What Is Art? · Chapter
Chapter III: Aesthetic Theories of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries explained
Tolstoy surveys the major aesthetic theories from the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on English, French, Italian, Dutch, and German philosophers.
What happens
Tolstoy surveys the major aesthetic theories from the 18th and 19th centuries, focusing on English, French, Italian, Dutch, and German philosophers. He examines definitions of beauty and art by Hutcheson, Home, Burke, Diderot, Kant, Schiller, Fichte, Schelling, Hegel, and their followers, as well as counter-theories by Herbart and Schopenhauer. Tolstoy critiques these theories as obscure, contradictory, and failing to provide a clear, universal definition of art.
Themes in this chapter
Critique of Aesthetics and Art Criticism
Tolstoy systematically critiques the major aesthetic theories, finding them contradictory and obscure.
True Art vs. Counterfeit Art
By exposing the confusion in definitions of beauty, Tolstoy sets the stage for distinguishing genuine art from counterfeit.
Characters to notice
- Leo Tolstoy
Author presenting and critiquing historical aesthetic theories.
- Immanuel Kant
His aesthetic theory of beauty as pleasure without practical advantage is discussed.
- Friedrich Schiller
Follows Kant, defining art as a game aiming at beauty without utility.
- Johann Gottlieb Fichte
Views beauty as dependent on the observer's 'beautiful soul'.
- Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph Schelling
Defines art as the union of subjective and objective, beauty as the infinite in the finite.
- Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
His doctrine that beauty is the sensuous manifestation of the Idea is examined.
- Arthur Schopenhauer
Opposes Hegel, viewing beauty as objectification of Will on various planes.
- Johann Wolfgang von Goethe
Mentioned as influenced by Hemsterhuis's aesthetic ideas.
Key passages
“According to Hutcheson (1694–1747— Inquiry Into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue ), the aim of art is beauty, the essence of which consists in evoking in us the perception of uniformity amid variety.”
Hutcheson believed art's purpose is beauty, which arises from perceiving uniformity within variety.
Summarizes Hutcheson's aesthetic principle.
“According to Kant, in its subjective meaning is that which, in general and necessarily, without reasonings and without practical advantage, pleases.”
Kant defined beauty subjectively as something that pleases universally and necessarily, without reasoning or practical benefit.
Captures Kant's core definition of beauty.
“According to Hegel, God manifests himself in nature and in art in the form of beauty. ... Beauty is the shining of the Idea through matter.”
Hegel saw beauty as the divine Idea shining through material form, with art as a manifestation of this Idea.
Explains Hegel's metaphysical aesthetic.