ABSTRACT
Ernst Cassirer suggests there had always been a close link between philosophy and literary criticism. In the Enlightenment these links gradually become formalized in the notion of a systematic philosophical aesthetics. This involves not just an analysis of art but is an endeavour, which seeks to correlate the content of philosophy and art as forms of knowledge. Cassirer's major investigation of Immanuel Kant's aesthetics is to be found in his book Kant's Life and Thought of 1918. One of the extraordinary features of this book is the central significance, which it gives to the Critique of Judgment in Kant's critical philosophy. The linking of genius to the comprehension of formative creative power is for Cassirer a great achievement in the history of aesthetics. It is a moment whose full potential is realized in Kant's aesthetic theory. The line of transmission from Shaftesbury is complex and proceeds chiefly via Francis Hutcheson.
