Kierkegaard’s Сoncept of the Аesthetics and Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

Abstract

The paper discusses the problem of relation of Kierkegaard’s aesthetic conception to the original project of aesthetics of Baumgarten. I demonstrate that Kierkegaard’s aesthetic conception wasn’t inspired by Baumgarten. On the one hand, Kierkegaard wasn’t acquainted with Baumgarten’s texts and he could meet only later interpretations of Baumgarten’s aesthetics as a beautiful science or philosophy of art, if at all; on the other, the conception of aesthetic stage of human existence has nothing to do with epistemic context of Baumgarten’s science of sensitive knowledge. Kierkegaard understands aesthetic as sensuous in the meaning of sensuous immediacy that is here a basis of pleasure, not through the satisfaction of carnal desires, but related to the ability to understand beauty and art. So Kierkegaard’s interpretation of aesthetic as sensuous doesn’t originate from Baumgarten’s aesthetics, but, in a sense, leads to it. The reason for this is that Baumgarten’s project of aesthetics not only gave a stimulus for all later philosophical processes called “aesthetics” but also was – though neglected – their invisible distant background. In this perspective, Kierkegaard’s aesthetic conception is interesting as a random unpredictable hint at Baumgarten’s authentic aesthetics already in the 19^thcentury.