ABSTRACT
This chapter shows that Adolph Bernhard Marx's early aesthetics are motivated by contemporary philosophical thought only to a limited extent. It also shows that Marx's conception of artistic understanding, the core of his critical program, is based largely on his personal identification with the dramatic coherence of the music of Ludwig van Beethoven. Marx understands form as a function of the Idee: In general, one speaks so often about form as a typus for all works of the spirit, seeming to designate it as something existing once and for all. Marx was also aware of earlier pioneering efforts in literary criticism. Returning to Marx's characterization of the three stages of Beethoven's symphonic development, we may notice, with the German critic Arno Forchert, that the first stage involves subjective expression, the second objective portrayal, and the third a synthesis of subjective and objective.
