IESTHE'TICS. 2Esthetik is the designa tion given by German writers to a branch of philosophical inquiry, the object of which is 11 philosophical theory of the beautiful, or, more definitely expressed, a philosophy of poetry and the fine arts, and which has by them been raised to the rank of a separate science. The word _sthctik is derived from the Greek (that which concerns feeling or perception), and was first used as a scientific term by Alexander Baumgarten, a disciple of Christian Wolf, who in his ZEsthetiea (Frank fort, 1750-58), considered beauty as a given property of objects, of which we are becoming sensible.. 1Vinckelmann, without embodying his views in a regular system, developed them chiefly in reviewing and appreciating the re mains of antient sculpture. Kant denied the possibility bf a strict science of beauty, inas much as beauty, according to him, is not a property of objects, but has its origin in the disposition of our mental faculties. Beauty, according to Schelling, is that manifestation cf the principle of art where the infinite appears contained in, or represented by, the finite, or where, in the very object, the dif ference between the conscious and the un conscious (mind and nature) is annulled.
Most German writers who have published systematic treatises on aesthetics, have, with greater or less independence, followed the principles laid down by Baumgarten, Kant, or &belling. They commonly divide) their systems into a general part., or a discussion of the essence of beauty and art, and a spe cial one, or an inquiry into the peculiar cha racter and predominant principles of the several branches of poetry on the one hand, and the fine arts (chiefly sculpture, architec ture, painting, and music) on the other.
In England it is not customary to write formally on /Esthetics as a science ; but the principle of beauty in art has been discussed by Alison, Payne Knight, Burke, Price, Lau der, Reynolds, Bell, Dugald Stewart, Jeffrey, Hay, Ruskin, Fergusson, and others —who have, however, failed to arrive at anything conclusive and generally accepted; for there are few subjects on which opinions are more discordant than on this.