Georg Friedrich Meier: Figure of a critic (1745)

We’ve just seen Meier describe an ideal figure of a philosopher, and in the very same year he also published a work (Abbildung eines Kunstrichters) meant for describing an ideal figure of a philosopher. Just like in his figure of a philosopher, Meier draws heavily on the work of his teacher, Baumgarten. Difference is that in the case of a critic, Meier can only use his own lecture notes on Baumgarten’s aesthetics, since the latter had not yet published anything on the topic.

Meier’s intended audience is particularly the German speaking world. German philosophy and sciences are already respected, he states, but the same cannot yet be said of its taste. True, there are a lot of German critics, but without a model of what a critic should be like we cannot really say whether they are particularly good critics.

Meier begins with a short history of criticism, starting from the Renaissance, when scholars wanted to learn what wisdom was to be found in the texts of ancient authors. Before they could get to the actual content of these texts, the scholars had to discern what the words and expressions of the authors had meant. With this philological interest began the study of evaluating a text based merely on the words and expressions in order to see, for instance, whether some scribe had added things to the original work.

Later this study or critique was extended more generally into evaluation of all works of art. The purpose of critique was to find out what is perfect and what is imperfect in them and how to avoid the imperfections. Yet, Meier says, critique could be extended even further to evaluation of all finite things, because all things are perfect in some manner, whereas all finite things are in some measure imperfect. This means that absolutely anything, with the exception of God, can be evaluated by critique, even such seemingly frivolous things as wigs.

Critique or the art of evaluation can be divided into two parts, Meier notes. The theoretical part contains rules by which we can recognise perfections and imperfections in general, but doesn’t consider any particular kinds of objects. The practical part, on the other hand, tries to discern what is perfect and imperfect in particular kinds or even in individual objects. In other words, practical criticism takes an individual object, like Homer’s Odyssey, and evaluates it according to some given rules. Practical critique developed faster than theoretical, since e.g. Homer was evaluated long before Aristotle had written his Poetics. Then again, insufficient theoretical critique is bound to lead to bad practical critique, and therefore it is especially theoretical critique Meier is eager to develop in his work.

Theoretical critique should begin, Meier insists, what he calls instrumental critique or logic of critique that studies the very concepts of perfection and imperfection and the various methods of evaluating them. According to Meier, the logic of critique divides into two parts. The first part describes the methods for knowing perfections and imperfections distinctly, reasonably and philosophically. This is done by what he calls the intellectual capacity of evaluation. This intellectual capacity should be based on a distinct understanding of what is perfect and what imperfect and it should work in close conjunction with the reason.

The second part of the logic of critique, on the other hand, concerns taste, which gives rules for evaluating perfection and imperfection of things in a sensuous manner, that is, as beauty and ugliness. Just like the intellectual capacity of evaluation worked in conjunction with reason, taste should work in conjunction with the senses, for instance, when a musician can hear whether a melody is beautiful or not. Despite taste using non-distinct methods for its evaluations, it also can be perfected, Meier thinks. Furthermore, he continues, since many of our sensuous representations are not distinct, while all our distinct representations have some connection to what is sensed, taste must always provide the raw material for the judgemetns of intellectual evaluation. Thus, Meier concludes, improving the taste of the people is of utmost importance even from the perspective of the intellectual capacity of evaluation.

In addition to the logic of critique, theoretical critique also studies the perfections and imperfections of things. This study, Meier says, divides into two parts. The first part is more general, being like metaphysics of critiqued, because it studies, firstly, perfections belonging to all possible things, secondly, imperfections common to all finite things, and finally, perfections and imperfections belonging to highest genera of things. The second part, on the other hand, studies the further species of things and their perfections and imperfections. This second part has no clear boundary with the practical critique and could extend indefinitely, for example, to evaluation of general perfections and imperfections in comedies.

With these preliminaries in place, Meier can finally proceed to create his figure of a critic, by which he means a person capable of evaluating perfections and imperfections. Meier notes that his definition also covers critics who use only taste, but not the intellectual capacity of evaluation. This means that not all critics can explain why they evaluate things in the way they do.

The first characteristic of a good critic, Meier says, is that they should be able to evaluate, and even more, they should actually evaluate as many things as is possible for them. The possibility in this statement is not a mere empty expression, but points to clear limitations on what the critic should attempt to evaluate. Firstly, Meier points out, there are things no human being could evaluate. Furthermore, every individual human being has things they particularly cannot evaluate. Finally, Meier notes that moral possibility should also be taken into account: evaluating certain things could break a higher duty, while a critic could be obligated to evaluate other things.

Beyond these limitations, nothing as such should in principle limit the extent of what a critic should evaluate. Indeed, they should be ready to use their evaluating capacities in all walks of life and in all arts and fields of knowledge. Of course, Meier admits, there are physical limitations as to how much and how extensively a person can do evaluating work. Thus, it is reasonable for a critic to find a certain field of expertise, where to especially use their talents.

Since there are limits to what a critic can evaluate, Meier argues, they should especially concentrate on evaluating as great things as is possible for their capacities. By greatness Meier does not mean just quantitative greatness, although that is one possible way to choose the topics of evaluation. Instead, he says, things also have their own inner worth, depending on how much they support virtuous behaviour. In addition to such intrinsic worth, a thing can have worth due to the variety and worthiness of its consequences. Meier notes that neither the intrinsic worth nor the worth of the consequences should be left for the common people to decide, since even such a seemingly impractical study as philology can be worthwhile, because it teaches us to read and understand things.

When a critic has finally decided what to evaluate, they should try to discover as much perfections and imperfections in what is evaluated. Of course, there are limitations as to what can be found in a thing and also how much to put attention to a single thing - one should not put too much effort into evaluating wigs, Meier jokes. Still, even within these limits there are many perfections and imperfections to be found, since everything can be regarded from many angles - the intrinsic characteristics of things, their relations to other things, laws governing these relations etc. For instance, when evaluating Homeric poetry, one should surely contextualise it to the religious background of ancient Greeks, Meier points out.

When considering perfections and imperfections of a thing, Meier continues, a critic should concentrate on the greatest the thing has. This does not mean that a critic could not pay any attention to small details, but only that the attention should not be unproportionally great. Hence, when studying a tragedy, a critic should mainly concentrate on the question whether it fulfils the central purpose of all tragedies, that is, of inciting feelings of horror and compassion, and less on things like whether the costumes of the actors look realistic.

Thus far, Meier says, we have outlined the figure of a critic, but now we should paint it, in other words, we should not just say what a critic is to evaluate, but also how they should do it. The first rule Meier points out on this account is that a true critic should evaluate things with as great clarity as possible. As should be expected, Meier again points out that clarity has its limitations, since human beings do not have divine omniscience. Thus, again, the clarity used for evaluation should be in proportion to the worth of the thing evaluated. Furthermore, a critic should be ready to gradually increase the clarity of their evaluations.

A critic can use both an intellectual capacity of evaluation and taste for their evaluations, and both have their different forms of clarity: judgements of taste are more vibrant or lively, but judgements of the intellectual kind are more distinct. Meier notes that in any case taste must be used, but the intellectual capacity should be especially reserved for things deserving a more refined evaluation. The two capacities have also different criteria for a sufficiently clear evaluation: while using only taste, a critic can often merely say that the thing evaluated has something je ne sais quoi, but in a more intellectual evaluation such impreciseness would not be accepted.

The most important perfection of a critic, Meier says, is that of making as correct evaluations as possible. This means, mostly, that a critic should avoid errors as much as is possible. Of course, Meier admits, humans cannot avoid all errors, since they are just finite beings. In some cases this is not crucial, if the error is of no significance. Still, in many cases errors would be important. Thus, a true critic should be more inclined to abstain from evaluation and admit their ignorance than to make guesses without any good evidence. Even if a critic is convinced of the correctness of their evaluation, they should be prepared to correct their opinions later.

Although Meier spends considerable time to describe how to avoid error - mostly by getting rid of false presuppositions, such a person thinking their own skin colour should please everyone else best - he does also mention that correctness or truth comes in many grades and that for higher grades something more is required than just a lack of errors. This higher grade of truth consists essentially of integrating one’s evaluations to a system, where one can see, e.g. rules of evaluation ordered into a hierarchy of more and less important rules.

Closely connected to the demand of correctness is Meier’s insistence that a critic should be as certain as is possible of their evaluations. He notes that certainty comes in two different types, corresponding to the two types of evaluating capacity. In the intellectual evaluation, we have philosophical certainty, which is based on proofs. These proofs can be demonstrations, which conclude with fully certain statements, but they can also be just probable proofs, which can still create at least e.g. moral certainty. Here the probability can also be increased with a number of different proofs used to justify the evaluation.

An intellectual evaluation should always be backed up with taste. Thus, Meier argues, critics should be more than logicians and strive also for aesthetic or sensuous certainty. Sensuous certainty is based on immediate experience, which makes an evaluation sensuously plausible. Furthermore, because taste could be used in cases where intellectual evaluation is not possible, sensuous certainty is sometimes the best a critic can achieve.

If a critic is not convinced of their evaluations, they should not persuade others of their certainty. This does not mean that they should constantly try to give perfect justifications of their evaluations, Meier adds, because sometimes they just don’t have time for a proper proof, while at other times they have nothing but their taste to rely on. Even so, Meier notes, they should at least try to justify why they trust their taste and be prepared to find their evaluations shaken.

Sometimes intellectual evaluation and taste of a critic can be at odds with one another. Such contradictions obviously make their evaluations uncertain and should thus be avoided. Meier thinks that usually it is the intellectual capacity of evaluation that should be preferred, because taste is based on confused ideas and is hence prone to make more mistakes. Thus, Meier thinks that the statement that matters of taste cannot be disputed is proven false, because intellectual evaluation could well show the incorrectness of an evaluation of taste.

Evaluating things should not be just dead speculation, Meier thinks. Instead, evaluations should cause pleasant or unpleasant feelings in the critic and thus motivate them to action. Here the role of the sensuous capacity of evaluation or taste is especially important, Meier says, since intuitive understanding of things affects us more deeply than mere symbolic cognition.

A seasoned critic, Meier continues, knows how to do all the things described with incredible ease, being able to evaluate on a moment’s notice things they have never before even heard about, even if they are at the same time occupied by distracting thoughts. This seasoned ease, he states, is something that can be practised, for instance, by improving one’s cognitive skills in general.

Evaluation of a critic is usually not just something they make in their head, but also something they present to others, whether in oral or written fashion. Meier notes that not all evaluations should be presented at all. While truth as such is always a positive thing, its effect on people could be harmful. Of course, Meier admits, it is not the case that a critic should remain silent, if it causes some harm to someone: truth can have its martyrs. Still, it requires careful consideration whether expressing certain evaluation in public will do more harm than be of use.

If a critic decides to make their judgement known, they should present it in a manner that shows the critic to have followed all the previously mentioned rules of evaluation. Furthermore, a presentation of evaluation should also follow good morals. Meier ponders the question whether certain styles, like satire, should be allowed in critical evaluations. He comes to the conclusion that such are allowed, if the style matches the content.

The figure of the critic has been completed, Meier states, but few details have to be added. Thus, a good critic should make fair evaluations, which are proportional to the perfections and imperfections of the evaluated thing and impartial. They should also be prepared to become authorities in the field of criticism, who inspire others to imitate them, but not try to gain such authority by merely fulfilling the irrational wishes of the public audience. Furthermore, they should try to maintain balance in the realm of criticism, so that all critical authorities would have a chance to state freely their opinion, within the limits prescribed by customs and the law of the land, and so to balance their tastes. Finally, they should avoid a gloomy disposition and seek more for perfection in the things evaluated.

Critics should constantly try to improve their capacities of evaluation. Still, Meier concedes, these capacities will eventually diminish, when the critic turns into their second childhood. While an ageing critic can slow this process down with constant practice, this cannot go on forever. It would be best if the critic would then completely abstain from evaluations, but since we cannot expect rational behaviour from people in their second childhood, Meier suggests, the younger critics should just respectfully ignore the silliness of what an elderly critic says.

Georg Friedrich Meier: Thoughts about jokes (1744)

 

(1718-1777)
By Skara kommun - Georgius Fridericus Meier; Uploaded by Magnus Manske, CC BY 2.0 

It seems almost a joke in itself to read an author from the Wolffian tradition of philosophy discussing the merits of jokes: how could such a system, with a penchant for droll rules, help us to understand imaginative and unruly world of jokes? Yet, this is exactly what Georg Friedeich Meier sets out to do in his Gedanken von Schertzen - to find rules by which to decide which jokes are effective and which are not. Just like an artist might not be able to explain why her works are beautiful, similarly a joker might not know why some joke is particularly funny.

To clarify a bit, Meier is not a pure Wolffian, but more precisely, hails from the tradition of Baumgarten. Now, while Baumgarten’s metaphysics was, on the whole, more intellectualist than Wolff’s, which still had some empiricist leanings, in one particular aspect Baumgarten’s philosophy was more receptive to the messiness of such topic as jokes. Baumgarten accepted that in addition to the clear and distinct perfection of conceptual thought, senses have their own kind of perfection, embodied in the new discipline of aesthetics. Baumgarten hadn’t at this point published his work on aesthetics, mentioning it only briefly in his psychology, but Meier as his student probably knew about Baumgarten’s more concrete ideas.

In addition to the obvious idea that jokes should induce laughter - at least when time and audience are right for them - Meier notes that jokes are dependent on two faculties, wit and sharpness. These two faculties are in a sense opposite: while a sharp mind provides distinct notion of separate entities, wit notices all correspondences between them, such as similarities of qualities and quantitative proportions. Mere wit is not enough for a joke, or otherwise allegories could be jokes, but neither is mere sharpness nor making people laugh - conceptual analysis is no joke and neither is any old prank.

Now, what makes a joke good or bad, Meier says, can depend either on the topic joked or on the very form of the joke. He at once concentrates his work on the latter kind of perfection. Still, he does note that topic can affect our overall enjoyment of joke: a blasphemous joke can make us uneasy, no matter how good it technically is.

Formal perfection of joke consists simply in showing wit and sharpness and making people laugh. Meier specifies this rather obvious remark by giving more definite criteria for the perfection of a joke. A good joke, Meier says, must be both complex and novel - or at least complex and novel jokes are better than simple and unoriginal ones. Complexity of a joke - or more precisely, joke impressing many ideas at once - entices imagination and causes pleasant emotions, when we have the ability to conceive many things at once. Novelty, on the other hand, shows that the joker has originality and not just good memory. An old joke might have seemed funny at first, but becoming too familiar it has lost its ability to make us laugh. Thus, a good joker doesn’t repeat her stories over and over again.

A good joke shouldn’t be just witty, Meier notes, but it should also be sharp. In other words, the connections uncovered in a good joke should not be too obvious, because mere similarity does not induce laughter. What this means in practice is, for instance, comparing very small and insignificant things with great and significant things and finding unexpected similarities. Especially funny, Meier says, is putting apparently contradictory matters on the same level, which he considers to be the essence of irony. The more points of contact uncovered for sharply distinguished things, the more perfect the joke is. All of these points of contact need not be made explicit, and indeed, it is better if many of them are left implicit. Furthermore, these points of contact should concern the essence of things, thus, Meier concludes, mere word plays are very imperfect jokes and a sign of bad taste (here Meier shows his own personal taste).

Meier also notes that good jokes should be unexpected. A joke told after a number of other, similar jokes has not much of an impact, because the ideas suggested by it are too distinct in our minds. Instead, a perfect joke should be preceded by ideas of a very different sort, being like a flash of sudden witticism. Thus, Meier notes, a joke told in the middle of very serious lectures requiring conceptual distinctness is a sign of great wittiness, and even more witty is when a person jokes at the time of her own death. Because a joke should be completely unexpected, audience should not have too much time to think about the matter beforehand, so it should not be preceded by any lengthy introductions. Particularly to be avoided is laughing before one’s own joke.

In addition, Meier notes, a good joke should have all the marks of beauty, that is, sensuous perfection. Firstly, a good joke should produce a clear idea of what it attempts to convey. That is, audience should not need any detailed explanations to understand it. Then again, a good joke should also be lively, which means that it shouldn’t be too conceptualised and analysed, just like geometrical explanation of a beautiful object is not beautiful. This means that jokes should not be too long. In order to combine clarity and brevity, jokes should be aimed at the specific audience listening to it. Finally, best jokes should concern true matters, although good jokes can also be told of things someone believed to be true, such as pagan gods.

Meier doesn’t have that much to say about what in a good joke makes someone laugh, because he admits that genesis of laughter is still not very clear. He does point out that laughter is primarily connected to positive ideas, although it can have mediate connection to negative ideas, such as when we laugh at our enemies. He also notes deformities and roguery as examples of things causing laughter, although too great a deformity causes empathy and too great a roguery anger. A general rule Meier concludes from these examples is that laughter happens when we observe incongruities in unimportant trifles. Then again, laughable as such is no true joke, if the aspects of witticism and sharpness are missing. Thus, funny anecdote is not yet a joke nor is a laughingstock a witty joker. Similarly, although a good performance can enhance the effect of a joke, performance as such does not make anything a joke.

Baumgarten: Philosophical letters of Aletheophilus (1741)

Letters have been a medium of philosophical discourse at least since the Platonic letters, which were probably not written by Plato at all. Just like in case of these Platonic forgeries, philosophical letters have often been meant from the start for a wider audience, even if they have had a nominal addressee.

Such an audience was obviously meant for Baumgarten’s Philosophische Brieffe von Aletheophilus. As can be seen from the title, these letters were published under a penname, which suitably translates into the lover/friend of truth - not to mention it's also a clever pun on Baumgarten's names: Ale(xander) Theophilus (lover of God or Gottlieb in German). Aletheophilus isn’t the only writer, but there are occasional letters from the readers, and one letter contains a poem written by Museophilus (friend of muses). Despite this anonymity, we find interesting tidbits of Baumgarten’s own philosophical development. In the very first letter, he mentions that for a long time he had merely identified Spinoza’s and Wolff’s philosophies, but then to his surprise he was finally branded as a Wolffian, because he had used the formalities of Wolffian textbooks and relied on ontological truth of God’s existence (which ironically was not that important to Wolff).

It is quite clear that Baumgarten is making an attempt of a lighter tone than in his text books. One letter even is a parody of a philosophical text book – it is divided into numbered paragraphs, where the first paragraph is explicitly marked as not containing the principle of contradiction, because the definition of letter requires it to be an address to the readers. In one letter he lets his supposed reader to ask that Aletheophilus wouldn’t write about metaphysics, but more about things in general vogue and especially about moral and aesthetic questions.

And Baumgarten truly attempts to fulfil this request. He studies the recently published Anti-Machiavelli and tries to strike peace between different religious factions (one shouldn’t call one’s religious opponents enthusiasts, if they are not, and if they are, one should pity them, because that is just a sign of an understanding not capable of discerning lively imaginations from real experiences). Baumgarten deals also with moral questions and speaks for the right of the sensuous nature of human beings – even Stoics wanted merely to subdue it, not completely eradicate. Thus, he argues for allowing certain amount of frivolity in one’s life, because it is no great sin.

It is no wonder that Baumgarten has a number of things to say about aesthetics. Just like in his more formal works, Baumgarten contrasts it with logic – while the latter is a discipline for good use of understanding, the latter is a discipline for good use of sense, especially in matters concerning beauty. He also goes into the topical question of good poetry, first distinguishing it from mere oratory and then noticing that a good poem must strike a balance between lively thoughts and an ordered structure that only appears to be chaotic.

Between these more popular topics, Baumgarten does have time to enter more theoretical questions. It is somewhat striking that he even tries to present a sort of formal symbolism for logic – a peculiar choice for a series of popular letters. Somewhat more interesting for a common reader is a series of letters concerning truth. In these letters Baumgarten describes in vivid details that truth is like an abundant well of water, which also flows into various smaller streams (i.e. different kinds of applied truth). He continues by telling that different persons have need for different streams of truth and that different streams have different criteria for reliability – in some fields we must accept mere probabilities.

Baumgarten goes also into some specific metaphysical problems. The most general of these is, undoubtedly, the question of the unity of the world, where he again praises the Leibnizian notion of the principle of sufficient reason. By a daring and faulty leap, Baumgarten moves from the relatively humble supposition that all things are connected to something else through such links of reasons to the much more powerful statement that all things are connected to one another through such links (clearly, he seems to ignore the quite real possibility that there would be several universes with their own internal links).

More specific metaphysical questions handled by Baumgarten concern the nature of ensouled beings. Firstly, he sets for philosophy the task of proving the immortality of human soul, which shouldn’t be just assumed on basis of Bible, because instead, Baumgarten states, the truth of Bible should be justified from it. While Baumgarten doesn’t actually go into proving this statement and even says that no conclusive proof for either truth or falsity of it has been given, he does note that by immortality one could mean several things – for instance, that human soul couldn’t be broken to pieces, that it would continue to exist indefinitely or that it could continue with a memory of its previous existence.

Finally, Baumgarten considers also the partly metaphysical, partly moral question of the intelligence of animals – if animals were intelligent, they shouldn’t be slaughtered for food. Baumgarten makes first the quite obvious point that if animals are defined as non-intelligent living beings, no animal would be intelligent, but at the same time points out that this doesn’t tell whether there really are such animals. He then proceeds to argue that animals do exist, because in a perfect world there must be entities in all possible levels of existence. Of course, this statement doesn’t tell us yet, whether some particular living being is an animal or not, and Baumgarten appears to leave this question completely undecided.

Next time, we shall return to Wolff's tale of natural law.

Johann Jakob Breitinger: Critical poetry (1740)

In the previous post I mentioned the conflict, which Gottsched had with the Swiss aestheticians Bodmer and Breitinger. In retrospect, this conflict was less to do with completely different notions of aesthetics and more to do with different emphasis: Gottsched was more keen to hold on to the principle of the imitation of nature and clear rules derived from this principle, while Bodmer and Breitinger thought wonder to be the essential element of aesthetic feeling. While previously we saw Bodmer's practical application of their notion of aesthetics, Breitinger's Critische Dichtkunst presents its basic theory.

One must at first note that despite Breitinger's animosity with Gottsched, he doesn't wonder too far from tenets of Wolffian philosophy. Thus, we hear philosophy or ”worldly wisdom” defined as a science of all things, in so far as humans are capable of knowing the ground of their possibility and actuality.

What Breitinger wants to modify in Wolff's philosophy is to add rhetoric and poetry as its parts. His justification is based purely on utilitarian grounds. While philosophy is based on intricate scientific reasoning, most people simply cannot follow it and they have to be educated by other needs, that is, with the help of rhetoric and poetry.

Furthermore, Breitinger also accepts the suggestion that poetry is imitation of nature. That is not to say that poetry would be just a retelling of what happens in world around us, somewhat like history. Instead, poetry should arouse a feeling of truth in its reader through sensuous images. In this sense, poetry resembles painting, which also tries to imitate nature by creating a semblance of truth in its watcher. Yet, painting affects us more forcefully, while poetry has the advantage in being able to use material from all senses, which is just recollected by hearing certain words.

Since Breitinger accepts the idea that the actual world is the best of all possible worlds, he is bound to accept that imitated natural things can be regarded good. Yet, Breitinger finds a certain difference – while the goodness of the actual world is intrinsic to it, goodness of poems lies in them being good imitations. Thus, one can have a good poem, even if its topic falls short of complete perfection.

As it was habit with Gottsched and Bodmer, Breitinger extends the notion of imitation from the actual to all possible worlds, and just like Bodmer, he extends it quite far, to improbable possibilities, in which animals and plants speak and all sorts of allegorical abstractions exist. Indeed, such fables are one end of poetic works, in which wondrous rules over probability. Still, even they have some share of probability, since human mind has the tendency to antropomorphise natural things and especially animals.

In general, Breitinger sees all poetic works balancing between wonder and probability. Too much of wonder and a poem loses its credibility. Then again, too little of wonder and a reader won't have any interest on the poem. Most of the art of poetics deals then with various ways to enhance both wonder and probability. Thus, even when describing quite ordinary things, poet can highlight some of their more extraordinary properties or show them in an unexpected light. Similarly, one must make e.g. actions and speeches of a person seem like they would flow naturally out of the character of the person.

I will not go further into the petty details of the conflict between Gottsched and Breitinger/Bodmer-duo, and hence, this will be last we'll hear of any of them. Next time, I shall look at a completely different discipline, namely, jurisprudence.

Bodmer: Critical inquiry on wondrous in poetry (1740)

It is always refreshing to see a philosopher reconsider his old ideas and to move away from positions he held earlier. This appears to be case with Bodmer, whose earlier work showed clear influences of Wolffian philosophy and regarded imitation as the basic principle of good poetry. By the time of writing his Critische Abhandlung von dem Wunderbaren in der Poesie und dessen Verbindung mit dem Wahrscheinlichen, Bodmer appears to have changed his opinion quite radically – art need not be limited by correspondence with actual objects, because in addition to actual world, poems can deal also with other possible worlds.

The topic of Bodmer's work is John Milton's Paradise Lost, a poem about the rebellion of Satan against God and of the fall of the first human beings from the grace. A number of French critics had attacked the book, notably because it had tried to overreach the limit of what is humanly imaginable and to describe things no human being could have ever witnessed. A good example is provided by the angels. Critics had complained that these are actually immaterial entities, but Milton describes them as having flesh and blood. When it comes to fallen angels, he even suggests they can feel bodily pain. Bodmer notes that Milton is just following an age-old tradition – even Homeric gods had a body, were bodily exhausted etc. Furthermore, he notes that a poet can refrain from literal imitation, if a powerful allegory demands it.

Even further in his dismissal of the principle of imitation Bodmer goes when he speaks of Milton's use of such entities like Death and Sin. The French critics had complained that these characters felt quite shadowy and that their presence in the poem mad the whole thing look quite improbable. Bodmer notes that a poet need not restrict oneself to mere probabilities, when the whole range of possibilities is available for him – and who can tell what wonders lie in the immaterial world?

Bodmer's aesthetical bent drives him then toward extending the range of what can be recounted in a work of fiction – not just probabilities, but also possibilities. This attack against very restricted theories of imitation is not the only philosophically interesting theme Bodmer considers. For instance, he notes that when Milton describes Satan as having momentary relief from pain, the poet is just telling the truth, since an infinite amount of pain is impossible for a limited entity, which even an angel must be. Or, when critics express puzzlement that Adam could know concepts of negative emotions, when all he had thus far had were positive emotions, Bodmer notes that Adam could well have abstracted the concept of a negative emotion from his experience of positive emotions – it wouldn't have been a distinct concept, but it would still have been a concept. Yet, the main aesthetic innovation of the work is just this attack on imitation as the sole principle of poetry.

Although Bodmer speaks of French critics, another probable target of his attack is Gottschedian school of aesthetics, in which naturalness was seen as the central element of poetry – so central that even operas were thought to be bad poetry, because people singing all the time is just artificial construct. Indeed, Bodmer's work can be seen as an integral part of his conflict with Gottsched, which was an important source of controversy in the 1740s. We shall have occasion to speak about this controversy with the next book, which was written by Johann Jakob Breitinger, an ally of Bodmer.

Baumgarten: Chorographic dissertation, evolving notions of superior and inferior, ascending and descending, which occur in sacred chorography and Uninsignificant philosophical meditations concerning poems (1735)

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, 1714 - 1762

When Wolff left his post in Halle because of the atheism controversy, a philosophical vacuum was all that left. Around the end of 1730s this vacuum was finally filled by a new eminent figure, Alexander Baumgarten. It is two early pieces of Baumgarten I am looking at in this post.

The first of these works, Dissertatio chorographica, Notiones superi et inferi, indeque adscensus et descensus, in chorographiis sacris occurentes, evolvens does not deserve a careful study, because it is mainly of historical worth as Baumgarten's dissertation. It is not so much a philosophical, but a theological study of the presence of notions like superior and inferior or ascend and descend in the Bible. Baumgarten's main point is that while the words have a literal meaning of higher and lower or moving to a higher place and moving to a lower place, the words are also used in a figurative sense: superior is not just physically higher place, but better, just like Heaven is superior to Earth and Earth superior to Hell.

Somewhat more interesting is Baumgarten's work on poetry, Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, especially as Baumgarten was later known as the instigator of aesthetical studies – indeed, the word aesthetics itself is already used in this early work. Baumgarten shows his clear Wolffian heritage especially in his manner of carefully defining all the terms he uses in his discussion. Thus, we hear that oration, for instance, is a series of sounds which are connected with some significance – ”Peter picked a pickled penny” is so an oration, because it consists of certain combinations of sounds that have a meaning. As these combinations or words have representations as their significance, orations reveal certain connections between representations.

In poetry, then, the words signify usually sensuous representations, that is, representations belonging to what in Wolffian psychology is taken as an inferior faculty of representation. Of course, even quite prosaic sentences fall under that description – ”Cat is sitting on a mat” is not a true poem, but it still refers to sensitive representations of things like cat, Poetry is differentiated from such sensitive representations by being more perfect – perfection means here especially that poems reveal more connections between various sensuous representations.

This rather summarised ideal of a poem leads then to various principles of a good poem – these principles or rules then constitute poetics. Poems themselves, like all orations, contain three distinct features: the words themselves as mere sounds, the significance of the words or representations and their connections. Starting with the first feature, the words as mere sounds are important only as producing sensuous pleasure – thus, poems are expected to have pleasing rhythm and soothing melody.

Most of Baumgarten's rules concern representations or their connections. Thus, we hear Baumgarten pronouncing that representations occasioned by poems must be more vivid than other orations. Thus, these representations must feature as many aspects of the topic of the poem as possible. Indeed, the height of poetic perfection is to characterise a complete, living individual in her full personality.

A somewhat striking consequence of the demand of vivacity or clarity of representations occasioned by poetry is that an attempt to go too much into the realm of fantasy leads to less poetic verses – after all, mere imaginations seem less vivid than things that we could actually sense. Mere utopias and impossibilities are not poetic at all, although internal consistency and coherence might help (thus, Tolkien's well structured world might still deserve the name of poetry). Instead of fantasy, the kernel of poetic lies according to Baumgarten in metaphors, which show deep and unnoticable connections between different representations.

So much for Baumgarten's first writings. Next time I'll return to Wolff's opponents.

Attempt at a critical art of poetry (1730)

We have already witnessed an uprising of a Wolffian school, particularly in the guise of two followers of Wolff, Thümmig and Bilfinger, but now a second generation of Wolffians starts to appear on the scene of German philosophy. Johann Christoph Gottsched had already studied Thümmig's summarised rendering of Wolff's ideas and would himself write another text book of philosophy later in 1730s. Yet, his primary achievements on the field of philosophy was the introduction of aesthetical questions to German philosophy in the shape of a widely distributed book, Versuch einer critischen Dichtkunst.

Gottsched (1700-1766)

As the name of the work reveals, its topic is the art of poetry and particularly the possibility of evaluating poetic works through philosophical principles. As we shall see again when considering Gottsched's text book on general philosophy, he was quite fond of beginning with historical discussions and especially with speculations on times before reliable written histories. Thus, he suggests that poetry is the second eldest art, preceded only by music, which also was a natural ingredient in the first works of poetry, which were sang and not read.

At first poems were made quite freely, Gottsched continues, but experience made it clear that even poetry must have some rules – he explicitly mentions Aristotle and Horace as masters in this field. Every art, Gottsched suggests, strives to imitate nature – painting does it with images and music with sounds, but poetry can use full field of all sensations, or at least our mental recollections of such sensations. Just like every other art, poetry must then strive for naturalness, Gottsched concludes.

Mere description of natural entities is still not poetry, according to Gottsched, or at least it occupies only the lowest rung. A slightly more adequate type imitates the speech patterns of certain persons – this is especially true of dramatic works. Yet, the real meat of poetry lies in fables or story telling – a good poem tells of activities of people, either of the common folk, as in comedies, or of the noble and mighty, as in tragedies or in epics, which Gottsched evaluates as the highest form of poetry, recounting an event important to the fate of a whole nation. It is clear without saying that Gottsched insists each story to have a moral – the aim of poetry is to make people better.

Gottsched accepts the Wolffian idea that stories present, as it were, events in other possible worlds and thus might not follow rules of the actual world – a story might have, for instance, talking animals as characters. Still, naturalness is an important standard for good poetry: improbable events usually hinder the enjoyment of a poem, Gottsched says. Of course, what seems probable depends on the level of education. We cannot therefore disparage Greeks for using divinities and other mythical entities as characters, but in the modern world any use of magical effects would seem incredible, Gottsched concludes.

Even if Gottsched strives for naturalism, when it comes to stories, he does not insist on using a natural style in poems. Indeed, he goes even so far as to suggest that too naturalist style might turn into banalities, which are against morality. In fact, poetic style is characterised by certain wittiness, which combines seemingly distant ideas in a manner that is rare in a straightforward historical telling of events: thus, while a historical work describing a battle would just recount all the events, a poem about the same battle might e.g. use some suggestive similes making more philosophical points about the nature of warfare.

A good poet is then one who can discover new and surprising connections between apparently quite disparate topics. Yet, this is still not enough, Gottsched says. An uneducated natural poet does not know about the rules of good poetry and therefore might well fail to have a proper taste and be lured by bad novels. Even if she manages to gain skills required for good poetry, she might still lack the basic ethical education, which is an essential requirement for educational poetry.

Judging just by these general directives, one might concur with Egon Friedell that Gottsched was a bit uptight in his aesthetic views. This impression is amply confirmed by his actual reviews of certain well known poets. Shakespeare's Julius Caesar has some delightful moments, Gottsched admits, but it has one great fault – the events of the play last longer than one day, which makes the whole thing seem quite improbable, as what audience sees happens only within few hours (I believe Gottsched is just one of those persons with no ability for suspension of disbelief). And Molière is also witty author, but he sometimes uses characters reminiscent of commedia dell'arte and especially that awfully unbelievable magical trickster, the Harlequin. Besides, many of his plays fail to have a proper moral.

But truly vehement criticism Gottsched lays upon opera, which he calls the most absurd invention of human understanding. This form of art Gottsched considers to follow the sad tendency of modern forms of poetry that they let the music control the substance of the poem too much. Indeed, even the very notion of opera shows its absurdity, because the idea of people singing all the time is just too incredible to believe. True, the music can be divine, but the stories used are from the worst kinds of books, featuring all sorts of unlikely events, magic and wondrous things, making it all seem like a tale out of another planet. But what is definitely worst is the complete absence of morals that operas appear to endorse. As a life-long fan of Wagner I cannot but wonder what Gottsched would have had to say about the overtly mythological story of Nibelungen.

GOTTSCHED: Dragons? No way!

It is not that Gottsched sees no justification for the existence of opera – it can serve as an amusement of princes and nobles, serving to ease their life of constant toil over state welfare. Even here Gottsched recommends replacing opera with ballet, which at least reveals the gentle grace of human anatomy. After all these remarks, one cannot fail to see the irony that a person attempting to find universal rules of good poetry can epitomise so well the essential relativism of aesthetic judgements.

So much for Gottsched's aesthetics, next I shall return to Wolff with yet another part of his Latin works.

Reasonable thoughts and judgements on eloquence: Of influence and use of imagination for improvement of taste or detailed study of all sorts of writings (1727)

We have finally reached a time, when Wolffians are not just content to explicate what their master said and defend his views from attacks, but also attempt to develop his ideas to their own direction. It was aesthetics, a matter that Wolff himself had left almost completely unnoticed, which was the first new field to be tackled by German philosophers.

Johann Jakob Bodmer's appreciation of Wolff is evident even from the name of his planned book series on poetry, Vernünfftige Gedancken und Urtheile von den Beredsamkeit. The series was meant to study the topic from various angles, and while the first book, Von dem Einfluss und Gebrauche der Einbildungs-Krafft; Zur Ausbesserung des Geschmackes: Oder Genaue Untersuchung Aller Arten Bescreihbungen, concentrated on imagination, the later books were meant to consider e.g. wit, taste and sublime. As far as I know, the first book of the projected series was also the only one ever written.

Bodmer in his old age

The Wolffian leanings of Bodmer are especially revealed by his attempt to situate aesthetics within the context of Wolffian cosmotheology. World was meant by God as something to be studied by rational entities, that is, human beings were meant to investigate the works of nature and thus see the glory of its Creator. The first means by which humans get in contact with world are senses, but with these we can merely come to know what is directly before us.

What is at least required for a more complex knowledge is the capacity of imagination, which at that time meant not just a capacity for creativity, but referred to all mental activities in which the object is not necessarily present to our senses – the object may then well be something that has existed and that we are only recollecting. Indeed, it is not complete fictions imagination should try to convey, but real things that do not happen to be present to our senses at the moment.

Art, for Bodmer, is then a matter of imitation – rather conservative view from modern perspective. Among the different types of artists, poet then ranks higher in Bodmer's view than painter or sculptor. While fine arts in general are based on visual sensations, to which in sculpture tactile sensations are added, poetic descriptions can use the whole range of sensations and emotions to convey the likeness of an object. Poet should even be master of all arts and skills, knowing everything from anything, Bodmer concludes.

Bodmer's criterion for good art and especially good poetry is then its capacity to evoke realistic ideas of things it describes. The majority of the book presents then examples of poetry, evaluated with this criterion. It seems clear that Bodmer is clearly wanting in decent German poetic works: when one has to elevate Brockes, rather repetitive writer of poems evoking teleological reasoning over and over again, as an example of what Germans can do at their best. Bodmer himself has to confess that while German language has evocative vocabulary for describing nature, in affairs of culture one must turn to Latin, Italian and French poets - especially Pierre Corneille appears to have been a favourite of Bodmer's.

While then especially many of the German works quoted by Bodmer feel rather artificial, Bodmer's own evaluations seem also rather misplaced. We might think it rather trite, if a writer compares lips of a woman to Red Sea, but it feels somewhat strange to condemn the lines containing this comparison, because Red Sea isn't actually red at all. Yet, it falls perfectly in line with Bodmer's naturalistic ideal of poetry. Thus, he is often disparaging unnecessary use of wit and prefers writings that reveal actual experience of things described. In case of human emotions, he praises writers who have clearly, for instance, suffered the sorrow of a lost wife.

Red Sea, not that red actually

When giving guide lines for poems describing human behaviour, Bodmer also touches on some quaint philosophical notions. Physiognomy or the idea of the character of a person showing through one's appearance is familiaralready from Wolff's writings and Bodmer himself mentions Wolff as a great source for future poets for finding good descriptions of the external effects of human emotions. Another rather old-fashioned idea is the notion of national characteristics determined partly by natural environment, partly by mores and customs of the nation – this is probably something that we will see in more detail with later German philosophers.

So much for Bodmerian aesthetics for now, next it is finally time to begin Wolff's Latin works.

Reasonable thoughts on the use of parts in humans, animals and plants (1725) and Singular phenomenon of fruit-bearing apple recalled all the way from blossoming to physical reasons (1727)

Wolff's physical writings continue: a book on general physical processes and another book on the purposes of physical processes are followed by a book concentrating specifically on biological questions, Vernünfftige Gedancken von dem Gebrauche der Theile in Menschen, Thieren und Pflanzen.

As we have seen earlier, biology and especially botanic was a topic Wolff himself had empirically investigated. It is then no wonder that the book feels quite professional and up-to-date, even if Wolff cannot yet know e.g. how leaves actually nourish plant in their interaction with carbon dioxide: it is enough that he can describe leaves and their parts and understands that they have something to with the nourishment of plants. Wolff goes carefully through all parts of human body, beginning from different types of fibers – the smallest elements of living matter known at that time – and all organs made out of these elements, and if necessary, he compares parts of human body with parts of other animals. After humans and animals, similar treatment waits plants.

What is somewhat striking is Wolff's open attitude towards even the most taboo questions of human bodies, particularly sexuality. Description of sexual organs was frowned upon, because reading about genitalia was thought to incite people to perversities. Wolff, on the other hand, thinks that information about sexuality will help a person to fulfill sexual needs in a moral manner: you cannot do something properly, if you don't know the reasons for it. Interestingly, Wolff is aware of the role of clitoris in female sexuality and thinks it has been created for awakening in women the want of intercourse - a necessary precondition of having children. Wolff also suggests that sexual pleasure is especially meant to encourage women to want sexual intercourse: otherwise they might refrain from it, because they feared the burden of child birth.

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As it should be evident, Wolff is not satisfied with mere description of living beings, but is also concerned to find the reason why God created them in the first place. The answer is actually familiar already from Wolff's teleology: humans and other rational entities exist in order to witness the glory of creation, and other things, including living entities, are meant to serve rational beings and their needs.

Wolff adds to this general description of the purpose of animals and plants two interesting details. Firstly, while Wolff's official teleological account of the world is an example of what later was called external teleology (things have a purpose beyond themselves), he also notes that animal and plant species could also be regarded as having an internal purpose that does not require reference to things beyond that species. Wolff suggests that this internal purpose would be propagation of species: animals and plants exist to produce other plants and animals of the same type. Thus, from the viewpoint of a certain plant, it is contingent that we use its flowers for medicinal purposes, but on the other hand, it is relevant that the flower produces seeds.

Secondly, Wolff also adds an aesthetic layer to his teleology. That is, he suggests that God does not just create purposive animals and plants, but that God's creations are also beautiful or pleasing to senses. Wolff especially emphasizes the symmetricity of animals as an evidence of their beauty: it just looks better if I have two ears equidistant from the center of the face and not, for instance, one on left hand and other on stomach.

Philosophically most interesting part of Wolff's biology are the little details that shed some more light on the question of the interaction of soul and body. Wolff refrains from the central question, whether and how soul and body interact, on the pretext that this is more of a metaphysical than biological problem. Yet, he points out that the problem concerns actually the interaction between the soul and the brain, which then controls the rest of the body. The exact details of this control are still not known to Wolff. Wolff is aware of nerves, but he doesn't really know how they work, so he must rely on Cartesian idea that there are some mysterious animal spirits that help nerves turn volitional movements of brain into movements of muscles, although instead of spirits, Wolff prefers the more material concept of nerve juice.

Before ending this post, I shall just quickly note that Wolff was actually more involved with biological studies at this time, because in a few years he published an inaugural dissertation celebrating his new post at the university of Marburg, Phaenomenon singulare de malo pomifera absque floribus ad rationes physicas revocatum, which is based on the botanical research of Wolff and his follower Thümmig.

So much for Wolff's biology. In next post, I shall investigate a Wolffian we have already met a number of times, tackling now metaphysics.

Christian Wolff: Elements of all mathematical sciences - Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?

The issue of my final posting on Wolff's Anfangs-Gründe is not mathematical, but aesthetical. Quite early in a chapter dealing with architecture or art of construction, a little bit after defining what a building is, Wolff tells us how to understand beauty: ”beauty is the perfection or a necessary appearance of it, in so far as both the one and the other are perceived, and generates in us a liking”.

In simplistic terms, we can discern in the various philosophical theories of beauty two distinct classes: one could say, firstly, that beauty is an objective characteristic of things – i.e. that beautiful objects would be beautiful, no matter who perceived them – and secondly, that beauty is a subjective characteristic dependent ont the observer of the so-called beautiful thing. The objective interpretation of beauty had for a long time been the philosophical norm, but at least from Kant's Critique of judgement onwards the subjective interpretation has probably been more influential.

(Coincidentally, when I was writing these words, the major Finnish newspaper published a news that neuropsychologists had found out what part of the brain produced an experience of beauty. An overenthusiastic science reporter declared that this would finally solve the question whether beauty was truly in the eye of the beholder. Well, that's it then: close down all the philosophy departments and let the neuroscientists deal with the difficult questions.)

Now, Wolff's definition of beauty appears to fall mostly to the objective side of the equation. True, there are some elements in the definition requiring the interaction of the objects with a subject in order to make the notion of beauty meaningful. Thus, beauty can be also an apperance of perfection and at least requires that someone observes this perfection, that is, it is ridiculuous to call something unobservable beautiful.

Despite this connection to the observation, beauty is for Wolff primarily defined through perfection of things, and even the appearance of perfection or the liking in the observer is necessarily caused by the beautiful thing. Furthermore, Wolff defines perfection in teleological terms as usefulness to someone: beautiful thing is then something that we like, because it seems to fulfill our needs and also does so.



One could easily raise some serious doubts towards Wolff's definition. For instance, how would Wolff explain cases where people have different opinions on what is beautiful? Still, Wolff's definition has some merits especially in case of architecture. For instance, consider some of the houses designed by Gaudi. I have never been inside such a house, but for the sake of an argument, let's assume that they are not very comfortable, and indeed, fail to satisfy even the lowest living requirements. Then we might justifiably deny that the houses by Gaudi were truly beautiful. In fact, they would scarcely be houses at all. In other words, to be beautiful as a house, a building must first satisfy the purpose of accomodating people.



Does this mean then that we could not say that a Gaudi house is beautiful? Not at all, it would just not be beautiful as a house. Yet, it might perfectly satisfy some other purpose, such a being a mock-house – and indeed, what else would it be, but a mock house, that is, a building designed to fool the observer to think it is a house. Thus, it would be a truly beautiful mock house.



With these thoughts I end the consideration of Wolff's Anfangs-Gründe. Next time, I will be studying a philosophically more rewarding work, when I embarge on the first reasonable thoughts of Wolff.