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Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
1911 Encyclopedia Britannica
or ALEXANDER GOTTLIEB BAUMGARTEN (1714-1762), German philosopher, born at Berlin. He studied at Halle, and became professor of philosophy at Halle and at Frankfort on the Oder, where he died in 1762. He was a disciple of Leibnitz and Wolff, and was particularly distinguished as having been the first to establish the Theory of the Beautiful as an independent science. Baumgarten did good service in severing aesthetics from the other philosophic disciplines, and in marking out a definite object for its researches. The very name ( Aesthetics ), which Baumgarten was the first to use, indicates the imperfect and partial nature of his analysis, pointing as it does to an element so variable as feeling or sensation as the ultimate ground of judgment in questions pertaining to beauty. It is important to notice that Baumgarten's first work preceded those of Burke, Diderot, and P. Andre, and that Kant had a great admiration for him. The principal works of Baumgarten are the following: Disputationes de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (1735); Aesthetica; Metaphysica (173 9; 7th ed. 1779); Ethica philosophica (1751, 2nd ed. 1763); Initia philosophiae practicae primae (1760). After his death, his pupils published a Philosophic Generalis (1770) and a Jus Naturae (1765), which he had left in manuscript.
See Meier, Baumgarten's Leben (1763); Abbt, Baumgarten's Leben and Charakter (1765); H. G. Meyer, Leibnitz and Baumgarten (1874); J. Schmidt, Leibnitz and Baumgarten (Halle, 1875); and article Aesthetics.
His brother, Siegmund Jacob Baumgarten (1706-1 7 57), was professor of theology at Halle, and applied the methods of Wolff to theology. His chief pupil, Johann Salomo Semler, is sometimes called the father of German rationalism. Baumgarten, though he did not renounce the Pietistic doctrine, began the process which Semler completed. His works include Evangelische Glaubenslehre (1759); Auszug der Kirchengeschichte (1743-1762); Primae lineae breviarii antiquitatum Christianarum (1747); Geschichte der Religionsparteien (1760); Nachricht von merkwiirdigen Biichern (1752-1757); Nachrichten von einer hallischen Bibliothek (1748-1751).
See life by Semler (Halle, 1758).
These files are public domain.
Chisholm, Hugh, General Editor. Entry for 'Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten'. 1911 Encyclopedia Britanica. https://www.studylight.org/encyclopedias/eng/bri/a/alexander-gottlieb-baumgarten.html. 1910.
