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Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution

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The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory

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Abstract

In the middle of the eighteenth century, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (re-)introduced the concept of aesthetics into the philosophical discipline. Based on Baumgarten’s concept of aesthetics, inter alia, Immanuel Kant as well as Johann Gottfried von Herder continued to work on the further development of this field. Both reformulated Baumgarten’s relation between aesthetics and logic. According to Kant, the combination of logic and transcendental aesthetics makes a theory of human experience possible. For Herder, aesthetics is neither concept nor judgment of taste. Rather, the understanding of aesthetics serves to transform philosophy into anthropology. Based on Baumgarten’s work on aesthetics and Kant’s partition between transcendental and anthropological aspects of human sensibility, this chapter argues that Herder’s notion of aesthetic anthropology, relating feeling and history, can be seen as an interesting point combining aesthetics, art(work) and social theory.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Bildung is the German concept of education and human development, based on the continental-European idea of enlightenment and its notion of emancipation that is to be realized by emphasizing maturity, reflexivity and social judgment, leading to an aesthetic and political consciousness, which is essential toward developing competencies of action.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Danish School of Education/Copenhagen, Faculty of Arts, Aarhus University, Denmark

    Dirk Michel-Schertges

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  1. Dirk Michel-Schertges
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Editors and Affiliations

  1. Political Science, William Paterson University, Wayne, New Jersey, USA

    Michael J. Thompson

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Michel-Schertges, D. (2017). Aesthetics as the Precondition for Revolution. In: Thompson, M. (eds) The Palgrave Handbook of Critical Theory. Political Philosophy and Public Purpose. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-55801-5_16

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