The Introduction of “Aesthetics” in Baumgarten’s Meditationes and Its Background

In his Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus Baumgarten famously called for Aesthetics, which he considered a branch of knowledge of the clear but confused perceptions that could not be reduced to any other kind of more distinct knowledge. This took place in a context of both Leibnizian-Wolffian Rationalism and Pietism. Regarding the first, Baumgarten used Leibniz’s taxonomy of ideas and depended on the Wolffian method, by using of which he tried to prove the possibility of what he called a “philosophical poetics”. His Poetics was mainly based on theories of Horace in his Ars Poetica. Regarding the second, he was influenced by the ideas about moral education by means of affections, present in the works of pietists such as August Hermann Francke about interpreting scriptures. Besides, it is crucial to draw attention to theological and biblical background of the word “aesthetics”. In the Bible, early christian texts and also in a book by Francke himself, “aisthesis” is an internal and spiritual perception, an insight based on affections. In this paper I have tried to put together these different aspects of the context of the Meditationes in a whole picture. I have concluded that based on this text by Baumgarten: there is always a notion of a “rule” present in aesthetics and it can also be interpreted in defence of poetry (and art) as a means of moral education by way of affections.