelm Fink,2013). See also TedKinnaman, “Aes- thetics beforeKant,” in ACompanion to Early Modern Philosophy,ed. Steven Nadler (Malden: Blackwell, 2002), 578–582. Ursula Franke, Kunstals Erkenntnis: Die Rolle der Sinnlichkeit in der Ästhetik des Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (Wiesbaden: Franz Steiner,1972),37. See also Franke, “Sinnliche Erkenntnis – was sie ist und was sie soll: A. G. Baumgartens Ästhetik-Projekt zwischen Kunstphilosophie und Anthropologie,” in Aichele and Mirbach, “Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten,” 73– 99. Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis,41. Friedhelm Solms, Disciplina aesthetica:Zur Frühgeschichte der ästhetischen Theorie bei Baum- garten und Herder (Stuttgart: Klett-Cotta, 1990), 21. 30 3Epistemology Section IIII: Imagination (phantasia) Section V: Perspicacity (perspicacia) Faculty of wit (ingenium) Faculty of acumen (acumen) Section VI: Memory (memoria) Section VII: Faculty of invention (facultas fingendi) Section VIII: Foresight (praevisio) Section VIIII: Judgment (iudicium) Section X: Anticipation (praesagitio) Section XI: Faculty of characterization (facultas characteristica) The science for analyzingthese sensate faculties requires, like anyscience,a method.Aswesaw in the last chapter,Baumgarten’s “science of everything that is sensate” is largely based on the rhetorical figureofanalogy, so it employs arhetorical method.⁶ He thus follows, as Herder astutelynotes,apath thatis more philologicallythan philosophicallygrounded: “Iamgetting closertothe heart of Baumgarten’sphilosophyand have noticed thatitissotied up with lan- guagethat his explanations, differentiations, and proofs oftenseem to work ety- mologically.”⁷ In other words, Baumgarten seems to shift the weight of his argu- ments onto the conceptsthat constitutethem. Herder becomes especiallyriled up with Baumgarten’suse of sensitivus,inEnglish “sensate,” which he seems to applytoeverything possible. In the context of the analogon of reason, the data (sense perceptions), organs (faculties), and products (representations, with regardtoboth quantity and quality) are all described with one and the same word: sensitivus. Herder bemoans this fact in his discussion of Friedrich Justus Riedel’s Theorie der schönen Künste (1767), which follows Baumgarten’s mold: We Germans disputewordsasother nations disputecauses; we areasblessed with defini- tions as others arewith inventions,and in his definition Baumgarten has moreover used a word that is rich and pregnant enough to conceal multiple meanings,thus leavingitself open to disputeand misuse: the word sensuous [sinnlich;Itranslateas“sensate,” F. B.]. Howmanyconcepts German philosophyassociates with this word! Sensuous leads us back to the source and medium of certain representations, and these arethe senses;itsig- nifies those faculties of the soul that form such representations, and these arethe so-called lower faculties of the soul; it characterizes the species of representation, confused and pleasant preciselyinthis rich, engagingconfusion; that is, sensuous;finally, it refers also to the intensity with which the representations enraptureusand excite sensuous pas- See 2.2Analogy. Johann Gottfried Herder, “VonBaumgartens Denkart in seinen Schriften,” in Werke,ed. Martin Bollacher et al., vol. 1, Frühe Schriften 1764–1772,ed. Ulrich Gaier (Frankfurt am Main: Deutscher Klassiker Verlag, 1985), 653. 3.1 Psychology 31 sions – on all four conceptual paths the multifacetedwords sensuous, sensitive areinkeep- ing with the definition of Wolff, Baumgarten, and Mendelssohn.⁸ Baumgarten’sconceptual politics made more than asmall contribution to this inflation. Even the concept aesthetics itself is an argument based on words (ar- gumentum ex vi verbi). By deriving aesthetica from an etymological topos (locus ab etymologia) in the first paragraph of the Kollegium,Baumgarten traces the name for the “science of everything that is sensate” back to its original meaning and provides an etymological explanation for the analogybetween reason and sensation:⁹ It actuallycomes from aisthanomai [I sense]; this wordrefers to whatsentio refers to in Latin, namely, to all clear sensations.Sincesensations can be divided intoexternal and in- ternal ones – into those that Iamconscious of occurringinmybodyand that relatetoall the senses,and those that onlyoccur in my soul – this word, which referstoclear sensa- tions in general, applies to both. Since, furthermore, the word sentio refers to perceiving somethingwith the senses and the Greek is completely
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