Barnouw - The Beginnings of Aesthetics and the Leibnizian Conception of Sensation - Read

8/9/2019 Barnouw - The Beginnings of Aesthetics and the Leibnizian Conception of Sensation - Read

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I The Leibnizian conception of sensationJEFFREY BARNOUW work of a proponent of that s pirit, a Boileau or Pascal.' Indeed, far

from being a reaction against a for m of scientism, these proto -aesthetic tendencies often extended the att itud e of scienti fic inquiry

The beginnings of into confused areas of experience. And even where it belongedaesthetics and the more to belles-lettres, thi s movement s eems to have exerted a signif-icant, neglected influence on Leibniz's philosophical thinking, even

Leibnizian conception *fore th e disparate strands were overtly brough t together by

of sensation ct these tendencies can be recognized as aesthetic inint toward an analysis of the kinds of experience thato be considered aesthetic, though it is significant that

The term aestheticsu was coined by A. G. Baumgarten in the beau ty of na ture or of a rt was not a primary con-designate a projected discipline which was to do for sensate, strain of thou ght. The main focus was experience and

fused, knowledge what logic did for rational, or demonstr ati gment of a sort which eluded formulation n ot only in rules but inknowledge. When he followed through wit h the first volu me of guage altogether and which dealt above all with the nuancesA e s t h e t i c in 1750, e in effect consolidated a theory which Leib d thus the substance of social inter action. In this respect thehad adumbrated in various dispersed passages. This theory w ings of Graciiin, MQC, Bouhours, and oth ers studied in th e first

based in a view of sensa tion as a confused mode of representati of this essay continue a vein of the Italian Renaissance repreor krpwledge in the sense that its apparently immediate qualiti d, above all, by CastiglioneJs Cour t i e r.were actually constitu ted by the summa tion of impressions whic e influence of the aesthetic dimension of Leibnizian thinlungtaken singly, would be beneath the threshold of awareness. Leib ed again after its largely unsuccessful consolidation as a philo-

thereby found a means of b ringing ou t the virtues of ways of kno cal hscip line by Baumgarten, nonetheless attained a few sig-ing grounded in confused ideas or representations, as opposed to th ant high points associated with the term aesthetic, notably theclear and distinct representations th at were fundamental to the eption of a esthet ic educat ion developed by Friedrich Schillertesian concep tion of necessary knowledge. Along with other adva ose fundamental approach is far more Leibnizian than Kantian)tages of such con-fusion Leibniz revealed the role played by u awing on Schiller, Charle s S. Peirce's lat e reconstruction oflirninal or marginal awareness (registered in consciousness at m etics as the foundational normative science (underlying theas feeling) in knowledge and action generally. Understa ndng th two, ethics and logic), concerned essentially with analyzing and

insights will be the taslc of the final section of this essay.ng habit s of feeling.2 The genesis of th is inte rmi tten t tradition

Baumgarten's new discipline of aesthet ics also continued tend aesthetics is our focus here.cies of seventeenth-century thought in which, under headings suas g u s t o , i n g e n i o , and a g u d e z a , or finesse, d e l i c a t e s s e , and je ntroductory section on sentiment in the works of Pascal and the chevalierquoi, sub tle sensitive modes of perceptio n and judgment wer in Jeffrey Barnouw, Feeling in Enlightenment Aesthetics, Studies in

eated that had been ignored or excluded by the new insistenc th-Century Culture (East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues Press, I g88 , ol. I 842, which may be considered a premature sequel to the present essay.

reasoning grounded in clear and distinct ideas, which was co ey Barnouw, 'Aest hetic ' for Schiller and Peirce: A Neglected Origin oft the poetics of classicism and th e methodology of rationa lism. atism, Iournal o the History 4 Ideas 49, no. (Oct. 1988), 607-32, repr. in

spirit of the New Science what Pascal called the intelligen on the History of Aesthetics ed. Peter Kivy Library of the Hi story of Ideasester: University of Rochester Press, 19 92) ~ 77-402; idem, Aesthetics as

geometryJt called forth this countermovement to complement ve Science in Peirce: The Deliberat e Formation of Habits of Feeling, paperto compensate for its restrictive focus, sometimes even w i t h the Charles Sanders Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress in

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54 JEFFREY B A R N O U W The Leibnizian conception of sensation

GUSTO, INGENIO, AND AGUDEZA

IN GRACIAN

The concept of p s t o , which had come to mean taste in matters ofartistic judgment in the Italian Renai~sance,~ cquired a new senseand prominence through the wri tings of the Spanish Jesuit BaltasarGraciin in the 1640s~ where gusto was often closer in meaning to

tact than taste (i.e., an intuitiv e capacity to understand a situa-tion and act spontaneously, discreetly, and appropriately). As such,gusto is the key to an a rt of wor ldly wisdom or prudence.4 Gusto forGraciHn is a discriminative capacity (like discrecion) reaffirming thecommon root mean ing of Latin gustare and German kosten, to try

or test. 5 The background of the word taste (fro m Middle Englishtasten, to touch, test, taste ; and Old French taster, to feel, try,taste ; with a first meaning: to become acquainted with by experi-ence or to try or test by or as by the touch ) shows a similar rangeand suggests an etymologica l link to th e Latin root of tact ( tan -gere, to touch ; I : sensitive mental or aesthetic pe r~e pti on ).~ nexperimental as well as experiential aspect is common to theseterms, an element of cur iosity as in the German tasten.p Gusto is a subtle mode of judgment tha t does not make use offixed general concepts and is attuned to the individual and the

I

1- unique. GraciHn treats gusto as roughly equivalent to genio and- iuicio (judgment), all of these term s designatin g a complement of

hgenio. This distinction does not imply an oppositio n, a s Pascal'sCambridge, Mass., Sept. 1989, w hc h was developed into 'Th e Place of Peirce's'Esthet ics' in His ~ h ~ u g h t nd in the Tradition of Aesthetics, in Peirce and Value between esprit de gkomhtrie and esprit de finesse does, so much as

the interdependence of two principal co mponent s of understand ingroads 6 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins, k'ftendimien to/: he art of pruden ce, where judgment and genjo are

3 Robert Klein, Judgment and Taste in CinquecenMeaning: Essays on the Renaissance and ModernArt crucial, and the art of acuity (agudeza) entered in ingenjo.7Wieseltier (New Yo&: Viking, rg 7g) , pp. 161-9, und ert Gracih's compendium of mannerist style conceptismo], rte emation of guidizio into gusto or stages of contact, and of s m ~ a n hgeni0 (1642)~ xpanded as Agudeza y arte e jngenio (16~81, astion, through which gusto gradually replaced guidizio. Another been treated almos t exclusiv ely as concerned wit. literar y conceits,discretio, which nearly took the place eventually claimed by gusto. What he con-cludes from this is, however, not clear. More relevant to our topi but it has to do as Well with promptitude and penetration in speechmers, The Iudgment of Sense: Renaissance Natural ism and the R and action.' What is essential is being ready for any opportun ity(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Summers focuseon relations wh ch are aesthetic in that they are determ ined by sense , by the concept of tast e was not an aesthetic category. But this ignores the dram atic flux ofjudgment of sense (p. 8). He recognizes that a long tradition of speculation con- t rms for mental functions in this period and the wide range of reference of con-cerning prerational sensate judgment continued through the Renaissance to concepts originating in the theory of conduct. Friedrich Schummer, Die Ent-

tribute to modem aesthetics when it was finally defined as such y wicklung des Geschmacksbegriff s n der Philosophie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,BaumgartenU p. 22), and he discusses Leibniz and Baumgarten b Archiv fur Begn'ffsgeschichte (195 ): 120-41.to confused ideas (pp. 82-97). Hellmut Jansen, Die Grund begriffe des Baltasar Gracirin (Gen eva: Droz, 19581,~1 orbculo manua l y ar te d e p ru d e~~c ia1647)~ ran P 66; and Friedrich Kluge, E ymologis ches Wd Rerbuch der deu schen Sprache

including T h e A r t o f Wo r ld l y Wi s d o m ,tr. Jos eph JacDe Gr u~te r, 957). P. 396: erproben, priifend beschauen, versuchen,lt and

culled aphorisms from his earlier works, El hkroe (1637) nd El then aussuchen/wiNen.Karl Borinski, Baltasar Glacibn un d die Hoflitteratur in D Webster's N ew Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: G and C Memam,Niemeyer, 1a94), PP. 39-52, on Graciin's idea of gusto. 1973)) PP. 1193 and 1186.cnce to Graciin, he is following writers on taste in the late se sen 1 Die Grundbegriffe,PP. 27-37, 4 4 Jansen sees genio as the basis or pre-eighteenth century, who cite Gracian as originator. While he to disposition, ingenio as what one can make of it, but he also shows &t both areFriedrich Schummer remarks that scholars of that age were aware -turd d t s and perfectible by art In practice the difference seems to be tha tauthors such as Petronius, Cicero, and Quintillian had used the between settled and spontaneous behavior.gustare and sapor, sapere (cf. English savor, savvy, sapi 1d-1 PP 9, 41- See also Emst Robert Curtius, European fiterature and t6e LatinSion to mean assessment and appreciation. He ar Middle Ages (Ne w York: Harper and ROW, 19631, pp. 294-jo1. A c u m e n was linked

innovative insofar as it obscured this classical aesthetic se to ~ m d e n t i an Cicero (p. 294), but G ra ci h supplemented classical rhetoric with aseventeenth-century of taste as an aesthetic concept discipline regarding the faculty of acuteness p. 298). The Fr ench translationciin and indeed had to overcome his mfluence, while revivi ofAgudeza Y m e e i ng en ioby Michele Gendreau-Mass alom and P ierre Laurens,ing of the classical Latin terms. He bases this argument on p inte ou 1'al-t d u gknie (Paris: UNESCO 98 3 , renders aqudezo s la pointe,


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or occasion. Circumstances provide matter and motive energy toingenio. Contingencies sollicit promptitude. g Conversely, the po-etic heights of subtlety and vivacity require special circumstances

a rare contingency o justlfy and sustain them, withou t whichagudezas would be (as he repeatedly says) mere rhe torical devices.1°Gusto too applies to aesthetic as well as practical matters. Its rangeis as broad as life, and in every area its role has a cognitive aspect.ll

Graciin writes of objective subtleties, and acuteness is also notsimply a quality of th e knowing subject. Matter is the foundationof hscours e; i t gives rise to subtlety. The objective agudezas arecontained wi th n the objects themselves. The concepto is notmerely a verbal conceit, but is also not a rational concept. The wiseman forms concep tos of all things; he digs, wit h differentiation[distincibn], where he finds a solid basis and substance, and thd k sthere might be more to it than he thinks. l2

As a power of ingenio, ngudeza shows itself i n the recognition ofcorrespondences between things, of the sort t hat lead to the forma-

tion not of concepts but of metaphors. The simila rities and dif-ferences in question do not stand out as distinguishing marks, yet

though its introduction opens by remarking that it means, not witticism, pointed'esprit', ni m2me l'esprit de pointe, que la pointe de l'esprit, ce qu'il y a en lui deplus acere, et pknktrant: angle aigu de l'intellgence (p. 17). Vico too plays thisangle, identifying ingen ium as acute and relating it to a non-Cartesian physics of points T h eAutobiographyo Gimba t t i s ta Vico ,tr. Max H. Fisch and ThomasG. Bergin [It haca: Great Seal Books, 19631, pp. 148-52, and cf. 122-3; De nostritemporis studionun ra tione,ch. 4), he acut e played off against Cartes ian linearity.The relation of Vico to Gracisn as well as to Tesauro and Pellegrini might be worthinvestigating.Graciin, Agudeza, chs. 7, 38, 45; La pointe, pp. 30, 83, 269, 300-1.

lo See La pointe, pp. 107, I I 1-2, 121-2, I 58, 219, 231, 227. He sometimes r efers tosuch occasions or the verbal responses to them as sublime. His mannerist or

conceptist poetics is usually, and understandably, related to English theories ometaphysical wit, but Agudeza,with its emphasis on the poetic value of religiousideas and the feelings they engender, also anticipates the poetics of John Dennis.See Jcffrey Bamouw, The Morality of the Sublime: To John Dennis, ComparativeLiterature 35 (19 83): 21-42.Emdio Hidalgo-Sema, Das ingeniose D enken bei Baltasar Gracirin(Munich: Fink,1985)~ stablishes the connection of h is idea of gusto to ingenio, agudeza,and hismuch misunderstood wncept i smo, and refutes t he clai m of Borinslu, Schummer,and Hans-Georg Gadamer Wnhrheit und Methode ['Tlibingen: Mohr, 19601,pp. 31-6) tha t gusto had an exclusively moral range of reference for GraciBn.

2 Graciin, Agudeza, chs. z and 62; La poinre, pp. 47 and 392; Ordculo, 3 5 . SeeHidalgo-Sema, Das ingeniose Denken,pp. 98, 131, 91-2; cf. pp. I 13-48, on thecognitive side of conceptismo in Agudeza.

The Leibnizian conception of sensation 57

they can be sensed by the discerning mind. There is a similar con-ception of wit (ingenium), contemporary with Graciin, in Hobbes.In wit, Hobbes writes,

quick ranging of mind . is joined with curiosity of comparing the thingswhich come into the mind, one with another: in which comparison, a mandelighteth himself eit her with finding unexpected simili tude of things, oth-erwise much unlike, in which men place the excellency of fancy, . or elsein discerning suddenly dissimili tude in things that otherwise appear thesame . [which] is commonly termed by th e name of judgment: for, tojudge is not hn g else, but to distinguish or discern: and both fancy andjudgment are commonly comprehendcd under the name of wit, whichseemeth to be tenuity and a ~ l i t y f spirits.13

Judgment is a sudden discerning, construed in analogy to fancy (orwhat will later be wit in a narrow sense) rather than in contrast toit. Moreover, wit is significantly related to curiosity in Hobbes, wholike Gra ci h sees curiosity as the distinguishing trait of humanity.14

For Graciin the cognitive value of th e concepto , of agudeza, and ofthe art of ingenio is also closely linked to th e role of curiosity andnovelty, wonder, and surprise in t he gaining of knowledge. In thededicat ion of El hbroe curiosity is said to be the distinctive trait ofman spur of his ingenio; i n El criticbn it is the mother of gusto.

What was admirable yesterday is contemptible today, not because'it has lost in perfection, but in appreciation, not because it haschanged, but because it has no t. The wise restore civility of taste by&aking new reflections on the old excellences, thus renewing tastealong with wonder. Gus to is identified with o ur appetite for life.15

In another formulation the m other of gusto is not wonder butmultiplicity, which means the human need for variety, since Gra-ciin elucidates this by saying that man is distinguished from beast

by the fact that this gusto leads him not to some particular sphere. a

13.Human Nature, ch. 10, 54, in Hobbes, Body, Man, and Citizen,ed. Richard S.Peters (New York: Collier , 1962). p. 237. This work was writt en ca. 1640 and firstpublishedinr650.

. 14kSee Jeffrey Bamouw, La cur iosite chez Hobbes,'' Bulle tin de la Socidtd frunpisede philosophe 82, no. 2 (Apr. 1988): 41-69; and idem, Hobbes's Psychology of

Thought: Endeavours, Purpose, and Curiosity, History of European Ideas 10, no. 5(19891:519-45-

j 5 l critic61111651-7j, Part I ch. 2 The Great Theater of thc World, and see ch. 3for curiosity as the mother of gusto. Hidalgo-Sema, Das ingeniose Denken,PP 150, 153; cf. PP- 13, 70-1, 97, 139-401 165.

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but to the whole world. In chapter of El criticdn, The GreatTheat er of the World, he varies the topos, best known from Giovan-ni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the ignity of Man, of man'shaving no fixed sphere of life as the other ani mals do,lG linkingboundless appetite to gusto, which thus comes close to the sense ithas since acquired in English. The same chapter relates wonder,curiosity, and knowledge in a way recalling Aristotle ( as we will see):We lack wonder [admiracidn]generally because we lack novelty,

and with it, attention.A n essential link between Gracihnls poetics or art of acuity and

his art of prudenc e or recommendations for social success is theircommon foundati on in a psychology of app etite or interest t hatbrings out the virt ues of difficulty and incomplete satisfac tion. Inboth spheres the qualities he values can be felt but not defined,known in their effects but not their causes, and one should accord-ingly reveal only glimpses of wh at one has t o offer. Artistic or artfulself-expression in poetry, as in society, is partly a matt er of self-

concealment as well as of concealing one's ar t or artifice. Knowledgeand enjoyment tha t cost something are all t he more valued for thatand are greatest when still mixed with curiosity or desire. Theseinsights should guide our control of ot hers but also the manage mentof our own happiness.17

The importa nce of c oncealing one's a rt or artifice in social en-counters was a recurring motif, under the he ading of the newlyminted sprezzatura (nonchalance), n dastiglione's Courtier, whichanticipated Graci5n generally in establishing the analogy betweensocial comportment and artistic expression. In one passage at leastCastiglione also saw the advantage of not comple tely revealing of

partly concealing one's meaning or virt ue or beauty:[I]f the words used by the writer carry with them a certain I will not saydifficulty but veiled subtle ty and so are not as familiar as those commonlyused in speech they give what i s written greater authority and cause the

6 Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr,, eds., TheRenaissance Philosophy o Man (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 19 48 )~ p. 224-5.

7 Agudeza, chs. 7, 39; La pointe, pp. 79-80 , 273. These related themes are insistentin the Oraculo. See §§s, 1 9, 58, 68, 94, 170, 189, zoo, 2 1 2 253, 277, 282, 299; TheArt o Worldly Wisdom , pp, ~ , I I - 1 2 , 4, 40, 55,101-2,11 4, 1 2 0 128,152-3, 167,170, 179. For econ omic metaphors in the psychology, see Werner Krauss, GracidnsLebenslehre (Frankfurt: Klostermann, 19 47 )~ p. I I 3-21.

The Leibnizian conception of sensa tion 9

reader to be more attentive and aware and so reflect more deeply and enjoythe skill and message of th e author; and by judiciously exerting himself alittle he experiences the pleasure that is to be had from accomplishingff icul t tasks. 8

Nonchalance, doing something difficult with apparent ease, uncon-cern, and even disdain (t he original sense of sprezzo , s elucid ated byreference to th e use of imperfec t harmonies in music, whic h keepthe listener in a stat e of expectancy, and to Apelles's point in c riticiz-ing a painter for finishing his work too thoroughly. The analogywith social behavior may verge on fatuousness at times: delicatehands, uncovered at the right time, when there is a need to use andnot just to disp lay them, le ave one wit h a grea t desire to see more ofthem. l9 But Castiglione counsels such tactical reserve in the dis-play of all one's talent s, sin ce disguised self-promotion is crucial tohls view of court life.

The similar advantage of subtlety, not to say dificu lty, in the art ofwriting was perhaps an incidental analogy for Castiglione, but itbecame the domina nt topic of manner ist poetics in Italy in the sameperiod as Gracian's Agudeza. In works such as Matteo Pellegrini,Delle acutezze I 6 39 , and Emanuele Tesauro, I1 cannocchiale aris-telico (1655)~ t was clear tha t t his insight was drawn from Aristo-tlels justification of figura l language, particularly metaphor, i n hisRhetoric. Pellegrini's work, as its subtitle said, was meant to illus-trate the Idea dell'arguta [acute] et ingeniosa elecutione, using the

telescope (i.e., the Rhetoric of the divine Aristotle. It is worthasking in what ways Graciiin was different from Castiglione andfrom Pellegrini and Tesauro.

Graciin is distinguished from Castiglione by the degree to whlch

hc is interested in t he cognitive dimensi on of t he subtl eties of socia linteraction. There is frequent reference in Th e Courtier to instinc-tive judgment, a fine judgment akin to grace, a discernment anddiscretion that cannot be given rules, but Castiglione does not seek

8 Baldesar Castighone, The Book o the Courtier, tr. George Bull (Harmondsworth:Penguin, 19671, p 72. Cas tiglione has Federico say this, but on ly after distinguishmgwriting from speaking (which requires clari ty) and in answer to Count Lodovico daCanossa, who had just said that it s more important to make one's meaning clearin writing than in speaking; because unlike someone listening, the reader is notalways [sic J resent when the author is writing.

9 Ibid., pp. 69, 87; cf. pp. 67-8.


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60 J F F R Y B A R N O U W The Leibnizian conception o sensation 6

to analyze or elucidate such ~apac itie s.~' n another passage antic- following Aristotle's use of the ter m asteia in the Rhetoricipating mannerist poetics he writes: (~I~ro.141ob6). llustrating wit in the process of characterizing it, he

says it is beneficial for conservation (of the individual) and conversa-~h~~ good usage in speech . . s established by men of hscemment whothrough lcamin g and experience have acquired Sound iu ds me nt , wh ich

tion (with others); it provides relaxation for the mind as rest does for

enables them to agree among themselves and consent to accept those words the body; and it fosters sociability. As Lange conveys it, Tesaurofs

which themselves to them, and these they recognize by means ofaccount of how this works seems to m iss th e point of wit. He suggests

a certain instinctive judgement and not by any formula or rule- Do You not that the delight of one who produces an acute remark is expressed by areal ize hat the se figures of speech which give such grace and clarity to what , smile that has an effect on th e heart of the listener, which would

we say are all of grammatical rules but are accepted and established bypass or even short -circuit th e effect of the w itty insight itself. Yetby usage because and this is the only possible reason they are this self-appreciation does serve to show that the free play of associa-

The ref erence to instinctive judgment (th e approval implicit in thetion of ideas and words is not co ns cio us l~ ontrolled by the agent,

pleasure) s not a focus of inquiry for Castiglione, as it will be for who thus can experience wonder or admiration a t th e results. Despite

Gracih, but rather brings questioning to a halt. When kderico suggestions that facetin enables us to learn as well as teach, Tesauro

claims tha t it is sometimes allowable, in the service of one's n ~a s- carries over too l ittle of Aristotlets interest in the cognitive aspects ofwit and metaphor.=

ters, to kill not just one man but t en thousand, and to do many otherthings which on a superficial view would appear evil although they

Graciint more than his Italian counterparts, pursues th e acute and

are not u he is asked to teach us how to distinguish what is really ingenious as traits of mind which correspond to feamresof the

good from what merely appears to be and immediately begs off, for world* He gives greater prominence to learning by experience and

there would be too much to say. But let everything be decided byholds that ta ste or tact is in need of cultivation just as ingenio is; thenurture of each is closely intertwined with that of the other. ~~~t~

your d i~ c r e t ion . ~ ~Tesauro, like Gr ac ih a Jesuit, also focused on acuity (argu teua or must be refined continually and developed into a second nature.

Gracih's logic of subtle ingenious thinking and science of goodacu t eu a claiming that the ingenious could as well be called theacute, but he gave acuity a narrower range of application^ largely taste 24 may thu s be Seen as anticip ating no t only Baumgaten~s

aesthetics but even more Sch illerJs idea of aestheti c education,restricted to literary expression, because he saw it as mode oflanguage use. He distinguished grammatical speech, which works

which was meant to refine the capacity of sen se or feeling Emp f in -

with concepts proper to their objects, from rhetorical, acute, ordung] tha t underpin s Our conviction s as well as our knowledge,

nious speech, which introduces unaccustomed means of significa-ln fo mi ng our range of response in all facets of life.25

tion calling for acute or ingenious interpretation and thus addingpleasure to the process of understanding. The acuity of the u n d er l ~ PA S C A L N D M Ring perceptions does not get t he at tention it did in GraciAn-

Looking for indica tions of the role acuity might play in social life Although th e differences from a scientific or ma themati cal model of

(indications he said he could not find in the Cannocchiale or in nowledge are lef t implicit, GracianJs conception of taste (tact], ub-

Pellegrini's ~ e f l ecutezza , Uaus-Peter Lange discovered a promis- K1aus-Peter Lange, Theoretiker des literarischen Manierismus: Tesauros und pel-ing adaptation of the grammatical/rhetorical distinction in Tesauro's legrim's Lehre VOn der A cute ua oder von der Macht der Sprnche (Munich: ~ a

~ i l ~ ~ ~ f i ~orale. Here the distinction is between serious and humor- 19681. PP- 142-3 , 148. 152-4. Tesauro's idea of unserious spealung anticipatesaspects of Schiller's understanding of play,

ous speech facetia), he la tter being ingenious or acute speech in Graci5n1 El h h e . ch. i l discreto, ch. ; Hidalgo-Serna, Das jngeni se Denken,social context, w b c h Tesauro associates with urbanity and civilit% PP 561 162, and cf. p. 17 0.

See Jeffrey Bamouw, The Moralit y of the Sublime: Kant and Schiuerl.l studies n2 E . ~ - ~bid.. pp. 63-4. 112-3. l Ibid.. p. 80- bid.j P- 131. Romanticism 19 (1980): 497-5 14. esp. pp. 513-14-


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tlety, and acuity is similar to Pascal's roughly contemporan eous ideaof esprit de finesse (th e intelligence of subtlety), correlated withj u g e m e n t and s e n t i m e n t , and contrasted with I'esprit de g d o met r ie .Some few, Pascal says, accustom th emselves to judge instantaneouslyby s e n t i m e n t ( feeling, but perhaps also drawing on a secondarymeaning, opinion ), instead of reasoning step by step according toprinciples, although in fact the espr it , or intellect, reasons in suchjudgment as well, but tacitly, naturally, and witho ut art. In effectthe concept esprit has split in two. Explicating the hstinction be-tween the esprit de finesse and that of geometry, Pascal says tha t justas true eloquence scorns the eloquence founded self-consciously onrules, there is a morality of j u g e m e n t based in feeling which scornsthe morality of i n te l l e ~ t . ~ ~

Finesse, like its variant d d l ica tes se , favored by writers like Saint-Evremond, who associates it with penetration and discernment aswell as with what is curieux and i n g b n i e w , depends on fine orsubtle &scriminations (and correlations) that can be learned but nottaught or systematized.27 L'espr it de finesse may well have beenpersonified for Pascal by his older friend the chevalier de Mert,whose style of thought is epitomized in his differentiation of twodivergent aspects w i t h the neoclassical ideal of ju s te s se whichmoves it (a t least pa rtly) out of the range of rule s or explanations:

The first depends less on esprit and intelligence than on taste and senti-ment; and if esprit does contribute to it (if 1 may say it in this way), it i s anesprit of taste and sent iment: I have no other terms to explain more clearlythis I know not wh at of wisdom and adroitness which always knows what isfitting. The other justesse consists in the true relation which one thingshould have with another.28

6 Blaise Pascal. Pensdes (Paris: Gamier, 1961)) pp. 73-5 (no s. 1-4 in the Brunschvicgordering), Oeuvres complttes ed L Lafuma (I'aris: Seuil, I 9631 p 576 (nos. 12-13in the Lafuma ordering). Pascal's foc us was less political or social conduct thanpractical orientation in ethics and religion. But he sounds like Graciin in no. 6,p. 76: On sr forme l'esprit et le scntime nt par les conversations. Cf. Orhculo.518; Es muy eficaz el trato, - communicanse las c ostumbres y 10s gustos; ptigaseel genio y el ingenio, sin sentir. And Gr ac ih would agree with what Pascal adds:

On se g5te I'esprit et le sentiment pas les conversations. l import donc detout de bien s a i i r choisir.

7 Quentin M. Hope, Soint-Evremond: The Honnbte Homme as Critic (Blooming-ton: Indiana University Press, 1962)~ p. 87-97.

8 Le chevaher de MCre, De la justesse, Oeuvres compldtes ed. Ch.-H. Boudhors(Paris: Fernand Roches, 1930) ~ , p. 96.

The Leibnizian concep tion of sensatio n 6 3As in Pascal the point is not to develop a simple dlchotorny opposingfeeling to intelligence but rather to suggest that there is also a kindof intelligence in which feeling plays a crucial role and that wherefeeling assumes such a role, a lund of intelligence i s at work.

The phrase this I know not what of wisdom and adroitness is acharacteristic locution for Mere. I know not what recurs through-out his writings but significantly never becomes focal for him. Itsuse expresses his tacit concern not to reduce things to the cut andb e d . In the first of th e Conversations with th e marechal de Cler-ambault (hi s first work, published in 1668-9, when he was oversixty) here are no less than six places where he uses the expression.Ladies are said to want to preserve I know not what of modesty,which gives rise to respect. There is I know not what of th e freeand easy that has better effect in conversation than insisten twitticisms. When one speaks, there comes from the esprit andsentiment I know not what of the naive whic h clings to our wordsbut which cannot be carried over in speaking a foreign language.29 In

these examples the quality of not quite knowing seems in harmonywith the quality not quite known.

This does not mean it is always a qual ity Mere approves of. Falsegallantry shows itself, the chevalier says, in I know not what ofbrdhance, which can surprise in an unwanted way, though he con-cedes that an h o n n z t e homme who lacks gallantry sometimes can-not find a graceful way of insin uatin g what he ha s to say into th econversation, even though it is full of bon sens. The marechal an-swers that women do not want good sense in such a setting butrather that I know not what of piquancy, which teases withoutembarrassing. Finally, the chevalier counters that brilliance can

soon become tiresome, and the more intelligent la de s much preferI know not what further reserve [de plus retenu]. 3OThe expression je ne sais quoit' was hackneyed before Mkre took

it up. Erich Kohler has surveyed its vicissitudes, alluding to twin$sources n an urbane nescio qw'd of Cicero and the nescio quad of

29 Ibid., pp 8, 9, 11.30 Ibid., pp. 18, 20 21. See also p. 5 5 : moral education is a matter of developing a

delicate goust for agrdments so that a child can judge by know not what feelingthat is quicker and often more accurate than reflection. All ranslations from the

- Oeuvres compldtes are my own.] Other instances in the Conversations are pp. 23,25 26, 29, 30, 321 40. 461 73' 77r 82 851 87 81 and 89.


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mystical ineffability going back to Augustine, and he finds that theje ne sais quoi of prbciositb &d not survive satire li ke Boileau's Leshbroes de romans ( 1 6 6 4 )or criticism like that of ltabb6 dth lly :

Words such as 'sympathy,' 'I know not what,' and 'occult qua lities'do not mean anythi ng; men invented them in order to say some-thing when they lacked reasons and did not know what to say.If3l

The Influence of scruples carried over from scientific debate isapparent in the association with occult qualities. A poem describ-ing l'honnete mai t r es se attributed her appeal not only to an I knownot what th at was hardly expressible but also to hidden and inter-nal perfections, occult properties which are only recognizableby the effects they pr0duce. 3~ But with the ascendancy of Newton,however, a conception of th e new science came to predomi nate tha trestored a good consci ence to such ways of knowing. As we will soonsee, the je ne sais quoi also became a topic of inquiry in i ts ownright 33

It is worth pursuing what may seem a trivial expression in MQC

because the je ne sais quoi will be of focal inte rest i n Bouhours andsubtly important i n Leibniz. Mere invokes it whenever he wants tosuggest a gap between what can be felt and what can be formulatedin words. But this is far from mystical ineffability, since for him themark of a noble nd perfect manner of expressi on (de s 'expliquer) is

to let certain t h g s be understood without saying them. One'smeaning extends further tha n one's words.' 4 Similarly the bestpainters give exercise to the imagination and leave more to beinferred of a thing tha n they show of it.I135 Images, li ke words, canconvey more th an they m ake explicit. MCrC found a similar quali ty

3 1 Erich Kohler le ne sais quoi: Ein Kapitel aus der Begrdfsgeschic hte des Un-begreiflichen, Romanistisches /uhrbuch 6 (195 3-4): 21-59, esp. pp. 30- 31 Partic-ularly with regard to M&rC Kohler repeatedly hypostatizes the je ne sais quoi as anunknowable Ding an sich, different in each case.

3 Couvray, L'honndte maitresse of 1654, quoted by Kijhler, /e ne sais quoi. p. 26.33 There had been an address by Gombauld devoted to the je ne sais quoi before the

fledglurg French Academy in 1635 wh c h must have reflected the attitudes of theHGtel de Rambouillet and been close in spirit to Mere.

4 Mere, Oeuvres complktes, I, p. 62. Samuel Sorbie re praised Mere in just suchterms as un esprit delicat, qui touche finement les choses, et les laisse presquetoutcs deviner (quoted in the notes, I 159).

5 Ibid., p. 63. Cf. 111 p. 83: In those pa intings of Apelles whic h were only sketchedtherc was an I know not what which charmed but was not to be found once theywere finished.

The Leibnizian conception of sensation6s

in what they call fagonner ; L e s f a ~ o n should tend only to signi-fy delicately and gracefully what must only be in~inua ted. ~G

Analogously the writer or artist should not deliberately seek tocreate such effects but should concentra te on the object, on think-ing well, since good discern ment for things entail s the delicacyof feeling which makes for delicacy of language. S7 The same hidden

causes operate in the expression as in the understandin g of meanin g,and something analogous takes place in aesthetic perception. Thejudgments and pleasures of t ast e are mat ters of agrbment, a corre-spondence between what pleases and the natural feelings of theindividual it is pleasing to, as Pascal too had argued. A g r i m e n t is anagreement between subject and object at a subliminal level underly-ing overt perception, a proportion w h c h charms with out one per-ceiving where i t comes f r~ m . ~ W k r e rote a short work calledLes agrtme nts in which he referred to them as I know not what

that can be felt but not explained. They are themselves difficult toperceive, but the almost imperceptible ag r b men ts do not fail to

produce a great effect, and it is they that touch the most.'GgThe ancients represented the Graces as delicate in order to

suggest that what pleases consists in almost imperceptible things,as n know not what tha t easily escapes and which one can nolonger find as soon as one searches for it. 40 This elusive qualitycharacterizes many face ts of the soc ial aesthe tic of t he period, andthe je n e sais quo is repeatedly associated with grace, not only inthe sense made popular by Castig lione's Courtier but in the the-ological sense as well. This is a topic for a separate paper. One lastvariation on the theme may round out t his proto-aesthetic interestin barely perceptible and the refore powerful qualities, whic h tendedincreasingly to become an int erest in th e qualities of perceptionitself.

'

Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, t he friend and mentor of Mer6 used

36 Ibid., p. 13. MCrC ins ist s that what one tries to understand by facons is only tooE 1 real and effective. He uses the neologism nuances similarly (ibid., p. 74, cf.

p. 162; 11 pp. 19 and 104 , je ne sqay quelles nuances. ).7 Ibid., I, p. 73.8 Ibid., pp. 73, 72. Cf. Pascal, Pensdes, pp. 80- I, nos. 32-3, Brunschvicg ordering

(nos. 585-6, Lafuma ordering).9 Mere, Oeuvres complktes, 11 pp. 12 19.

Ibid., pp. 14- I 5


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much the same terms in 1644 to characterize the quality for whichhe coined the term urbanity, a scarcely perceptible impressionw h c h can be recognized only by chance, . t can be felt but notseen and inspires a secret gknie which o ne loses by seeking , or takenin a broader sense, it is the science of convers ation, and finally anadroitness [adresse] t touching l 'esprit by I know not what piquan-cy, the sting Ipiqzire] of wh ich is agreeable to him who receives itbecause it tickles but does not injure and leaves a painless spurwhich awakens l 'esprit to a ~ t i o n . ~ l

Many of h s contemporaries, including Balzac, testified to thefascination exercised by Mere in his letters and con~ersation,~~ utnow he often seems only fatuous when he holds forth on the finepoin ts of being an h o n n i t e h o m m e .His relation to Pascal shows upthe limitat ions of his merely m o n d a i n e conception of finesse and hisblindness to a significant scientific source of I know not wha t. Bothmen associated the esprit d e finessewith the social-aesthetic orienta-tion of the honnBte homme,characteri zed by the absence of any

narrowness reflecting professional spe~ialization.~~ ut Mkrkclaimed Pascal had only an esprit de gbometrie until a trip threw h mtogether with Mere, Du Vair, and o ther worldly men who opened theworld of taste and feeling to him, giving h m un tout autr e esprit. Ineffect Mere presents Pascal's experience as a quasi-r eligious conver-sion to worldliness ( dazzled by s uch vivid light ) leading him toabjure mathernati~s.4~

4 Quoted from Balzac's second Discours in E. B. 0 Borgerhoff, The Freedom ofFrench C lassicism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I 9 SO), p. 10- I. Cf. Lesoeuvres de Monsieur le Chevalier d krd (Amsterdam: Mortier, 16921, 11pp. 165-6: J'espere, Madame, qu'enfin vous donner ez cours ce nouveau motdlurbanitC que Balzac avec sa grande tloquenc e ne pQ mettre en usage. He recalls

that he and she havc discussed it at length and affirms that it consiste en je nesgay quoy de civil de poli, je ne sCay quoy de raille ur de flate ur tout ensem -ble.

4 Gerhard Hess begins his insightful essay Wege des Humanism us im Frankreichdes 17. jahrhunderts, 11 Mtrt, Roman ische Forschungen53 (1939): 262-99, witha 1646 letter from Balzac to M&rd, Je reconnois une pui ssance secrete qui agit surmoy, et il est ues- vray qu e je n e vous ay jamais veG, ny n'ay jamais songC a vous, quje n'aye senti je ne sgay quoy qui m'a chato iilll 6 le coeur.

43 MCrC, Oeuvres compl&tes, p. 11: un honneste homm e n'a point de mestier.Pascal, Pensees, p. 81, no. 35, Brunschvicg ordering ( no. 647, Lafuma ordering), onl 'honnbte homme;cf. p 86, no. 68 (no. 778).

44 Mdrt, De l'esprit, Oeuvres compl8tes,11 pp. 86-8: C'estoit un grand Mathe -maticien, qui ne s~a voi t ue cela . . . qui n'avoit ny goust, ny sentiment. Depuisce voyage, il ne songea plus aux Ma themati ques qui l'avoient toiljours occupt5, etce fut 15cornme son abjuration.

The Leibnizian conceptio n of sensatio n 67

Mere's account (w hich has genera lly been taken t o refer to Pascalbut is highly stylized, not to say fictionalized ) emphasizes thatthis other esprit is a mat ter of knowledge. In context in hls Del'esprit it serves to illust rate Mere's idea tha t learning is based inpleasure. Pascal's illumination showed that insight can be propa-

: gated ins tan tan eous ly.4 ~~ leasure makes us at tentive and recep-

tive, learning proceeds exponentially when t he matter gives us plea-sure. If study is boring, it is not the sort tha t leads to esprit. Onlyesprit can give rise to esprit. All me n have a natu ral desire to know,particularly to know causes, and the good teacher gives his pupil

the reason for the least of things. Because ther e is always a natura lcause, even if complicated, which makes one way better than an-other. 46 It was a fascination with such finesse that allegedly res-cued Pascal from mathematics.

It was Mere who introduced Pascal to the doctrine of chancesand the rule of hst ribu tion s (rkgle des partis), two problems emerg-

i ing from his gambling which led to th e development of mathe-

matical probability theory, and he had definite pretensions t o scien-tlfic understanding and even a~h ie ve me nt .~ ' is letter to Pascal(published after Pascal's death , probably in altered for m) presented a

45 There is a paragraph in the biography of Pascal by his sister which allude s to thisepisode or cpoch in his life. Le voilh donc dans le monde: il se trouva plusieursfois la Cour, oh des personnages qui ktaient consommeCs remarquerent qu'il enprit d'abord l'air et les maniere s avec auta nt d'agrdment que s'il y cfit i.tC nourritoute sa vie. I1est vrai que, quand il parlait du monde il e n developpait si bien tousles ressorts qu'il etait trks capable de les rcmuer et de sc porter toutes les chosesqulil fallait faire pour sty accornmoder, auta nt qulil le trouverait raisonnablel'(Pascal, Oeuvres compldtes,ed. L. Lafuma, p 21 .Mtr6, Oeuvres complktes, 11 pp. 85-9. His treatme nt of the natural desire toknow, epitomized in the pleasure we take simply in seeing things [p. 86 , and of th econnec tion between te aclung and knowledge by way of causes (p. 89) of whichPascal's story is an illustration s clearly Aristotelian. See the excursus below onAristotlc.

47 See MLrCns etter to Pascal in MLrt, Oeuvres [Paris, 16y2, II, 63; Vous spv ez quejay decouvert dans les Mathernatiques des choses si rares que les plus sipvans desanciens nlen ont jamais rien dit, desquelles les meilleurs Mathematiciens dellEurope ont est t surpris; Vous avez 6crit sur mes inventions aussi-bien que Mon-sieur Huguens [Huygens], Monsieur de Fermac [Ferrnat] tant d'autres qui les ontfadmirkes. Pascal wrote to Ferrnat, 29 July 1654, tha t many people had been able tofind la mtt ho de des dCs or rule of chanc es with dice, inclu ding MCrC, who firs t

i proposed these questions, but th at MCrC could not discover the rule of hstri bu-tions (Pascal, Oeuvres complktes,ed. Laf urna, p. 43). But cf. ibid., p 659' Huygensin his ournu1 on 30 December 1660, referring to MCrC as inventeur des panisdans le ieu.,

I


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confrontation of the int elligence of ge ometry and that of finesse,focusing on their hsagreement about infinite divisibility (whetherof physic al bodies or space or geometrical en tities was part of t heproblem), which hinged on Mkrt's re fusal or inability t o disengageconception (what can be conceived) from sensuo us imagination.Some of h s objections are not easily answered, and it seems likelythat Pascal is responding to them in the fragmentary De I espritgbomdtrique. This cannot be gone into here, but it is worth notingtha t what Pascal calls the infin ity of petitesse (a marvel of nature,i.e., physical as well as mathe matic al and made more easily conceiv-able by the microscope) anticipates t he je n e sais quo i of Leibnizlsminute perceptions.

Pascal took th is incapacit y to conceive of t he infin itely sma ll as amark of the one-sidedne ss of MQt ts idea of finesse.48 Mere rejectedthe infinitely small because it conflicted with natural feeling andbon sens, a reflection of h s conviction that one only knows wellwhat one sees distinctly. 49 The lim it of his cel ebrated penetration

was the almost imperceptible. Conversely, it was Pascal, the masterof th e distin ct, th e basis of geometric al method, who reached deeperinto our cognitive reliance on feeling and finesse, the imperceptibleand the infinitesimal. In t h s constellation he again points forwardto tha t othe r pioneer of probabi lity theory a nd the grandfat her of aesthetics, Leibniz.

IN O U H O U R S

Other examples could be offered of thi s proto-aesthetic t hat ranged

over all of prac tical and c ultu ral life as t he appropria te mode ofthinking and knowing, but one more substantial illustration should

8 AS Pascal wrote to Fermat in the le tter quoted above, the M ic ul ty of the proof oflnhnite divisibi lity astonished Mkre, car il a tres bon esprit, mais il n'est pasgkomktre (c'est cornme vous savez, un grand dCfaut) p. 45) . f you could make imunderstand how a mathematical line is infinitely divisible, Pascal adds, you wouldrender him perfect. As it is he is one of ces esprits fins qui ne sont que h s , nepeuvent avoir la patience de descendre jusque dans les premiers principes deschoses sp6culatives et d'imagination qu'ils n'ont jamais vues dans le monde ettout a fait hors d'usage. Pierre Vi y it , L honndte hom me au XVII sikcle: LeChevalier de M h e (Paris: Chiberre, 19 22 )~ . 49.

9 Mere, Oeuvres compl8tes, I p. 69, and cf. pp. 24, I I I .


be sufficient. Dominique Bouhours, a French Jesuit, devoted a chap-: ter of his Entretiens d Ariste e t d Eugdneto another key notion of

the nascent aesthetics, th e je n e sais quoi , not as a quality associatedwith works of art or thing s of beauty, but main ly as an essent ialelement of personal appeal. Thi s I know not what is a capacityboth of pleasing and of being pleased, the mo st exquisit e feeling of

the soul for whatever makes an impression upon it. At the sametime it is almost unconscious in its operation, not a power we con-trol: it is so delicate and imperceptible tha t it escapes the mostpenetrating and subtle intelligence.

What this means is that we sense or feel the effect but cannotperceive the cause, and this is because it operates so swiftly. Evenstones become invisible if they fly fast enough through the air, so weshould not be surprised if th e trai t which s trik es the soul cannot beperceived ( n ese puisse apercevoir)since one does not have the timeto notice it ( le emarquer) .The je n e sais qu oi produces its effect inthe shortest of a l l moment^,'^ particularly its effect on the heart.50

If one could perceive thesour e

of this effect, the effect itselfwould be undermined . The mystery of th e je n e sais quo i is also itsessence. The same seems to hold for the ch ain of effects tha t i t

, engenders, for the I know not whats of beauty and ugliness excitein us I know not whats of inclinat ion or aversion that reason can-

; not grasp and the will cannot control. These are the first movementswhich antici pate reflection and liberty. Lllungs and dislikmgs thu sseem to be formed in an ins tan t, yet Ariste, who affirms this, thinks itconsistent with t he doctri ne of th e schol astic philosophers who say

[ that the will can only love what has first been known by the under-: standing. The connecti on between t his kind of knowing (where the

efficacious traits are not known i n the ir own righ t) and will or affec-: tion is instantaneo us and imperceptible . We know tha t our affections

and inclin ations are well founded but cannot say how.51These dialogues, published in I 67 I th e year Leibniz came to Paris,

5 Bouhours, Entretiens d Ariste et dDEug8neParis: Bossard, ~ g zo J , p. 194-213

(quotations horn pp. 196, 199 -201). An English translation of this chapter is foundin The Continental Model, ed. Scott Elledge and Donald Schier (Ithaca: Cornell

i University Press, 1970)~ p. 182-92, which have used but revised where needed.Here, pp. 183-5. See also Borgerhoff, The Freedom of French Classicism,

. pp. 186-200, on the je n e sais quoi in Bouhours.51 Entretiens, pp. 204, 199, 207; Continental Model, pp. 187, 184 , 189.

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7 J EF F RE Y B A R N O U W

can be seen as anticip ating one of Leibniz's most characteris tic ideas,the doctrine of minu te perceptionsff from another angle, minuteappetitions or minu te solicitations ), wh c h he will make use ofeven in th e analysis of se nsation. Th e je n e sais quo i is a dimawareness of a cause which escapes notice but is known by its effects,and these effects are as relevant to knowledge or discernment as theyare to affection.

The expression of the face which distinguishes o ne person from ahundred thousand others is such a quality, being very noticeable andyet very diffi ult to describe, for who has ever clearly distinguishedthe features and t he lineame nts in which that difference preciselyresides? 52 The interest here is in what we know but cannot expressin words, or more precisely, what it is (th e notae or marques) thatenables us to discriminate and recognize but itself eludes specifica-tion. Physiognomic perception still poses fruitful problems for psy-chology, but the operation which Bouhours is concerned with isbroader.

Thus h e goes on to offer examples from symptoms of diseases andfrom other natural effects such as the tides and magnetism wherescience has been led to suppose the operation of occ ult causes.

Nature, as well as art, is careful to hide the cause of ex traorhna rymovements; one sees the machine and observes it wit h pleasure, butone does not see the spring which makes it work. 53 There is aninteresting parallel i n Bouhoursfs later work, La mani2re de bienpenser duns les ouvrages d esprit, where he answers the question

what, precisely, is delicacy? The delicacy of thoughts characteriz-ing imaginative works is best understood, he says, by analogy withnature, that is, where nature works, as Pliny said, in minimis and

where the mat ter almost imperceptible makes us doubt whether shehas a Mind to show or hide her Ad dr es ~. ~~ elicacy of thoughtsanalogously conveys much in few words and induces us to interprettheir half-h dden sense. It keeps us in suspense to give us the plea-sure of discovering it all a t once, whe n we have knowledge enough,just as microscopes improve our vision such tha t we can see nature's

s Entretiens. p 207; Continental Model p. 189.5 Entretiens pp 199-200; Continental Model p 185.s4 BouhourslThe A n of Criticism or the Method of Markng a right ludgrn en upon

Subjects o f Wit and Learning (London,1705; repr., Delmar N Y : Scholars Fac-s id es , 1 9 8 1 ) ~p 110-1.

The Leibnizian conception of sen satio n 7 1

finest workings, like the s truc ture of an almo st invisible insect .Here the idea that the charm would be lost once the cause were seenseems to have been abandone d. Still the delicacy of thoug ht and th ebien penser of the work's tit le essen tially deal with phenomena thatpartly manifest and partly obscure the underlying reality, with ef-fects that depend on our not being distinctly aware of the ir causes.

When Bouhours applies the je n e sais quo i to rt in the earlierwork, he prefaces the discussion in a way that makes it seem aninnovation. Acting as a foil for the more sensitive Ariste, Eugknesays, At least the je n e sais quo i is restricted to natural phenomenafor, as far as works of art are conc erned, all th eir bea uties are evidentand their capacity to please is perfectly understandable. Ariste an-swers tha t th e same ineffable effect is found in ce rtain paintings andstatues that appear almost alive, that seem to lack only speech andindeed sometimes seem even to speak to us. Thi s effect is apparentlylinked with the human figure, however, and not attributed to thepower of art generally. Earlier Ariste claime d one could neithe r ex-

plain or depict the je ne sais quoi of human visage; a portrait neverled anyone to love the person portrayed.It is worth noting, then, that in th e later work, La man iere de bien

penser, Bouhours delineates a mode of thinking proper to works ofesprit, that is, literary or imaginative writings. The term esprit hasin effect changed sides from its position in Pascal's dichotomy, nolonger meaning intellect, a shlft paralleled in the seman tic career ofthe equivalent English word wit, which was also the word used to

6

translate the Latin term ingen ium and Graciin's ingenio. In thesame sense acuity of conce it degenerated, in some writers, in tobeing witty. But esprit in Bouhours has taken a more particularmeaning without sacrificing its h g h level or cognitive import.Moreover, despite th e English transl ation of the title,55 Bouhours is

I delineating a mode of think ing different from discursive reasoningound in works of esprit.

In the first dialogue of La mani2re d e bi en penser, Eudoxe, whofavors the ancients, de bates with Phl an th e, proponent of the mod-em Italian and Spanish taste, whether a thought that shows esprit

ineeds a foundation on t ruth or a charming ad mixture of falsehoodthat is, fictions, ambiguities, hyperboles, and other figures that are

See the preceding note


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7 J E F F R E Y B A R N O U W

little more tha n lies. Eudoxe argues that such fiction must still beprobable and have some truth hidden in it and eventually convincesPhilanthe that tru th is broader than he thought, since it may agreewith equivocal expressions in matt ers of wit. Along the way, how-ever, Philanthe has related esprit to the Italian ingegno and agudezacontinuing in the same sentence, Aristotle reduces almost thewhole art of th inkin g ingeniousl y to the metaphor, which is a kindof fraud, and Count Tesauro says, according to that philosopher'sprinciples, that the subtlest and the finest thoughts are only figur-ative enthymemes, which equally please and impose upon the un-derstanding. 56 Aristotle's Rhetoric is again recognized as the sou rceof th e idea that work s of imagination embody a kind of thinkingpatterned after but differing from and even violating demonstrativereasoning.

It is not evident that either partner prevails in the dialogue, sinceEudoxe vindicates tru th a s a requisite of works of esprit only byrecognizing tha t it is a kind of t rut h proper to such works. Metaphor

has a trut h of i ts own, as Phi lant he conclude s, and may be needed forthe presentation of any truth. Like Gra ci h, Bouhours insists thatnovelty plays an essential role in advancing knowledge, that it is notenough for truth t o content t he mind, but there must be somethingwluch strikes and surprises it. Ingenious thinlung is intertwinedwith curiosity and admiration or wonder. f the thoughts be not new( it would be hard to say riothing but wha t is newU),57 hey should atleast be uncom mon or the way of turning th em at least should beso. This idea was nothi ng new.

E X C U R S U S O N A R I S T O T L E

That metaphor heightens attention and interest through its devia-tion from normal accustomed language is a point Aristotle makesrepeatedly in both the Rhetoric and the Poetics. But the cognitiveimplications of this are drawn out in the concluding book of theRhetoric where he writes that we all naturally find it agreeable toget hold of new ideas easily, [and] it is from metaph or tha t we canbest get hold of som ethin g fresh. Liveliness is specially conveyed

6 Ibid., pp. 7-8, 1 1 , 17, 5 1 - 2 . Part of thl s first chapter is include d in Cont inen talModel, pp. 193-205; here, pp. 197, zoo and 204.

57 rt of Criticism, p. I .

The Leibnizian conception of sensation 7 3

by metaphor, and by the further power of surpris ing the hearer;because the hearer expected something different, his acquisition ofthe new idea impresses him all th e more. For Aristotle th e pleasureof metaphor is tied up with that of learning, which entails activeparticipat ion and effort, but not stren uous exertion. Both speechand reasoning are lively in proportion as they make us seize a new

idea promptly, and people are not take n eith er with the obvious orwith the obscure, but with arguments which convey their informa-tion to us as soon as we hear them, provided we had not the d o n n a -tion already, or which the mind only just fails to keep up with. 58

Aristotle has a similar ex planation of the effect achieved by anenthymeme, that is, the abbre viated rhetorical version of the syl-logism (just as the example is the equivalen t in rhetoric of t he othermode of reasoning in logic, induc tion). Enthymemes are th e body ofrhetorical persuasion, which is a sort of de monstratio n, for Aristo-tle, and thus e nthymemes are a sort of syllogism, appropriate inmatters concerned not with the truth but with what is like the

truth, that is, the probable.The enthymeme has an effectiveness which the syllogism doesnot, since it om its ment ion of proposi tions or premises that ca n beassumed or take n for granted and takes its point of de parture innotions already accepted. It is this simplicity that makes the un-educated more effective than the educated when addressing popularaudiences . educated men lay down broad general principles; un-educated men argue from common knowledge. Beyond such sim-plicity, it is important for the audience to think along with thespeaker, supplying the parts of t he argument tha t are not spelled outand seemingly coming to the intended conclusion on their own.S9

8 Rhetoric, IU.10.1404b6-1z, 14 1ob1o -I 3, 14 1za17 , 141obzo-26; on the pleasurei: associated with change, and accordingly with wonder and lcaming new things, see

I 37 1az5-34. I quote the W Rhys Roberts translation fro m The Works of Aristot le.ed W D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, n.d.1, citing the Bekker marginal pagenumbers.

9 Ibid., 1354a14, I 35sa4-17, 1357a1z-18, I 395 b2z-33. Referring to enthy meme s(as syllogism s), Aristo tle writes that those are most applauded of which we fore-see the conclusions from the beginning, so long as they are not obvious at firstsight for part of the pleasure we feel is at our own intelli gent anticipa tion; orthose which we follo w well enough to see the point of them as soon as the lastword has been uttered (1400 bz9-3 4). Bouhours says more pleasure is given whenhearers or readers are allowed to comp lete tho ughts on thei r own, whereas spellingeverything out awakens resentmen t.


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74 JEFFREY BARNOUW

Enthymeme li ke metaphor steers a course between the obvious andthe obscure, mingling the attractions of clarity and curiosity.

In both the Rhetoric and the Poetics he considers metaphor thechief resource of d iction, and in each case this points beyond style toa cognitive capacity. But the greate st thing by far is to be master ofmetaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and

it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies a n intuitiveperception of the similarity in dissimilars. Metaphors must bedrawn from things tha t are related to t he original thing, and yet notobviously so related ust as in philosophy also an acute mind willperceive resemblances even in thing s far apart. 60 GraciBnts agudezaseems to have taken it s original hint here, as did the correspondingconception of ingenio, esprit, or 'wit' in the innovative sense of aparticular acute faculty contradistinguished from judgmentwhich perceives subtle resemblances and correspondences.

The impor tance of Aristotle's Rhetoric for the seventeenth-century developments we have briefly considered does not consist

simply in particular affinities or borrowings, however, but concernsthe general intellectual and cultural role which the logic of tasteor aesthetics in Baumgarten's sense tried to take on. Aristotle hadconceived his rhetoric on the model of his logic of demonstrativereasoning, construing th e enthy meme as a weak sort of syllogismappropriate to matters in which probable knowledge had to servebecause necessary knowledge could not be had. Aristotle's mainintention was to reform rhetoric, however, to give it cognitive in-terest by shifting it s focus from techn iques of persuasion to groundsof persuasion, and not so much to develop a logic of probable reason-ing in its own right. T he epistemological side of rhetoric was alsoscarcely pursued after Aristotle. Th e preponderance he gave to de-monstrative reasoning, out of all proportion with the role it plays inscience, the science of his day or ours o say nothing of its role inhuman life eft the task of clarifying the principles and methodsof empirical knowledge in its shadow for almost two millennia.

Aesthetics seems originally to have been conceived in part to fillthis need.

60 Poetics, 1459a5-8, tr. Igram Bywater, in Works, ed. Ross; cf. Rhetoric, 140537-10,1412a9-12.

The Leibnizian conception of sens ation 75

A E S T H E T I C S I N B A U M G A RT E N ' S S E N S E

In his 7 3 dissertation the twenty-one-year-old Baumgarten main-tained that poetry represented a sensuous mode of knowledgecomplementary to the ration al mode characteristic of philosophy.Poetics, the discipline concerned with sensuous discourse, pre-

supposed sensuous ideas representationes ensitivae, mental rep-resentations in thc sense of ideaft established by Descartes andLocke) and a lower cognitive faculty th at traditional logic, ori-ented exclusively to rational knowing, had neglected. The distinc-tion between two levels in the cognitive powers was in fact a recentinnovat ion of Chris tian Wolff, who assigned knowledge foundedin distinct ideas to the hg he r and tha t founded only in indistinctideas to the lower. But what Baumgarten meant was that non-demonstrative logic regarding empirical knowledge based in senseperception had yet to be founded.

In the closing paragraphs Baumgarten called for a new science,based on principle s provided

bypsychology, which might direct the

lower cognitive faculty in kn owing thing s sensately, just as logicguides intellectual or rational cognition. Referring to the classicalGreek opposition between aistheta (thing s perceived) and noeta(th ng s known), and identifying the lat ter with th e object of logic,Baumgarten dubbed the new science aesthetica, the discipline ofaisthesis, or sensuous knowing, including not only sense perceptionbut sensuous imagination. In his later lectures on aesthetics Baum-garten projected th e idea of confusio n back int o th e Greek originsof his term aesthetica: in Plato aistheta are opposed to noetois asindistinct to distinct representations. As they made logike fromlogikos, the distinct, so from aisthetos we make aisthetike, the sci-ence of all that is se n su ~u s. ~ ~

Baumgarten referred to aesthetica in his first major work, the

6 A G Baumgarten, Me dtat ione s phdosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinen-tibus, tr. H. Paetzold as Philosophische Betrachtungen iiber einige Bedingwen

es Gedchte s Hamburg: Meiner, 198 3) ~ p 84-7; Reflections on Poetry, tr. KarlAschenbrenncr and W B Holther Berkeley and Los Ange les: University of Califor-nia Press, 1 9 ~ 4 ) ~ p 38-9, 77-8. For the lecture notes, s ee Baumgarten, Texte zurGrundlegung der Aesthetik , rd. Hans Rudolf Schweizer Hamburg: Meiner, 19831,PP 79-80.


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Metaphysica of 1739 (in Part 3, dealing with empir ical psychology), asthe science of knowing and presenting what one knows sensuouslysensitivecognoscendi et proponendi).The Leibnizian background of

this notion had been made clear in earlier paragraphs whererepraesentatio non distincta was called sensitiva, after confusedthinking confusecogito)had been defined as that in which one doesnot distinguish the marks notns)of the object of thought.62 ASLeibniz had originally explained this:

Knowledge isclear, therefore, whenit makes i t possible for me to recognizethe thing represented. Clear knowledge, in turn, is either confused or dis-tinct. It is confused whenI cannot enumerate one by one the marks [notasjwhich are sufficicnt to distinguish the th ing from others, even though th ething may in tru th have such marks and constituents in to which its concept[notio] can be resolved. Thus we kno w colors, odors, flavors, and otherparticular objects of t he senses clearly enough and discern the m from eachother but only by the simple evidence of th e senses and not by marks thatcan be stated.63

Confused knowledge is based on ideas taken simply as they aregiven in experiencej a sensuous idea is an unanalyzed whole thatmay inclu de a numb er of undiffe rentiated el emen ts fused together.When Leibniz repeated this explanation two years later in French,he added, In this way we sometimes know clearly, f a poem ora picture is well done or badly, because it has a certain 'something, Iknow not what' w h c h either satisfies or repels us. But when I canexplain the marks I have, my knowledge is called distinct. 64

Leibniz's reference to a je n e sais quo i is more than simply an

6 Baurngarten, Texte zur Grundlegung pp. 16, 10, and 4. Schweizer, p. 5 , muddlesthings in his German tran slation of 5 10 by making it a question of Ist ing uis hmgthe marks from one another, rather than simply distinguishing them, althoughBaumgartcn himself may have encouraged this with his distinction in $520 be-tween perceiving a thing in its difference from other things and just perceiving it.In §5zz he uses characteres as a synonym for notae (distinguishing traits ) and callsa representation distinc t if i t has clear notas sensuous if it s notae are obscure. Hethus makes things mu rh er by failing to distinguish between confused and ob-scureI1' as in s 10

6 Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas (1684) ~ n Leibniz, PhilosophicalPapers and Letters ed. Leroy E Loemker (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969), p. 291.

6 ' l D i ~ ~ ~ u r ~ en Metaphysics, $24, in Philosophical Papers pp. 318-19. Loemker 'srendering of the last part ( explain the criteria I use ) blurs the point, as does nthe opposite duection - he translation in Leibniz, Selections ed. Philip P Wiener

The Leibnizian conception of sensa tion I

allusion to a then fashionable topos. In the earlier text he used it asan analogy to illustr ate the confused natu re of sensation. We cannotexplain to a blind man what red is j it has t o be experienced. But the

idea of red is not for tha t reason logically simple:

[Tlhe concepts of these qualities a re compo site and can be resolved, for they

certainly have their causes. Likewise we sometimes see painters and otherartists correctly judge what has been d one well or done badly; yet they areoften unable to give a reason for their judgment b ut tell th e inquirer that thework which displeases the m lacks something,I know not what. ss

The composite nature of color is a con-fusion constituting sen-sation in a way similar to th e reliance of artist ic creation and appre-ciation on felt but un formula ted va lues. We will come back to thisconceptio n of sensat ion in t he conclusion of the paper. It is clear fornow that an idea may be lively, rich, and fr uitful in proportion to i tsconfusion. The advantage Baumgarten will draw from the confu-

i sion of sensuous ideas is sugges ted by 95 7 of his Metnphysica:

The Inure marks a perception contains, the stronger it is, and a: confused perception which includes more than a distinct one isstronger than it and is accordingly called pregnantmU66

Baumgarten justifies applying the term sensitiva to ideas by refer->: ring to Wolff's def inition: an appe tite which follows from a con-

fused represen tation of the good [i.e., object or goal] is called sen-: suous, and a confused representation is gained through the lower

part of t he cognitive faculty just as an obscure one is. h7 The ter msensitivn (Baumgarten seems to be implying) applied originally to

(New York: Scribner, 195 I) , p. 325 : explain the peculiarities which a thing has.I

The original reads expliquer lr s marques que j'ai, explain [or make explicit? thedistinguishing marks wh ch have for a thing in my idea of it, traits attributed tothe object and more intrinsic and essential to knowing than any criteria.

6s Pl~hilosophical apers p 29 I The concluding passage of thc text, p 294, blends twolevels of the con stit utio n of color: Moreover, when we perceive colors or odors,we are having nothing but a perception of figures and motions, but of figures andmotions so complex and minute that our mind in its present state is incapable ofobserving each distinctly and therefore fails to notice that its perception is com-pounded of single perceptions of exceedingly small f igures and motions. So whenwe mix yellow and blue powders and perceive a green color, we are in fact sensingnothing but yellow and blue thoroughly mixed; but we do not notice this and soassume some new nature instead.

1 66 Texte zur Grundlegung p. 8.6 I Phlosophische Betrachtungen pp. 9 and xi.

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appeti te because of t he sense-dependent and therefore confusednature of the ideas th at gave rise to it. The terminological scruple isexaggerated, but t his may be a roundabout way of suggesting tha t theconfusion intrinsic to sensuous representations derives from theirrelation to desire, a factor brought out in Descartes and even more soin Malebranche. This is not an aspect of sensuous cognition thatBaumgarten will give emphasis to in his later elaborations, yet itremains a significant, positive factor in the Leibnizian heritage hepasses on, under the name aesthetics, to Mendelssohn and Schiller.It is a significant break with this li ne of thinking when Kant insiststhat aesthetic pleasure must be free of interest, that is, free ofconcer n for the actual existence of th e object.

In his lectures on aesthetics Baumgarten says that sensuousknowledge is the basis of d istin ct knowledge, and thus, if th e under-standing is to be improved as a whole, aesthetic must come to theaid of logic. He equates the sch one Wissenschaft en with sciencesof our lower cogni tive powers, adh ng, or, if you want to speak

more sensuously, you could follow Bouhours and call them 'logicwithout thorns. ' He goes on to cite Bouhours again, along withCrousaz (for h s la it b du beau), Bodmer, and Breitinger, as writerswho have opened the way for his ae s t h e t i ~ . ~ ~

Compared with h s probable model, Ch risti an Wolff's Psychologiaempirica 1732)~ aumgarten's lower cognitive faculty includes awealth of new rubri cs, many of wh ich show the influence of

the ideas we have traced in the seventeenth century. In additionto Wolff's conventional headings - sense, memory, imaginationBaumgarten treats acume n, the ab ility to make fine discriminationsof th ng s depending on awareness of their characteristics (notae),

balanced by ingenium, an ability to see similarities in disparatethings. Together these two constitute perspi~acia.~9 e also in-cludes iudicium, judgment of a sensuous sort, identified with taste(gustus, sapor, palaturn) , wh c h is b oth the basis and the object ofaesthetica critica. Complementing these aesthetic powers are therelated or even overlapping faculties of praevisio, the anticipa tion offuture events based on experience, which shades over into t hat partof aesthetic known as mantica (divinatio n) based in the interpreta-

68 Texte zur Grundlegung, pp. 80, 82.9 Ibid., p. 38, 5 75 : The aesthetic of perspicacity is the part dealing with in genious

and acute knowing nd presenting. But for the reference to aesthetic this sen-tence could come from Gracik.


: tion of signs, and which further is hardly M er en t from praesagitio,premonition, equated with the expectation of similar cases, a fac-ulty shared by man an d animal t hat t akes th e place of reason inanimals and which is based on natu ral sig ns, a form of the associa -tion of ideas, and finally the fucultas characteristic a, which takes

'on thing as a sign of the existence of another. Qu ite ds ti nc t from

linguistic signs, such natural signs are a means of knowing the real-ity of another th ing because there is a nexu s significativus in theworld that grounds our mferen ~es. ~O

When Baumgarten comes to discuss the aesthetica characteris-tics, or scien ce of sensuo us knowledge of signs (cir ca signa) and ofthe corresponding presentation of knowledge, it is clear that lin -guistic signs are a subordinate part, philologia or grammatica in abroad sense. But in other o utlin es of hi s aesthe tic, perhaps as early as1742, he sharply separated its two parts, t he first dealing with sen-suous knowing or thinking, the second with its lively (lebhaft)presentation and thus akin to the traditional disciplines of poeticsand rhetoric, and he seems to have identified this second part ofaesthetica as ars signandi et signis cognoscench, CHARACTERISTICA(Semiotics, Semiologia, y mbolica). 71

This produces a major confusion because signs and semiotic al-ready play impor tant roles in sensuous or empirical cognition itselfand in the fir st part of a esthetica, and here in the second it cannot bemerely a question of subs titu ting sign ificanda for propenendo72 inthe definitio n of aesthetica, because an ars signis cognoscen di, art of

: knowledge by means of signs, is inc luded in this characteristica. Iwill postpone considering the knot ty qu estion of cognitive signs in

: Baumgarten, whlch I will tak e up in a history of conceptions ofnatural signs as the elemen ts of percep tion and thinlung.73

: Baumgarten finally answered his own call for th e new science in

bid., pp. 48 ( praevisio, §§sg5-61, 58 (praesag itio, 95612 -1 3J and 62 (charac-teristic~, 6j§61g-20), cf. p. 97. Following Leibniz ( Monadology, 526). Wolff re-

ferred to praesagitio as analogon rationis. The conception goes back to Hobbes'sidea of (animal) prudence.

: 7 Phllosophia generalis, 5147, a posthumously published text from the early 1740s~in ibid., p. 75.

7 In student notes from Baumgarten's lectures on aesthetica, in ibid., p. 83.Meanwhile, for a further development of the con ception of natural signs as thebasis of cognition n the Leibnizian tradition, see Jeffrey Bamouw, The Philosoph-ical Achievement and Historical Signhc ance of Johan Nicolas Tetens, Studies inEighteenth-Cent uly Culture (Madson : Univers ity of Wisconsin Press, 19 79 )~ ol.9 PP. 301-35.


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8 J E F F R E Y B A R N O U W The Leibnizian conception of sensation 8 1

750 with the first volume of his Aesthetica. In i ts opening para-graph he defined aestheti cs as "the science of sensiti ve cognition,"adding a series of synonyms: "Aesthetics, as the theo ry of th e liberalarts, lower-level epistemology [gnoseologia nfer ior], the art of t hink -ing finely [ar s pulc hre cogitand i], and the art of th e analogy of reason[that mode of inference which ma n shares with higher animals], is

the science of sensi tive cognition."74 But there was a new emphasishere that went beyond what one could anticipate from the earlierwritings.

The experience and appreciation of beauty in nature , includingthe sublime, and of works in the fine arts, including poetry, wereincluded in t he scope of Baumgarten's aesthetics , but only as ap-plications of the capacity that was its central concern, and even thennot the most importan t ones. It was rather in the art of common life,particularly the development of a well-rounded graceful individualwho could play a spontaneous and articulate role in society, thataesthetics was supposed to have i ts key influen ce as a practical disci-

pline (itself an ars ) concerning and nurtur ing he "lower," sen-suous-sensitive faculties.In addition to improving knowledge beyond the boundaries of

what can be dis tinctly known and creating a basis for practice in thefine and liberal arts, aesthet ica should m ake accessible whatever isknown scientifically and accommodate it to the common mind.Thus i t lends a certain excellence in th e practical affairs of commonlife.75 The na ture of t his last accomplishment is hard to conveywithout awkwardness in English:

As beauty or fineness of cog nition [pulchritude cognitionis] annot be anygreater or more noble than the vitality [vivisl f th e person who is thinking

74 Baumgartcn, Aesthetica, ed. and tr. Hans Rudolf Schwcizcr, as Theoretische Aes-thetik (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983) ~ 3. Other interpretations of Baumgarten'saesthetics are Ursula Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis: Die Rolle der Sinnlichkeit inder Aesth etik des Alexander Gott lieb Baumgarten (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1972);and Hans Rudolf Schweizer, Aesthetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis:Eine Interpretation der Aesthetica A G Baumgartens (Basel: Schwabe, 1973).More recently, Hans Rudolf Schwcizer, Vom ursprunglichen Sinn der Aesthetik(Zug: Kugler, 19761, and Horst-Mi chael Schmidt , Sinnlichkeit und Verstand(Munich: Fink, 1982)~ onsider and assess it s historical sigmficance in ways differ-ing from mine.

75 Theoretische Aesthetdi, p. 2, 53.

finely [pulchre], we must f irst of all deline ate t he genesis and ideal image ofone who thinks finely and t hus the character of t he fortunate or successfulaestheticus

This felix aestheticus is characterized by a native ingenium (wit)that is beautiful and fine (venus tum et elegans), its lower facultiesbeing easily excited and ap t for elegance of cogn ition. Thesequalities are further specified using terms familiar from Baum-gartents Metaphysica: the capacity for acute sensing, in the inn ersenses and inti mate consciousness as well as the external; a disposi-tion for perspicacity, which is refined (liter ally, polished) by work-ing together with a cumen and ingenium; and the gift of t aste(sapor), not of the common sort bu t delicate (delicaturn), whichtogether with acumen constitu tes the "judgment of the senses."77

The most prom inent and essential quality of beauty in cognitionseems to be life, vitality, or liveliness. Baumgarten insists that thequalities needed in the effective presentation of knowledge are al-ready crucial to fine or beautiful cognition itself, including an ele-

ment of sensuous i n t ~ i t i o n . ~ " rawing on t he Leibnizian (originallyStoic] conception of marks or notae with in representations, Baum-garten later argues that the universals of demonstrat ive knowledgeare gained through abstract ion at the cost of mate rial fullness orperfection of representati on. ''What is abstraction, if not loss [iac -t ~ r a ] ? " ~ ~t is in the same vein that Baumgarten, at the butset ofAesthetica, an ticipat es an objection to his conception of aesthetic asa logic of sensuous or confused representation, think ing, and knowl-edge, namely that confusion is th e mothe r of error, and answers thatit is rather "a condit io sine q ua non fo r the discovery of truth."80

7

Ibid., p 16, 527. Neither "aesthetician" or "aesthete" seems a proper rendering ofaestheticus. "Man of sensibi lity" might do, but not in the modish sense of thelater eighteenth century.Ibid., pp 16-20, $529. 30, 32, and 3s. Iudex inferior is glossed by a cross-referenceto Metaphysica, $608, where "taste" (gustus) was iudiciunl sensuum. facultywhich I have omitted here and above in the Metnphysica is the "poetic," whlch ischaracterized as combining and taking apart (pmescindendo) mental images(phnntasmata) $341, i.e.. concen trati ng att enti on on a part of a perceptio ($589).

8 Ibid., p 22, $936 and 37.9 Ibid., pp 142-4, $$ssg-60.

8 Theoretische Aesthetik, p 4, 57. Here Baumgarten confuses the difference be-tween obscure and clear with tha t between confused and dsti nct , but Schweizer'stranslation corrects (obscures ) this.


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8 2 J E F F R E Y B R N O U W

Unfortunately, it was the epistemologic al dimension of aestheticthat Baumgarten never fully worked out.

Baumgarten's contributions to our understanding of the thinking

and knowing that remain rooted in sensation a r e not that im-pressive, when compared with those of Leibniz, but his launching ofaesthetics as a formal discipline was import ant because it provided aframe for a rich group of ideas th at had been diffused throughoutLeibniz's writings. Understa nding Leibniz's conception of sensationis essential to an appreciation of th e original meaning and intent ionof aesthet ics, not simply in the sense th at Baumgarten gave explicitand systematic form to something that was suggested at variouspoints in Leibniz, but further in that what is formulated in outlineand envisaged as a whole by Baumgarten can be given richer conte ntand a deeper, broader foundation by a return to Leibniz. In undertak-

ing to show how this is so, the conclusion of the present essay isengaged in something quite different from discovering in Leibnizeleme nts of an interest or a theory tha t could be considered aesth et-ic in the conventional sen se of t he term.81

In effect Leibniz understood sensation in a way which revealedcontin ual cognitive achievements i n everyday perception of t he sortwhich Gr ac ih a nd Bouhours had made the privilege of polite soci-ety. But th e aesthetic functio n of sensat ion goes far beyond cogni-tion, since it is the basis for determining desires, motives, habits,and character. Before we take up this most fundamental aesthetic-practical aspect of Leibniz's though t, a second, more technical lookat the conce ption of c onfusion as the hall mark of t he sensuous willhelp us avoid certain misconceptions.

hs ti nc t idea of red is a paradoxical concept for Leibniz. It

8 See Cllfford Brown, Leibniz and Aesthetic, Philosophy and PhenomenologicalResearch 28 (1967 ): 7-80; and Romano Galeffi, A propos de 11actu&t6 deLeibniz en esth6tique1 in Akten des II Interna tionalen Leibniz-Kongresses(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1 9 7 ~ ) ~ ol. 3 pp. 217-28. T he secti on on The Relationto Aesthetics in Ernst Cassirer, Leibniz System in seinen wissenschafthchenG m d l a g e n (1902; Hildesheim: Olms, 1962)) p. 458-72, is even further from thefocus of the present essay insofar as Cassirer sees the basis of Leibniz's contribu-tion to conventional aesthetics in a proto-Kantian idea of the spontaneity of con-sciousness vis-a-vis phenomena, an idea intrinsically opposed to finding value in

confusion.

The Leibnizian conception of sensation 8 3

would require insigh t into the co nsti tuti on of red, insight thatwould have to be take n up in to th e sight of red (in order to be a partof the idea of red), whic h would undermi ne the confusion and thusthe very const itut ion of red. In the ew Essays he responds toLocke's point th at if our senses were acute enough, sensiblequalities such as th e yellow color of gold would then dsappe ar, andinstead of i t we should see an admirable te xture of parts. . T h smicroscopes plainly discover to us. True, Leibniz answers, but thecolor yellow is a reality, all the s ame, like th e rainbow, and more-over, i our eyes became more penetrating, so that some colors orother qualities disappeared from our view, others would appear toarise ou t of them. 82

Later in t he same book Leibniz criticizes Lockets definition ofconfused ideas, which he contrasts with Descartes's language: forhim an idea ca n be at once clea r and confused, as are the idea s ofsensible qualities, . e.g. the ideas of color and of warmth. Suchideas are not distin ct, because we cannot distinguish their con-tents. Thus, we cannot define these ideas all we can do is to makethem known through examples; and, beyond that, until their innerstructure has been deciphered we have to say that they are a je nesa is q ~ o i . ~ 3 deas which distinguish their objects, that is, allowthem to be identified, need not be dstinct, only clear, whereas onlythose are distinc t which distinguish in the object the marks whichmake it known, thus yielding an analysis or definition. g4

8 New Essays on Human Understand.mgltr. P Remnant and J Bennett (Cambridge:Cambridge University Press, 1981)~ k. 11 ch. xxiii, 512, corresponding to the

I

divisi ons of Locke ts Essay. T h s edition has no pagination of i ts own but uses thatof the Akademie edition by Robinet and Schepers in the margins, hcre p. 219.Against Locke's view of simpl e ideas (TI.ii.1; p. 1 2 0 Lcibniz says, these sensible

ideas appear simple because they are confused and thus do not provide the mindwith any way of making dis crimin ations in what they contain. He again cites theapparent simplicity of both green (com posed of blue and yellow) and blue itself(composed of moti ons) .Descartes had already used the phrase in this neutra l sense, void of the impli-

i cations of nuance and subtle sensibility t hat characte rized most seventeenth-century usage, to refer to the otherwise unknow n cause of our perceptions. It isnot surprising that the phrase disappears in translation: when we say that we

1 perceive colour s in objects, this is really just the same as saying that we perceivesomething [jene sais quui] n the objects whose nature we do not know, but whichproduces n us a very clear and vivid sensa tionJJ Principles f Philosophy.1, 970, inThe Phjlosophcal Writings o Descanes, tr. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff,

nd Dugald Mur doch [Cambridge: Camb ridge Univer sity Press, 19851, 1, p. 218).8 New Essays, 1I xziix q; p. 2 5 5

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There is an apparent ambiguity in Leibniz's usage since he alsoholds that distinct or distinguished perceptions are a prerequisite ofsensation, but what this means is simply that certain perceptions(perceptions being defined in the same context as representationsof the compound, or of that w hc h is without, in the simple )must be prominent or concentrated enough to make themselves

noticed.85 He says that when ther e is a large mul titu de of smallperceptions with nothing to distinguish them, we are stupefied, aswhen we turn continuously in the same direction several times.

From this we can see that If we have nothng distinctive in ourperceptions, and nothing lifted out, so to speak, and of a higherflavor, we should always be in a sta te of stupor. 8 he apparen tcon trah ctio n is resolved when two

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