# Chapter III: Aesthetic Theories of the Eighteenth and Nineteenth Centuries explained — What Is Art?

> Chapter companion for What Is Art? by Leo Tolstoy.

## 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.

## Character check-ins

### 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 lines

> 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._

## Links

- HTML: https://www.betterreads.online/discover/what_is_art_se/chapters/iii
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