ABSTRACT
Amongst German philosophers of any renown who clung to aesthetic sensationalism and psychologism was Kirchmann, promoter of a so-called realism, and author of Msthetic on a Realistic Basis. To the evolution or involution of the Herbartiams into physiologists of aesthetic pleasure corresponds a similar evolution or involution of the idealists into adherents of psychologism. Aesthetic pleasure arises from the spirit's consciousness of discovering itself in the sensible. The psychologist Jodi asserts the existence of elementary aesthetic feelings, as discovered by Herbart, and defines them as "immediate excitations not resting upon associative or reproductive activity or on the fancy", although "in ultimate analysis they must be reduced to the same principles". All artistic and in general aesthetic enjoyment is the enjoyment of something which has ethical value; not as element of a complex, but as object of aesthetic intuition. The most notable aesthetic students of that time were perhaps a group of persons engaged in constructing theories of particular arts.
