III.

Other Early Approaches

The 3rd-century philosopher Plotinus, born in Egypt and trained in philosophy at Alexandria, although a Neoplatonist, accorded far more importance to art than did Plato. In Plotinus’ view, art reveals the form of an object more clearly than is possible in ordinary experience, and raises the soul to contemplation of the universal. According to Plotinus, the highest moments of life are mystical, which is to say that the soul is united, in the world of forms, with the divine, which Plotinus spoke of as “the One”. Aesthetic experience comes closest to mystical experience, for one loses oneself while contemplating the aesthetic object.

Art in the Middle Ages was primarily an expression of religion, with aesthetic principles based largely on Neoplatonism. During the Renaissance in the 15th and 16th centuries, art became more secular, and aesthetics Classical rather than religious. The great impetus to aesthetic thought in the modern world occurred in Germany during the 18th century. In his Laokoon (1766) the German critic Gotthold Ephraim Lessing argued that art is self-limiting and reaches its height only when these limitations are recognized. The German critic and Classical archaeologist Johann Joachim Winckelmann maintained that, in accordance with the ancient Greeks, the best art is impersonal, expressing ideal proportion and balance rather than its creator’s individuality. The German philosopher Johann Gottlieb Fichte considered beauty a moral virtue. In creating a world in which beauty, as much as truth, is an end, the artist foreshadows the absolute freedom that is the goal of human will. For Fichte, art is individual, not social, but it fulfils a great human purpose.