Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (July 17, 1714 – May 26, 1762) was a German philosopher. He was a follower of Leibniz and Christian Wolff, and gave the term aesthetics its modern meaning.
Life
Baumgarten was born in Berlin in 1714, ten years before Kant and two years before Leibniz's death. He was educated at an orphanage at Halle, which had been founded and run by August Hermann Francke and which was wholeheartedly devoted to the Pietist movement and had become one of its central institutions. His dissertation at Halle, Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, focused on poetry, foreshadowing the philosophical discipline to which his name is most often connected. After spending another two years in Halle teaching (during which he published his Metaphysica, which Kant used as a textbook in his lectures), he took a post as a professor at Frankfurt on the Oder. While there, he continued writing, producing the first edition of what may be his most important work, the Aesthetica in 1750. He died at Frankurt on the Oder in 1762.
Philosophy
By Trying to develop an idea of good and bad perceptions, he also in turn generated philosophical debate around this new meaning of aesthetics, without it, there would be no basis for aesthetic debate as there would be no basis for comparison or reason from which one could develop an objective argument.
References and Further Reading
Works by Baumgarten
- Aschenbrenner, Karl and Holther, W. B. (trans.). (1954) Reflections on Poetry. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press.
Recommended Secondary Literature
- Beck, Lewis White. (1969, reprinted 1996) Early German Philosophy: Kant and his Predecessors. Bristol: Thoemmes Press. ISBN 1855064480
- Townsend, Dabney (1998). Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb. In E. Craig (Ed.), Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy. London: Routledge. Retrieved March 27, 2007, from http://www.rep.routledge.com/article/M013.
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