ABSTRACT
We cannot assess the development of aesthetics as a discipline if we look at it solely from the goal of aesthetic autonomy. In this vein, this chapter argues that Moses Mendelssohn’s philosophy, as one influential take on aesthetics in the second half of the eighteenth century, cannot be captured adequately if understood as a mere forerunner to Kant, even though some of his thoughts invite such an interpretation. This counts in particular for Mendelssohn’s conception of the faculty of approval (Billigungsvermögen), which he develops in the Morning Hours (1785). Read instead in its appropriate context of Mendelssohn’s theory of aesthetic perfection, this mysterious faculty is by no means a sibling of Kant’s concept of judgment nor does it invite the same kind of disinterested pleasure. Rather, Mendelssohn’s aesthetics appear as a sophisticated form of aesthetic perfectionism that strives to offer a theory of the interplay of all human faculties. This interplay presupposes a certain freedom within aesthetic appreciation but does not let go of the ultimate connection of beauty to perfection and our human interest in it.
