| |
| | Somaesthetics: A Disciplinary Proposal |
 | | Baumgarten's original aesthetic project will be seen to have far greater scope and practical import than what we recognize as aesthetics today, implying an entire program of philosophical self-perfection in the art of living. |
 | | The wide-ranging utility that Baumgarten claims for aesthetics is implicit in his initial definition of the discipline: "Aesthetics (as the theory of the liberal arts, science of lower cognition, the art of beautiful thinking, and art of analogical thought) is the science of sensory cognition" (§1). |
 | | Baumgarten insists especially on "keenness of sensation," "imaginative capacity," "penetrating insight," "good memory," "poetic disposition," "good taste," "foresight," and "expressive talent." But all of these, he argues, must be governed by "the higher faculties of understanding and reason" ("facultates cognoscitivae superiores... |
| www.artsandletters.fau.edu /humanitieschair/somaesthetics.html (8999 words) |
|