ABSTRACT
Friedrich Schleiermacher delivered his first lectures on aesthetic at Berlin University in 1819, and from that date he began to study the subject seriously with a view to writing a book on it. He considered aesthetic as an essentially modern Une of thought, and drew a sharp distinction between the Poetics of Aristotle, which never shakes itself free from the empirical standpoint of the maker of rules, and what Baumgarten tried to do in the eighteenth century. He praised Kant for having been the first truly to include aesthetic among the philosophical sciences, and recognized that in Hegel artistic activity had attained the highest elevation by being brought into connexion and almost into equality with religion and philosophy. Schleiermacher has denuded aesthetic of its imperative character; he recognizes in it a form of thought differing from logical thought; he considers the aesthetic fact as pure human productivity.
