ABSTRACT
Modern aesthetics, which has taken the decisive step from aesthetic objectivism to aesthetic subjectivism. This chapter shows that this modern aesthetics, which proceeds from the concept of empathy, is inapplicable to wide tracts of art history. Its Archimedian point is situated at one pole of human artistic feeling alone. It will only assume the shape of a comprehensive aesthetic system when it has united with the lines that lead from the opposite pole. The need for empathy can be looked upon as a presupposition of artistic volition only where this artistic volition inclines towards the truths of organic life, that is towards naturalism in the higher sense. Just as the urge to empathy as a pre-assumption of aesthetic experience finds its gratification in the beauty of the organic, so the urge to abstraction finds its beauty in the life-denying inorganic, in the crystalline or, in general terms, in all abstract law and necessity. Aesthetic enjoyment is objectified self-enjoyment.
