ABSTRACT
A disciple of Leibnitz, A. Baumgarten, invented the term "aesthetic" and assigned it a special place in the philosophic cycle. It is an explanation of beauty, but in Baumgarten's doctrine, as in that of his master, the beautiful consists in a sensation impervious to order, a clear obscurity of the inner life. Thus aesthetics takes its rise in psychology, and since Leibnitz' time there has been the tendency to ascribe it to a certain attitude of the self. The German theorists of the aesthetic of sympathy have pursued in innumerable examples and through the labyrinthine analysis of artistic emotions the confirmation of their ideas. The theory of Einfuhlung contributes to perpetuate the false aesthetic which reduces all musical beauty to the production of a state of sensibility. This phenomenon of sentimental autoprojection is not the aesthetic phenomenon. It is only one of the multiple circumstances which accompany a properly artistic impression.
