ABSTRACT
The formalistic aesthetic, born under bad auspices, is a curious example of servile fidelity in externals combined with internal infidelity. Starting from unity, or rather from subordination of Ethics and Æsthetic to a general Æsthetic defined as "a science which treats of the modes by which any given content may acquire the right to arouse approval or disapproval" (thereby differing from Metaphysic, science of the real, and from Logic, science of right thinking), Zimmermann places such modes in form, that is to say, in the reciprocal relation of elements. In Italy the Abate Tornasi wrote a half-Hegelian, half-Catholic aesthetic, wherein the beautiful is identified with the second person of the Trinity, the Word made man; by this means he hoped to raise a bank of opposition against the Uberal criticism of De Sanctis, whom he considered, from the sublime height of his own philosophy, as "a subtle grammarian".
