Ars analogi rationis new Relations between Philosophical Anthropology and Aesthetics

* Paper read at the "XIIIth International Congress of Aesthetics "Aesthetics in Practice"", Lahti, Finland, August 1-5, 1995. Quotations are made by abbreviation that can be expanded in bibliography.

1 I am thinking, for example, of Shaftesbury’s "Virtuoso" or of Baumgarten "aestheticus felix"; on the former see De Caro 1995, on the latter Piselli 1991.

2 Wolff 1724, Ad p. 374. p. 117; Wolff 1732, p. 506; Wolff 1734, p. 765. See also Wolff 1720, p. 374-377 and p.872; Wolff 1724, Ad p. 872. p. 326.

3 Whereas reason, which is able to connect truth, is peculiar to human being; see Wolff 1720, p. 368.

4 Wolff says that "analogum rationis" derives from the Scholastic philosophy; Wolff 1724, Ad p. 374. p. 117.

5 So the entry in Goclenio 1613, where it means the knowledge of details typical of animals.

6 In the original: "le tracce aggregate consentono una previsione […] che, pur essendo di origine empirica, assicura un’anticipazione che mima l’a priori" Ferraris 1994a, p. 12.

7 In the original: "dall’analogo alla ragione non si arriva per progressione, ma per iterazione (la ragione non sarebbe che l’iterazione dell’analogo, cosí come l’analogo non è che l’iterazione-idealizzazione della sensazione). […] Come mediazione tra sensibile e intelligibile, l’immaginazione è allora la sede dell’analogo, in base al principio per cui la traccia (sensibile), nel suo conservarsi nella memoria, diviene ideo facto intellegibile". The passage goes on as follow: "The trace persists as a merely passive function: nevertheless by this way it prepares itself for active functions: idealization, association of ideas (passive function but already idealized), expectations of similar cases (which make active the association of ideas)"; in the original: "La traccia permane, come funzione puramente passiva: per questa via, nondimeno, si predispone a funzioni attive: idealizzazione, associazione di idee (funzione passiva ma già idealizzata), attesa di casi simili (che rende attiva l’associazione di idee)." Ferraris 1994a, p. 12.

8 Piselli 1991, p. 129.

9 Baumgarten 1735, p. XCII.

10 See Baumgarten 1750, pp. 610-612.

11 However fancy has already quite an active character, since it can draw from the darkness what, once sensitively present, had fallen into the "fundus animae"; see Baumgarten 1750, pp. 557, 559. It is interesting to notice that in the edition I (1739) of Metaphysica the "facultas fingendi" was discussed in the long section dealing with "phantasia".

12 The "facultas fingendi" is so called in: Baumgarten 1750, p. 589.

13 Baumgarten 1750-58, p.1.

14 Herder 1769, IV, 4.

15 Sulzer, 1771-74, I, 47 b.

16 Kant, 1789, p. 11 and Kant 1790.

17 Kant 1781, p.1 footnote; Kant 1800, Einl., V; see Amoroso 1996, 28-37.

18 Kant 1798, Vorrede.

19 I refer to the question of the "Deduktion der reinen Kategorien" (especially p. 24, on which see Ferraris 1995b), and of the "Schematismus der reinen Verstandbegriffe" in Kant 1787 and 1781.

20 That, according to Kant, is a "Kritik des Geschmacks"; see Kant 1781, p. 1 footnote.

21 See Kobau 1993.

22 The debate on aesthetic historiography and on the question of modernity or ancientness of aesthetics is still alive in Italy; here I am just referring the studies quoted in the following bibliography: Amoroso 1991, Antico e moderno 1989, D’Angelo 1990, De Caro 1994a, Garroni 1986, 1989, 1992, Modica 1987, Rossi 1990, Russo 1988, 1993a, 1993b.