Barnouw - The Beginnings of Aesthetics and The Leibnizian Conception of Sensation - Read

I
JEFFREY B A R N O U W
The Leibnizian conception of sensation
work of a proponent of that spirit, a Boileau or Pascal.' Indeed, far

from being a reaction against a form of scientism, these protoaesthetic tendencies often extended the attitude of scientific inquiry
into "confused" areas of experience. And even where it belonged
more to belles-lettres, this movement seems to have exerted a significant, neglected influence on Leibniz's philosophical thinking, even
*fore the disparate strands were overtly brought together by
The beginnings of
"aesthetics" and the
Leibnizian conception
of sensation
The term "aestheticsu was coined by A. G. Baumgarten in

designate a projected discipline which was to do for sensate,
fused," knowledge what logic did for rational, or demonstrati
knowledge. When he followed through with the first volume of
A e s t h e t i c in 1750,he in effect consolidated a theory which Leib
had adumbrated in various dispersed passages. This theory w
based in a view of sensation as a "confused" mode of representati
or krpwledge in the sense that its apparently immediate qualiti
were actually constituted by the summation of impressions whic
taken singly, would be beneath the threshold of awareness. Leib
thereby found a means of bringing out the virtues of ways of kno
ing grounded in confused ideas or representations, as opposed to th
clear and distinct representations that were fundamental to the C
tesian conception of necessary knowledge. Along with other adva
tages of such "con-fusion" Leibniz revealed the role played by su
lirninal or marginal awareness (registered in consciousness at m
as feeling) in knowledge and action generally. Understandng th
insights will be the taslc of the final section of this essay.
Baumgarten's new discipline of aesthetics also continued tend
cies of seventeenth-century thought in which, under headings su
as gusto, ingenio, and agudeza, or finesse, delicatesse, and je
quoi, subtle sensitive modes of perception and judgment wer
eated that had been ignored or excluded by the new insistenc
reasoning grounded in clear and distinct ideas, which was co
to the poetics of classicism and the methodology of rationalism.
spirit of the "New Science" - what Pascal called "the intelligen
geometryJt - called forth this countermovement to complement
to compensate for its restrictive focus, sometimes even w i t h
ct these tendencies can be recognized as aesthetic in

int toward an analysis of the kinds of experience that
o be considered aesthetic, though it is significant that
f the beauty of nature or of art was not a primary constrain of thought. The main focus was experience and
gment of a sort which eluded formulation not only in rules but in
guage altogether and which dealt above all with the nuances d thus the substance - of social interaction. In this respect the
ings of Graciiin, MQC, Bouhours, and others studied in the first
of this essay continue a vein of the Italian Renaissance repred, above all, by CastiglioneJs Courtier.
e influence of the aesthetic dimension of Leibnizian thinlung
ed again after its largely unsuccessful consolidation as a philocal hscipline by Baumgarten, nonetheless attained a few sigant high points associated with the term "aesthetic," notably the
eption of aesthetic education developed by Friedrich Schiller
ose fundamental approach is far more Leibnizian than Kantian)
awing on Schiller, Charles S. Peirce's late reconstruction of
etics as the foundational normative science (underlying the
two, ethics and logic),concerned essentially with analyzing and
ng habits of feeling.2 The genesis of this intermittent tradition
aesthetics is our focus here.
ntroductory section on sentiment in the works of Pascal and the chevalier
in Jeffrey Barnouw, "Feeling in Enlightenment Aesthetics," Studies in
th-Century Culture (East Lansing, Mich.: Colleagues Press, I g88),vol. I 8,
42, which may be considered a premature sequel to the present essay.
ey Barnouw, "'Aesthetic' for Schiller and Peirce: A Neglected Origin of
atism," Iournal of the History 4 Ideas 49, no. 4 (Oct. 1988),607-32, repr. in
on the History of Aesthetics, ed. Peter Kivy, Library of the History of Ideas 5
ester: University of Rochester Press, 1992)~377-402; idem, "Aesthetics as
ve Science in Peirce: The Deliberate Formation of Habits of Feeling,"paper
the Charles Sanders Peirce Sesquicentennial International Congress in
m-
52
54
GUSTO, INGENIO, AND AGUDEZA
IN
GRACIAN
The concept of p s t o , which had come to mean taste in matters of

artistic judgment in the Italian Renai~sance,~
acquired a new sense
and prominence through the writings of the Spanish Jesuit Baltasar
Graciin in the 1640s~where gusto was often closer in meaning to
"tact" than "taste" (i.e., an intuitive capacity to understand a situation and act spontaneously, discreetly, and appropriately).As such,
gusto is the key to an art of worldly wisdom or prudence.4 Gusto for
GraciHn is a discriminative capacity (like discrecion) reaffirming the
common root meaning of Latin gustare and German kosten, "to try
Cambridge, Mass., Sept. 1989, w h c h was developed into 'The Place of Peirce's
'Esthetics' in His ~ h ~ u gand
h t in the Tradition of Aesthetics," in Peirce and Value
roads 6 (Amsterdam and Philadelphia: Benjamins,
Robert Klein, "Judgment and Taste in Cinquecen
Meaning: Essays on the Renaissance and Modern Art,
Wieseltier (New Yo&: Viking, rg7g), pp. 161-9, undert
mation of guidizio into gusto" or "stages of contact, and of s m ~ a n
tion, through which gusto gradually replaced guidizio." Another
discretio, which nearly took the place eventually claimed by gusto. What he concludes from this is, however, not clear. More relevant to our topi
mers, The Iudgment of Sense: Renaissance Naturalism and the R
(Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 1987). Summers focuse
on relations w h c h "are aesthetic in that they are determined by sense, by the
judgment of sense" (p. 8). He recognizes that "a long tradition of speculation concerning prerational sensate judgment" continued through the Renaissance to conto modem aesthetics when it was finally defined as such by
tribute
BaumgartenU(p. 22), and he discusses Leibniz and Baumgarten b
to "confused" "ideas" (pp. I 82-97).
4 ~1 orbculo manual y arte de prude~~cia
(1647)~
tran
including The Art of Worldly Wisdom, tr. Joseph Jac
culled aphorisms from his earlier works, El hkroe (1637)and El
Karl Borinski, Baltasar Glacibn und die Hoflitteratur in D
Niemeyer, 1a94),PP. 39-52, on Graciin's idea of gusto.
cnce to Graciin, he is following writers on taste in the late se
eighteenth century, who cite Gracian as originator. While he to
Friedrich Schummer remarks that scholars of that age were aware
authors such as Petronius, Cicero, and Quintillian had used the
gustare and sapor, sapere (cf. English savor, savvy, sapi
Sion to mean assessment and appreciation. He ar
"innovative" insofar as it obscured this classical aesthetic se
of taste as an aesthetic concept
seventeenth-century
ciin and indeed had to overcome his mfluence, while revivi
ing of the classical Latin terms. He bases this argument on
:
I
1-
or test."5 The background of the word "taste" (from Middle English

tasten, "to touch, test, taste"; and Old French taster, "to feel, try,
taste"; with a first meaning: "to become acquainted with by experience" or "to try or test by or as by the touch") shows a similar range
and suggests an etymological link to the Latin root of "tact" (tangere, "to touch"; I : "sensitive mental or aesthetic per~eption").~
An
experimental as well as experiential aspect is common to these
terms, an element of curiosity as in the German tasten.
p Gusto is a subtle mode of judgment that does not make use of
fixed general concepts and is attuned to the individual and the
unique. GraciHn treats gusto as roughly equivalent to genio and
iuicio (judgment), all of these terms designating a complement of
hgenio. This distinction does not imply an opposition, as Pascal's
between esprit de gkomhtrie and esprit de finesse does, so much as
the interdependence of two principal components of understanding
k'ftendimien to/:the art of prudence, where judgment and genjo are
crucial, and the art of acuity (agudeza)centered in ingenjo.7
Gracih's compendium of mannerist style (conceptismo],Arte de
hgeni0 (1642)~expanded as Agudeza y arte de jngenio (16~81,has
been treated almost exclusively as concerned wit. literary conceits,
but it has to do as Wellwith promptitude and penetration in speech
and action.' What is essential is being ready for any opportunity
I
concept of taste was not an aesthetic category. But this ignores the dramatic flux of
terms for mental functions in this period and the wide range of reference of concepts originating in the "theory" of conduct. Friedrich Schummer, "Die Entwicklung des Geschmacksbegriffsin der Philosophie des 17. und 18. Jahrhunderts,"
Archiv fur Begn'ffsgeschichte I (1955): 120-41.
Hellmut Jansen, Die Grundbegriffe des Baltasar Gracirin (Geneva: Droz, 19581,
P 66; and Friedrich Kluge, Etymologisches WdRerbuch der deu tschen Sprache
De Gru~ter,1957). P. 396: "erproben, priifend beschauen, versuchen,lt and
then "aussuchen/wiNen."
Webster's N e w Collegiate Dictionary (Springfield, Mass.: G. and C. Memam,
1973))PP. 1193 and 1186.
hsen1 Die Grundbegriffe, PP. 27-37, 4 4 Jansen sees genio as the basis or predisposition, ingenio as what one can make of it, but he also shows &t both are
, -turd
d t s and perfectible by art- In practice the difference seems to be that
between settled and spontaneous behavior.
"1d-1 PP 9, 41- See also Emst Robert Curtius, European fiterature and t6e Latin
Middle Ages (New York: Harper and ROW,19631, pp. 294-jo1. Acumen was linked
to ~ m d e n t i ain Cicero (p. 294), but Gracih supplemented classical rhetoric with a
discipline regarding "the faculty of acuteness" (p.298). The French translation
of Agudeza Y m e de ingenio by Michele Gendreau-Massalom and Pierre Laurens,
p"inte ou 1'al-t d u gknie (Paris: UNESCO, I983), renders aqudezo as la pointe,
'
they can be sensed by the discerning mind. There is a similar conception of "wit" (ingenium),contemporary with Graciin, in Hobbes.
In wit, Hobbes writes,
or occasion. Circumstances provide matter and motive energy to

ingenio. "Contingencies sollicit promptitude."g Conversely, the poetic heights of subtlety and vivacity require special circumstances "a rare contingency" - to justlfy and sustain them, without which
agudezas would be (as he repeatedly says) mere rhetorical devices.1
Gusto too applies to aesthetic as well as practical matters. Its range
is as broad as life, and in every area its role has a cognitive aspect.ll
Graciin writes of "objective subtleties," and acuteness is also not
simply a quality of the knowing subject. "Matter is the foundation
of hscourse; it gives rise to subtlety. The objective agudezas are
contained w i t h n the objects themselves." The concepto is not
merely a verbal conceit, but is also not a rational concept. "The wise
man forms conceptos of all things; he digs, with differentiation
[distincibn], where he finds a solid basis and substance, and thdks
there might be more to it than he thinks."l2
As a power of ingenio, ngudeza shows itself in the recognition of
correspondences between things, of the sort that lead to the formation not of concepts but of metaphors. The similarities and differences in question do not stand out as distinguishing marks, yet
though its introduction opens by remarking that it means, not witticism, " 'pointe
d'esprit', ni m2me l'esprit de pointe, que la pointe de l'esprit, ce qu'il y a en lui de
plus acere, et pknktrant: angle aigu de l'intellgence" (p. 17). Vico too plays this
angle, identifying ingenium as acute and relating it to a non-Cartesian physics of
"points" (TheAutobiography of Gimbattista Vico, tr. Max H. Fisch and Thomas
G. Bergin [Ithaca: Great Seal Books, 19631, pp. 148-52, and cf. 122-3; De nostri
temporis studionun ratione, ch. 4), the acute played off against Cartesian linearity.
The relation of Vico to Gracisn as well as to Tesauro and Pellegrini might be worth
investigating.
9 Graciin, Agudeza, chs. 7, 38, 45; La pointe, pp. 30, 83, 269, 300-1.
lo See La pointe, pp. 107, I I 1-2, 121-2, I 5 8, 219, 231, 227. He sometimes refers to
such occasions or the verbal responses to them as sublime. His "mannerist" or
"conceptist" poetics is usually, and understandably, related to English theories of
metaphysical wit, but Agudeza, with its emphasis on the poetic value of religious
ideas and the feelings they engender, also anticipates the poetics of John Dennis.
See JcffreyBamouw, "The Morality of the Sublime: To John Dennis," Comparative
Literature 35 (1983): 21-42.
11 Emdio Hidalgo-Sema, Das ingeniose Denken bei Baltasar Gracirin (Munich: Fink,
1985)~
establishes the connection of his idea of gusto to ingenio, agudeza, and his
much misunderstood wnceptismo, and refutes the claim of Borinslu, Schummer,
and Hans-Georg Gadamer (Wnhrheit und Methode ['Tlibingen: Mohr, 19601,
pp. 31-6) that gusto had an exclusively moral range of reference for GraciBn.
12 Graciin, Agudeza, chs. z and 62; La poinre, pp. 47 and 392; Ordculo, $35. See
Hidalgo-Sema, Das ingeniose Denken, pp. 98, 131, 91-2; cf. pp. I 13-48, on the
cognitive side of conceptismo in Agudeza.
57
quick ranging of mind . . is joined with curiosity of comparing the things

which come into the mind, one with another: in which comparison, a man
delighteth himself either with finding unexpected similitude of things, otherwise much unlike, in which men place the excellency of fancy, . or else
in discerning suddenly dissimilitude in things that otherwise appear the
same . . . [which] is commonly termed by the name of judgment: for, to
judge is nothng else, but to distinguish or discern: and both fancy and
judgment are commonly comprehendcd under the name of wit, which
seemeth to be a tenuity and a ~ l i t yof spirits.13
..
Judgment is a "sudden" discerning, construed in analogy to fancy (or

what will later be "wit" in a narrow sense) rather than in contrast to
it. Moreover, wit is significantly related to curiosity in Hobbes, who
like Gracih sees curiosity as the distinguishing trait of humanity.14
For Graciin the cognitive value of the concepto, of agudeza, and of
the "art of ingenio" is also closely linked to the role of curiosity and
novelty, wonder, and surprise in the gaining of knowledge. In the
dedication of El hbroe curiosity is said to be the distinctive trait of
man, spur of his ingenio; in El criticbn it is the mother of gusto.
"What was admirable yesterday is contemptible today, not because
'it has lost in perfection, but in appreciation, not because it has
changed, but because it has not. The wise restore civility of taste by
&aking new reflections on the old excellences, thus renewing taste
along with wonder." Gusto is identified with our appetite for life.15
' In another formulation the mother of gusto is not wonder but
a
multiplicity, which means the human need for variety, since Graciin elucidates this by saying that man is distinguished from beast
by the fact that this gusto leads him not to some particular sphere
a.
13.Human Nature, ch. 10, 54, in Hobbes, Body, Man, and Citizen, ed. Richard S.
Peters (New York: Collier, 1962).p. 237. This work was written ca. 1640 and first
publishedinr650.
. 14kSee Jeffrey Bamouw, "La curiosite chez Hobbes,'' Bulletin de la Socidtd frunpise
ij
r
de philosophe 82, no. 2 (Apr. 1988): 41-69; and idem, "Hobbes's Psychology of
j
,
1-
15
Thought: Endeavours, Purpose, and Curiosity," History of European Ideas 10, no. 5
(19891:519-45El critic61111651-7j, Part I, ch. 2, "The Great Theater of thc World," and see ch. 3
for curiosity as the mother of gusto. Hidalgo-Sema, Das ingeniose Denken,
PP. 150, 153; cf. PP- 13, 70-1, 97, 139-401 165.

but to the whole world. In chapter 2 of El criticdn, "The Great
Theater of the World," he varies the topos, best known from Giovanni Pico della Mirandola's Oration on the Dignity of Man, of man's
having no fixed sphere of life as the other animals do,lG linking
boundless appetite to gusto, which thus comes close to the sense it
has since acquired in English. The same chapter relates wonder,
curiosity, and knowledge in a way recalling Aristotle (aswe will see):
"We lack wonder [admiracidn]generally because we lack novelty,
and with it, attention."
An essential link between Gracihnls poetics or art of acuity and
his art of prudence or recommendations for social success is their
common foundation in a psychology of appetite or interest that
brings out the virtues of difficulty and incomplete satisfaction. In
both spheres the qualities he values can be felt but not defined,
known in their effects but not their causes, and one should accordingly reveal only glimpses of what one has to offer. Artistic or artful
self-expression in poetry, as in society, is partly a matter of selfconcealment as well as of concealing one's art or artifice. Knowledge
and enjoyment that cost something are all the more valued for that
and are greatest when still mixed with curiosity or desire. These
insights
should guide our control of others but also the management
of our own happiness.17
The importance of concealing one's art or artifice in social encounters was a recurring motif, under the heading of the newly
minted sprezzatura (nonchalance),in dastiglione's Courtier, which
anticipated Graci5n generally in establishing the analogy between
social comportment and artistic expression. In one passage at least
Castiglione also saw the advantage of not completely revealing - of
partly concealing - one's meaning or virtue or beauty:
[I]f the words used by the writer carry with them a certain, I will not say
difficulty but veiled subtlety, and so are not as familiar as those commonly
used in speech, they give what is written greater authority and cause the
16
17
Ernst Cassirer, Paul Oskar Kristeller, and John Herman Randall, Jr,, eds., The
Renaissance Philosophy of Man (Chicago: Phoenix Books, 1948)~
pp. 224-5.
Agudeza, chs. 7, 39; La pointe, pp. 79-80, 273. These related themes are insistent
in the Oraculo. See s, 19, 58, 68, 94, 170, 189, zoo, 212, 253, 277, 282, 299; The
Art of Worldly Wisdom, pp, ~ , I I - 1 234,
, 40, 55,101-2,114, 120, 128,152-3, 167,
170, 179. For economic metaphors in the psychology, see Werner Krauss, Gracidns
Lebenslehre (Frankfurt:Klostermann, 1947)~
pp. I I 3-21.
59
reader to be more attentive and aware, and so reflect more deeply and enjoy
the skill and message of the author; and by judiciously exerting himself a
little he experiences the pleasure that is to be had from accomplishing
Qff icul t tasks.18
'
'
Nonchalance, doing something difficult with apparent ease, unconcern, and even disdain (the original sense of sprezzo), is elucidated by
reference to the use of imperfect harmonies in music, which keep
the listener in a state of expectancy, and to Apelles's point in criticizing a painter "for finishing his work too thoroughly." The analogy
with social behavior may verge on fatuousness at times: delicate
hands, "uncovered at the right time, when there is a need to use and
not just to display them, leave one with a great desire to see more of
them."l9 But Castiglione counsels such tactical reserve in the display of all one's talents, since disguised self-promotion is crucial to
hls view of court life.
The similar advantage of subtlety, not to say dificulty, in the art of
writing was perhaps an incidental analogy for Castiglione, but it
became the dominant topic of mannerist poetics in Italy in the same
period as Gracian's Agudeza. In works such as Matteo Pellegrini,
Delle acutezze ( I 63 9), and Emanuele Tesauro, I1 cannocchiale aristelico (1655)~it was clear that this insight was drawn from Aristotlels justification of figural language, particularly metaphor, in his
Rhetoric. Pellegrini's work, as its subtitle said, was meant to illustrate the "Idea dell'arguta [acute]et ingeniosa elecutione," using the
"telescope" (i.e., the Rhetoric) of "the divine Aristotle." It is worth
asking in what ways Graciiin was different from Castiglione and
from Pellegrini and Tesauro.
Graciin is distinguished from Castiglione by the degree to whlch
hc is interested in the cognitive dimension of the subtleties of social
interaction. There is frequent reference in The Courtier to instinctive judgment, a fine judgment akin to grace, a discernment and
discretion that cannot be given rules, but Castiglione does not seek
18
19
Baldesar Castighone, The Book of the Courtier, tr. George Bull (Harmondsworth:
Penguin, 19671, p. 72. Castiglionehas Federico say this, but only afterdistinguishmg
writing from speaking (which requires clarity)and in answer to Count Lodovico da
Canossa, who had just said that "it is more important to make one's meaning clear
in writing than in speaking; because unlike someone listening, the reader is not
always [sic!Jpresent when the author is writing."
Ibid., pp. 69, 87; cf. pp. 67-8.
60
JEFFREY BARNOUW
to analyze or elucidate such ~apacities.~'

In another passage anticipating mannerist poetics he writes:
~h~~ good usage in speech . . . is established by men of hscemment who
through lcaming and experience have acquired Sound iudsment, which
enables them to agree among themselves and consent to accept those words
themselves to them, and these they recognize by means of
which
a certain instinctive judgement and not by any formula or rule- Do You not
realizethat these figures of speech which give such grace and clarity to what
of grammatical rules but are accepted and established
we say are all
by usage because (and this is the only possible reason) they are
The reference to instinctive judgment (the approval implicit in the

pleasure)is not a focus of inquiry for Castiglione, as it will be for
Gracih, but rather brings questioning to a halt. When kderico
claims that "it is sometimes allowable, in the service of one's n ~ a s ters, to kill not just one man but ten thousand, and to do many other
things which on a superficial view would appear evil although they
are not,uhe is asked to "teach us how to distinguish what is really
good fromwhat merely appears to be" and immediately begs off, "for
there would be too much to say. But let everything be decided by
your d i ~ c r e t i o n . " ~ ~
Tesauro, like Gracih a Jesuit, also focused on acuity (arguteuaor
acuteua)claiming that the ingenious could as well be called the
acute, but he gave acuity a narrower range of application^ largely
restricted to literary expression, because he saw it as a mode of
language use. He distinguished grammatical speech, which works
with concepts proper to their objects, from rhetorical, acute, or
nious speech, which introduces unaccustomed means of signification calling for acute or ingenious interpretation and thus adding
pleasure to the process of understanding. The acuity of the u n d e r l ~
ing perceptions does not get the attention it did in GraciAnLooking for indications of the role acuity might play in social life
(indications he said he could not find in the Cannocchiale or in
Pellegrini's ~ e f l aecutezza ),Uaus-Peter Lange discovered a promising adaptation of the grammatical/rhetorical distinction in Tesauro's
~ i l ~morale.
~ ~ Here
f i the
~ distinction is between serious and humorous speech (facetia),the latter being ingenious or acute speech in a
social context, w b c h Tesauro associates with urbanity and civilit%
20
E . ~ ibid..
- ~ pp. 63-4. 112-3.
2l
Ibid.. p. 80-
"
1bid.j P- 131.
61
following Aristotle's use of the term asteia in the Rhetoric

(~I~ro.141ob6).
Illustrating wit in the process of characterizing it, he
says it is beneficial for conservation (of the individual) and conversation (with others); it provides relaxation for the mind as rest does for
the body; and it fosters sociability. As Lange conveys it, Tesaurofs
account of how this works seems to miss the point of wit. He suggests
that the delight of one who produces an acute remark is expressed by a
, smile that has an effect on the heart of the listener, which would
bypass or even short-circuit the effect of the witty insight itself. Yet
this self-appreciation does serve to show that the free play of association of ideas and words is not consciousl~controlled by the agent,
who thus can experiencewonder or admiration at the results. Despite
suggestions that facetin enables us to learn as well as teach, Tesauro
carries over too little of Aristotlets interest in the cognitive aspects of
wit and metaphor.=
Graciint more than his Italian counterparts, pursues the acute and
ingenious as traits of mind which correspond to feamres of the
world*He gives greater prominence to learning by experience and
holds that taste or tact is in need of cultivation just as ingenio is; the
nurture of each is closely intertwined with that of the other. ~~~t~
must be refined continually and developed into a second nature.
Gracih's logic of subtle "ingenious" thinking and "science of good
taste"24 may thus be Seen as anticipating not only Baumgaten~s
aesthetics but even more SchillerJs idea of aesthetic education,
which was meant to refine the capacity of sense or feeling(Empfin.dung] that underpins Our convictions as well as our knowledge,
lnfoming our range of response in all facets of life.25
PASCAL A N D
MERE
Although the differencesfrom a scientific or mathematical model of

nowledge are left implicit, GracianJsconception of taste (tact],subK1aus-PeterLange, Theoretiker des literarischen Manierismus: Tesauros und pellegrim's Lehre VOn der "A cuteua" oder von der Macht der Sprnche (Munich:
~a.
19681. PP- 142-3, 148. 152-4. Tesauro's idea of unserious spealung anticipates
aspects of Schiller's understanding of play,
Graci5n1El h h e . ch. 5 i El discreto, ch. 5; Hidalgo-Serna, Das jngenibse Denken,
PP-1561 162, and cf. p. 170.
See Jeffrey Bamouw, "The Morality of the Sublime: Kant and Schiuerl.l studies in
Romanticism 19 (1980): 497-5 14. esp. pp. 513-14-
tlety, and acuity is similar to Pascal's roughly contemporaneous idea

of 1'esprit de finesse (the intelligence of subtlety), correlated with
j u g e m e n t and s e n t i m e n t , and contrasted with I'esprit de gdometrie.
Some few, Pascal says, accustom themselves to judge instantaneously
by s e n t i m e n t ("feeling," but perhaps also drawing on a secondary
meaning, "opinion"), instead of reasoning step by step according to
principles, although in fact the esprit, or intellect, reasons in such
judgment as well, "but tacitly, naturally, and without art." In effect
the concept esprit has split in two. Explicating the hstinction between the esprit de finesse and that of geometry, Pascal says that just
as true eloquence scorns the eloquence founded self-consciouslyon
rules, there is a morality of j u g e m e n t based in feeling which scorns
the morality of i n t e l l e ~ t . ~ ~
Finesse, like its variant ddlicatesse, favored by writers like SaintEvremond, who associates it with penetration and discernment as
well as with what is curieux and i n g b n i e w , depends on fine or
subtle &scriminations (and correlations) that can be learned but not
taught or systematized.27 L'esprit de finesse may well have been
personified for Pascal by his older friend the chevalier de Mert,
whose style of thought is epitomized in his differentiation of two
divergent aspects w i t h the neoclassical ideal of justesse which
moves it (at least partly) out of the range of rules or explanations:
The first depends less on esprit and intelligence than on taste and sentiment; and if esprit does contribute to it (if 1 may say it in this way), it is an
esprit of taste and sentiment: I have no other terms to explain more clearly
this I know not what of wisdom and adroitness which always knows what is
fitting. . . The other justesse consists in the true relation which one thing
should have with another.28
Blaise Pascal. Pensdes (Paris: Gamier, 1961))pp. 73-5 (nos. 1-4 in the Brunschvicg
ordering),Oeuvres complttes, ed L. Lafuma (I'aris: Seuil, I 9631, p. 576 (nos. 5 12-13
in the Lafuma ordering). Pascal's focus was less political or social conduct than
practical orientation in ethics and religion. But he sounds like Graciin in no. 6,
p. 76: "On sr forme l'esprit et le scntiment par les conversations." Cf. Orhculo.
518; "Es muy eficaz el trato, - communicanse las costumbres y 10s gustos; ptigase
el genio y el ingenio, sin sentir." And Gracih would agree with what Pascal adds:
"On se g5te I'esprit et le sentiment pas les conversations. . . . Il import donc de
tout de bien s a i i r choisir."
27 Quentin M. Hope, Soint-Evremond: The Honnbte Homme as Critic (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 1962)~pp. 87-97.
28 Le chevaher de MCre, "De la justesse," Oeuvres compldtes, ed. Ch.-H. Boudhors
(Paris: Fernand Roches, 1930)~I, p. 96.
26
63
As in Pascal the point is not to develop a simple dlchotorny opposing
feeling to intelligence but rather to suggest that there is also a kind
of intelligence in which feeling plays a crucial role and that where
feeling assumes such a role, a lund of intelligence is at work.
The phrase "this I know not what of wisdom and adroitness" is a
characteristic locution for Mere. "I know not what" recurs throughout his writings but significantly never becomes focal for him. Its
use expresses his tacit concern not to reduce things to the cut and
b e d . In the first of the Conversations with the marechal de Clerambault (his first work, published in 1668-9, when he was over
sixty) there are no less than six places where he uses the expression.
Ladies are said to want to preserve "I know not what of modesty,
which gives rise to respect." There is "I know not what of the free
and easy that has better effect" in conversation than insistent
witticisms. "When one speaks, there comes from the esprit and
sentiment I know not what of the naive which clings to our words"
but which cannot be carried over in speaking a foreign language.29In
these examples the quality of not quite knowing seems in harmony
with the quality not quite known.
This does not mean it is always a quality Mere approves of. False
gallantry shows itself, the chevalier says, in "I know not what of
brdhance, which can surprise" in an unwanted way, though he concedes that an h o n n z t e homme who lacks gallantry sometimes cannot find a graceful way of insinuating what he has to say into the
conversation, even though it is full of bon sens. The marechal answers that women do not want good sense in such a setting but
rather "that I know not what of piquancy," which teases without
embarrassing. Finally, the chevalier counters that brilliance can
soon become tiresome, and the more intelligent lades much prefer *
"I know not what further reserve [deplus retenu]."3O
The expression "je ne sais quoit' was hackneyed before Mkre took
it up. Erich Kohler has surveyed its vicissitudes, alluding to twin
$sourcesin an urbane nescio qw'd of Cicero and the nescio quadof
29
30
,
-'
Ibid., pp. 8, 9, 11.

Ibid., pp. 18, 20, 21. See also p. 55: moral education is a matter of developing a
delicate goust for agrdments so that a child can judge "by I know not what feeling
that is quicker and often more accurate than reflection." (Alltranslations from the
Oeuvres compldtes are my own.] Other instances in the Conversations are pp. 23,
251 26, 29, 30, 321 40. 461 73' 77r 82, 851 87-81 and 89.
mystical ineffability going back to Augustine, and he finds that the

je ne sais quoi of prbciositb &d not survive satire like Boileau's Les
hbroes de romans (1664) or criticism like that of ltabb6 dthlly:
"Words such as 'sympathy,' 'I know not what,' and 'occult qualities'
do not mean anything; . . . men invented them in order to say something when they lacked reasons and did not know what to say.If3l
The Influence of scruples carried over from scientific debate is
apparent in the association with "occult qualities." A poem describing l'honnete maitresse attributed her appeal not only to an I know
not what that was hardly expressible but also to "hidden and internal perfections," "occult properties . . which are only recognizable
by the effects they pr0duce."3~But with the ascendancy of Newton,
however, a conception of the new science came to predominate that
restored a good conscience to such ways of knowing. As we will soon
see, the je ne sais quoi also became a topic of inquiry in its own
right .33
It is worth pursuing what may seem a trivial expression in MQC
because the je ne sais quoi will be of focal interest in Bouhours and
subtly important in Leibniz. Mere invokes it whenever he wants to
suggest a gap between what can be felt and what can be formulated
in words. But this is far from mystical ineffability, since for him the
mark of a noble and perfect manner of expression (de s'expliquer) is
"to let certain t h g s be understood without saying them." "One's
meaning extends further than one's words.'"4 Similarly the best
painters "give exercise to the imagination and leave more to be
inferred of a thing than they show of it.I135 Images, like words, can
convey more than they make explicit. MCrC found a similar quality
.
Erich Kohler "le ne sais quoi: Ein Kapitel aus der Begrdfsgeschichte des Unbegreiflichen,"Romanistisches /uhrbuch 6 (1953-4): 21-59, esp. pp. 30-31 Particularly with regard to M&rCKohler repeatedly hypostatizes the je ne sais quoi as an
unknowable Ding an sich, different in each case.
32 Couvray, L'honndte maitresse of 1654, quoted by Kijhler, "/ene sais quoi." p. 26.
33 There had been an address by Gombauld devoted to the je ne sais quoi before the
fledglurg French Academy in 1635 w h c h must have reflected the attitudes of the
HGtel de Rambouillet and been close in spirit to Mere.
34 Mere, Oeuvres complktes, I, p. 62. Samuel Sorbiere praised Mere in just such
terms as "un esprit delicat, qui touche finement les choses, et les laisse presque
toutcs deviner" (quoted in the notes, I, 159).
35 Ibid., p. 63. Cf. 111, p. 83: "In those paintings of Apelles which were only sketched
therc was an I know not what which charmed but was not to be found once they
were finished."
31
6s
in "what they call fagonner"; "Les f a ~ o n should
s
tend only to signify delicately and gracefully what must only be in~inuated."~G
Analogously the writer or artist should not deliberately seek to
create such effects but should concentrate on the object, on "thinking well," since "good discernment for things" entails "the delicacy
of feeling which makes for delicacy of language."S7 The same hidden
causes operate in the expression as in the understanding of meaning,
and something analogous takes place in aesthetic perception. The
judgments and pleasures of taste are matters of "agrbment," a correspondence between what pleases and the "natural feelings" of the
individual it is pleasing to, as Pascal too had argued. A g r i m e n t is an
agreement between subject and object at a subliminal level underlying overt perception, "a proportion w h c h charms without one pere
a short work called
ceiving where it comes f r ~ m . " ~ W k rwrote
"Les agrtments" in which he referred to them as "I know not what
that can be felt but not explained." They are themselves difficult to
perceive, "but the almost imperceptible agrbments do not fail to
produce a great effect, and it is they that touch the most.'Gg
"The ancients represented the Graces as delicate in order to
suggest that what pleases consists in almost imperceptible things,
as . . . in I know not what that easily escapes and which one can no
longer find as soon as one searches for it."40 This elusive quality
characterizes many facets of the social aesthetic of the period, and
the je ne sais quoi is repeatedly associated with grace, not only in
the sense made popular by Castiglione's Courtier but in the theological sense as well. This is a topic for a separate paper. One last
: variation on the theme may round out this proto-aesthetic interest
in barely perceptible and therefore powerful qualities, which tended
increasingly to become an interest in the qualities of perception
itself.
Jean-Louis Guez de Balzac, the friend and mentor of Mer6, used
'
'36
E. 1
Ibid., 4 p. 13. MCrC insists that "what one tries to understand by facons is only too
real and effective."He uses the neologism "nuances" similarly (ibid., I, p. 74, cf.
\.
p. 162; 11, pp. 19 and 104, "je ne sqay quelles nuances. . . .").
Ibid., I, p. 73.
Ibid., pp. 73, 72. Cf. Pascal, Pensdes, pp. 80- I, nos. 32-3, Brunschvicg ordering
37
. 38
!
39
(nos. 585-6, Lafuma ordering).

Mere, Oeuvres complktes, 11, pp.
Ibid., pp. 14- I 5 .
12,
19.

much the same terms in 1644 to characterize the quality for which
he coined the term "urbanity," "a scarcely perceptible impression
w h c h can be recognized only by chance, . . . it can be felt but not
seen and inspires a secret gknie which one loses by seeking, or taken
in a broader sense, it is the science of conversation," and finally "an
adroitness [adresse]at touching l'esprit by I know not what piquancy, the sting Ipiqzire] of which is agreeable to him who receives it
because it tickles but does not injure and leaves a painless spur"
which awakens l'esprit to a ~ t i o n . ~ l
Many of h s contemporaries, including Balzac, testified to the
,~~
fascination exercised by Mere in his letters and c o n ~ e r s a t i o nbut
now he often seems only fatuous when he holds forth on the fine
points of being an honnite homme. His relation to Pascal shows up
the limitations of his merely mondaine conception of finesse and his
blindness to a significant scientific source of I know not what. Both
men associated the esprit de finesse with the social-aesthetic orientation of the honnBte homme, characterized by the absence of any
~ ~ Mkrk
narrowness reflecting professional s p e ~ i a l i z a t i o n . But
claimed Pascal had only an esprit de gbometrie until a trip threw h m
together with Mere, Du Vair, and other worldly men who opened the
world of taste and feeling to him, giving h m "un tout autre esprit." In
effect Mere presents Pascal's experience as a quasi-religious conversion to worldliness ("dazzled by such vivid light") leading him to
abjure mathernati~s.4~
41
42
43
44
Quoted from Balzac's second Discours in E. B. 0. Borgerhoff, The Freedom of

French Classicism (Princeton: Princeton University Press, I 9SO),pp. 10- I. Cf. Les
oeuvres de Monsieur le Chevalier dc Mkrd (Amsterdam: Mortier, 16921, 11,
pp. 165-6: "J'espere, Madame, qu'enfin vous donnerez cours B ce nouveau mot
dlurbanitC que Balzac avec sa grande tloquence ne pQ mettre en usage." He recalls
that he and she havc discussed it at length and affirms that it "consiste en je ne
sgay quoy de civil & de poli, je ne sCay quoy de railleur & de flateur tout ensemble."
Gerhard Hess begins his insightful essay "Wege des Humanismus im Frankreich
des 17. jahrhunderts, 11. Mtrt," Romanische Forschungen 53 (1939): 262-99, with
a 1646 letter from Balzac to M&rd,"Je reconnois une puissance secrete qui agit sur
moy, et il est ues-vray que je ne vous ay jamais veG, ny n'ay jamais songC a vous, qu
je n'aye senti je ne sgay quoy qui m'a chatoiilll6 le coeur."
MCrC, Oeuvres compl&tes,I, p. 11: "un honneste homme n'a point de mestier."
Pascal, Pensees, p. 81, no. 35, Brunschvicg ordering (no. 647, Lafuma ordering), on
l'honnbte homme; cf. p. 86, no. 68 (no. 778).
Mdrt, "De l'esprit," Oeuvres compl8tes, 11, pp. 86-8: "C'estoit un grand Mathematicien, qui ne s~avoitque cela . . . qui n'avoit ny goust, ny sentiment." "Depuis
ce voyage, il ne songea plus aux Mathematiques qui l'avoient toiljours occupt5, et
ce fut 15 cornme son abjuration."
67
Mere's account (which has generally been taken to refer to Pascal

but is highly stylized, not to say "fictionalized") emphasizes that
, this other esprit is a matter of knowledge. In context in hls "De
l'esprit" it serves to illustrate Mere's idea that learning is based in
pleasure. Pascal's illumination showed that insight can be propa~
makes us attentive and recep: gated i n s t a n t a n e o u s l y . 4 ~pleasure
' tive, learning proceeds exponentially when the matter gives us pleasure. "If study is boring, it is not the sort that leads to esprit." "Only
esprit can give rise to esprit." All men have a natural desire to know,
particularly to know causes, and the good teacher gives his pupil
"the reason for the least of things. Because there is always a natural
cause, even if complicated, which makes one way better than another."46 It was a fascination with such finesse that allegedly rescued Pascal from mathematics.
It was Mere who introduced Pascal to the "doctrine of chances"
,
and the rule of hstributions (rkgle des partis), two problems emergi ing from his gambling which led to the development of mathematical probability theory, and he had definite pretensions to scientlfic understanding and even a~hievement.~'
His letter to Pascal
(publishedafter Pascal's death, probably in altered form) presented a
There is a paragraph in the biography of Pascal by his sister which alludes to this
episode or cpoch in his life. "Le voilh donc dans le monde: il se trouva plusieurs
fois B la Cour, oh des personnages qui ktaient consommeCs remarquerent qu'il en
prit d'abord l'air et les manieres avec autant d'agrdment que s'il y cfit i.tC nourri
toute sa vie. I1 est vrai que, quand il parlait du monde il en developpait si bien tous
les ressorts qu'il etait trks capable de les rcmuer et de sc porter A toutes les choses
qulil fallait faire pour sty accornmoder, autant qulil le trouverait raisonnablel'
k
(Pascal, Oeuvres compldtes, ed. L. Lafuma, p. 21).
4 Mtr6, Oeuvres complktes, 11, pp. 85-9. His treatment of the natural desire to
know, epitomized in the pleasure we take simply in seeing things [p. 86, and of the
1 connection between teaclung and knowledge by way of causes (p. 89) - of which
Pascal's story is an illustration - is clearly Aristotelian. See the excursus below on
Aristotlc.
47 See MLrCnsletter to Pascal in MLrt, Oeuvres [Paris, 16y2, II, 63; "Vous spvez que
1 j'ay decouvert dans les Mathernatiques des choses si rares que les plus sipvans des
anciens nlen ont jamais rien dit, & desquelles les meilleurs Mathematiciens de
llEurope ont estt surpris; Vous avez 6crit sur mes inventions aussi-bien que Mon;
sieur Huguens [Huygens], Monsieur de Fermac [Ferrnat]& tant d'autres qui les ont
f
admirkes." Pascal wrote to Ferrnat, 29 July 1654, that many people had been able to
find "la mtthode des dCs" or rule of chances with dice, including MCrC, "who first
proposed these questions," but that MCrC could not discover the rule of hstribui
tions (Pascal, Oeuvres complktes, ed. Lafurna, p. 43). But cf. ibid., p. 659' Huygens
in his /ournu1 on 30 December 1660, referring to MCrC as "inventeur des panis
dans le ieu.',
45
1
11
1
I
confrontation of the intelligence of geometry and that of finesse,

focusing on their hsagreement about infinite divisibility (whether
of physical bodies or space or geometrical entities was part of the
problem), which hinged on Mkrt's refusal or inability to disengage
conception (what can be conceived) from sensuous imagination.
Some of h s objections are not easily answered, and it seems likely
that Pascal is responding to them in the fragmentary De I'esprit
gbomdtrique. This cannot be gone into here, but it is worth noting
that what Pascal calls the infinity of petitesse (a marvel "of nature,"
i.e., physical as well as mathematical and made more easily conceivable by the microscope) anticipates the je ne sais quoi of Leibnizls
minute perceptions.
Pascal took this incapacity to conceive of the infinitely small as a
mark of the one-sidedness of MQtts idea of finesse.48 Mere rejected
the infinitely small because it conflicted with natural feeling and
bon sens, a reflection of h s conviction that "one only knows well
what one sees distinctly."49 The limit of his celebrated penetration
was the almost imperceptible. Conversely, it was Pascal, the master
of the distinct, the basis of geometrical method, who reached deeper
into our cognitive reliance on feeling and finesse, the imperceptible
and the infinitesimal. In t h s constellation he again points forward
to that other pioneer of probability theory and the grandfather of
"aesthetics," Leibniz.
69
be sufficient. Dominique Bouhours, a French Jesuit, devoted a chapter
of his Entretiens d'Ariste et d'Eugdne to another key notion of
:
the nascent aesthetics, the je n e sais quoi, not as a quality associated
with works of art or things of beauty, but mainly as an essential
element of personal appeal. This "I know not what" is a capacity
both of pleasing and of being pleased, "the most exquisite feeling of
the soul for whatever makes an impression upon it." At the same
time it is almost unconscious in its operation, not a power we control: "it is so delicate and imperceptible that it escapes the most
penetrating and subtle intelligence."
What this means is that we sense or feel the effect but cannot
perceive the cause, and this is because it operates so swiftly. Even
stones become invisible if they fly fast enough through the air, so we
should not be surprised if the trait which strikes the soul cannot be
perceived (ne se puisse apercevoir) since one does not have the time
,
to notice it (leremarquer).The je ne sais quoi "produces its effect in
1 the shortest of all moment^,'^ particularly its effect on the heart.50
1 If one could perceive the source of this effect, the effect itself
would be undermined. The mystery of the je n e sais quoi is also its
essence. The same seems to hold for the chain of effects that it
, engenders, for the "I know not whats" of beauty and ugliness excite
in us "I know not whats" of inclination or aversion that reason cannot
grasp and the will cannot control. "These are the first movements
;
which anticipate reflection and liberty." Lllungs and dislikmgs thus
! seem to be formed in an instant, yet Ariste, who affirms this, thinks it
F: consistent with the doctrine of the scholastic philosophers who say
I
IN BOUHOURS
Other examples could be offered of this proto-aesthetic that ranged

over all of practical and cultural life as the appropriate mode of
thinking and knowing, but one more substantial illustration should
AS Pascal wrote to Fermat in the letter quoted above, the Miculty of the proof of
lnhnite divisibility astonished Mkre, "car il a tres bon esprit, mais il n'est pas
gkomktre (c'estcornme vous savez, un grand dCfaut)"(p.45).If you could make him
understand how a mathematical line is infinitely divisible, Pascal adds, you would
render him perfect. As it is he is one of "ces esprits fins qui ne sont que h s , ne
peuvent avoir la patience de descendre jusque dans les premiers principes des
choses sp6culatives et d'imagination qu'ils n'ont jamais vues dans le monde et
tout a fait hors d'usage." Pierre Viyit, L'honndte homme au XVII' sikcle: Le
p. 49.
Chevalier de M h e (Paris: Chiberre, 1922)~
49 Mere, Oeuvres compl8tes, I, p. 69, and cf. pp. 24, I I I .
48
[ that the will can only love what has first been known by the under: standing. The connection between this kind of knowing (where the
1 efficacious traits are not known in their own right) and will or affec: tion is instantaneous and imperceptible. We know that our affections
and inclinations are well founded but cannot say how.51

These dialogues, published in I 67 I, the year Leibniz came to Paris,
50
Bouhours, Entretiens d'Ariste et dDEug8ne(Paris: Bossard, ~ g z o Jpp.

, 194-213
51
(quotationshorn pp. 196, 199-201). An English translation of this chapter is found

in The Continental Model, ed. Scott Elledge and Donald Schier (Ithaca: Cornell
University Press, 1970)~
pp. 182-92, which I have used but revised where needed.
Here, pp. 183-5. See also Borgerhoff, The Freedom of French Classicism,
pp. 186-200, on the je ne sais quoi in Bouhours.
Entretiens, pp. 204, 199, 207; Continental Model, pp. 187, 184, 189.
i
'.
r,
70
can be seen as anticipating one of Leibniz's most characteristic ideas,

the doctrine of "minute perceptionsff(from another angle, "minute
appetitions" or "minute solicitations"), w h c h he will make use of
even in the analysis of sensation. The je ne sais quoi is a dim
awareness of a cause which escapes notice but is known by its effects,
and these effects are as relevant to knowledge or discernment as they
are to affection.
"The expression of the face which distinguishes one person from a
hundred thousand others is such a quality, being very noticeable and
yet very difficult to describe, for who has ever clearly distinguished
the features and the lineaments in which that difference precisely
resides?"52 The interest here is in what we know but cannot express
in words, or more precisely, what it is (the notae or marques) that
enables us to discriminate and recognize but itself eludes specification. Physiognomic perception still poses fruitful problems for psychology, but the operation which Bouhours is concerned with is
broader.
Thus he goes on to offer examples from symptoms of diseases and
from other natural effects such as the tides and magnetism where
science has been led to suppose the operation of occult causes.
"Nature, as well as art, is careful to hide the cause of extraorhnary
movements; one sees the machine and observes it with pleasure, but
one does not see the spring which makes it work."53 There is an
interesting parallel in Bouhoursfs later work, La mani2re de bien
penser duns les ouvrages d'esprit, where he answers the question
"what, precisely, is delicacy?" The delicacy of thoughts characterizing imaginative works is best understood, he says, by analogy with
nature, that is, where nature works, as Pliny said, in minimis "and
where the matter almost imperceptible makes us doubt whether she
~~
of thoughts
has a Mind to show or hide her A d d r e s ~ . "Delicacy
analogously conveys much in few words and induces us to interpret
their half-hdden sense. It "keeps us in suspense to give us the pleasure of discovering it all at once, when we have knowledge enough,"
just as microscopes improve our vision such that we can see nature's
s2 Entretiens. p. 207; Continental Model, p. 189.
53 Entretiens, pp. 199-200; Continental Model, p. 185.
s4 Bouhoursl The A n of Criticism, or the Method of Markng a right ludgrn ent upon
Subjects of Wit and Learning (London, 1705; repr., Delmar' N.Y.: Scholars' Fac-
sides, 1 9 8 1 ) pp.
~ 110-1.
,
,
6
j
;
11
71
finest workings, like the structure of an almost invisible insect.

Here the idea that the charm would be lost once the cause were seen
seems to have been abandoned. Still the delicacy of thought and the
bien penser of the work's title essentially deal with phenomena that
partly manifest and partly obscure the underlying reality, with effects that depend on our not being distinctly aware of their causes.
When Bouhours applies the je ne sais quoi to art in the earlier
work, he prefaces the discussion in a way that makes it seem an
innovation. Acting as a foil for the more "sensitive" Ariste, Eugkne
says, "At least the je ne sais quoi is restricted to natural phenomena
for, as far as works of art are concerned, all their beauties are evident
and their capacity to please is perfectly understandable." Ariste answers that the same ineffable effect is found in certain paintings and
statues that appear almost alive, that seem to lack only speech and
indeed sometimes seem even to speak to us. This effect is apparently
linked with the human figure, however, and not attributed to the
power of art generally. Earlier Ariste claimed one could neither explain or depict the je ne sais quoi of a human visage; a portrait never
led anyone to love the person portrayed.
It is worth noting, then, that in the later work, La maniere de bien
penser, Bouhours delineates a mode of thinking proper to works of
esprit, that is, literary or imaginative writings. The term esprit has
in effect changed sides from its position in Pascal's dichotomy, no
longer meaning intellect, a shlft paralleled in the semantic career of
the equivalent English word "wit," which was also the word used to
translate the Latin term ingenium and Graciin's ingenio. In the
same sense acuity of conceit degenerated, in some writers, into
being witty. But esprit in Bouhours has taken a more particular
meaning without sacrificing its h g h level or cognitive import.
Moreover, despite the English translation of the title,55 Bouhours is
delineating a mode of thinking - different from discursive reasoning

- found in works of esprit.
In the first dialogue of La mani2re de bien penser, Eudoxe, who
ii favors
the ancients, debates with Phlanthe, proponent of the modem Italian and Spanish taste, whether a thought that shows esprit
needs a foundation on truth or a charming admixture of falsehood that is, fictions, ambiguities, hyperboles, and other figures that are
i1
i
55
See the preceding note.
72
JEFFREY BARNOUW
little more than lies. Eudoxe argues that such fiction must still be
probable and have some truth hidden in it and eventually convinces
Philanthe that truth is broader than he thought, "since it may agree
with equivocal expressions in matters of wit." Along the way, however, Philanthe has related esprit to the Italian ingegno and agudeza,
continuing in the same sentence, "Aristotle reduces almost the
whole art of thinking ingeniously to the metaphor, which is a kind
of fraud, and Count Tesauro says, according to that philosopher's
principles, that the subtlest and the finest thoughts are only figurative enthymemes, which equally please and impose upon the understanding."56 Aristotle's Rhetoric is again recognized as the source
of the idea that works of imagination embody a kind of thinking
patterned after but differing from and even violating demonstrative
reasoning.
It is not evident that either partner prevails in the dialogue, since
Eudoxe vindicates truth as a requisite of works of esprit only by
recognizing that it is a kind of truth proper to such works. Metaphor
has a truth of its own, as Philanthe concludes, and may be needed for
the presentation of any truth. Like Gracih, Bouhours insists that
novelty plays an essential role in advancing knowledge, that it is not
enough for truth to content the mind, but there must be something
wluch strikes and surprises it. Ingenious thinlung is intertwined
with curiosity and admiration or wonder. If the thoughts be not new
("it would be hard to say riothing but what is newU),57they should at
least be uncommon or "the way of turning them at least should be
so." This idea was nothing new.
by metaphor, and by the further power of surprising the hearer;

because the hearer expected something different, his acquisition of
the new idea impresses him all the more." For Aristotle the pleasure
of metaphor is tied up with that of learning, which entails active
participation and effort, but not strenuous exertion. "Both speech
and reasoning are lively in proportion as they make us seize a new
idea promptly," and people are not taken either with the obvious or
with the obscure, but with arguments "which convey their information to us as soon as we hear them, provided we had not the d o n n a tion already, or which the mind only just fails to keep up with."58
Aristotle has a similar explanation of the effect achieved by an
enthymeme, that is, the abbreviated rhetorical version of the syllogism (just as the example is the equivalent in rhetoric of the other
mode of reasoning in logic, induction). Enthymemes are the body of
rhetorical persuasion, which is a sort of demonstration, for Aristotle, and thus enthymemes are a sort of syllogism, appropriate in
matters concerned not with the truth but with what is like the
truth, that is, the probable.
The enthymeme has an effectiveness which the syllogism does
not, since it omits mention of propositions or premises that can be
assumed or taken for granted and takes its point of departure in
notions already accepted. "It is this simplicity that makes the uneducated more effective than the educated when addressing popular
audiences . . educated men lay down broad general principles; uneducated men argue from common knowledge." Beyond such simplicity, it is important for the audience to think along with the
speaker, supplying the parts of the argument that are not spelled out
and seemingly coming to the intended conclusion on their own.S9
EXCURSUS ON ARISTOTLE
That metaphor heightens attention and interest through its deviation from normal accustomed language is a point Aristotle makes
repeatedly in both the Rhetoric and the Poetics. But the cognitive
implications of this are drawn out in the concluding book of the
Rhetoric, where he writes that "we all naturally find it agreeable to
get hold of new ideas easily, [and] it is from metaphor that we can
best get hold of something fresh." "Liveliness is specially conveyed
56
57
Ibid., pp. 7-8, 1 1 , 17, 51-2. Part of thls first chapter is included in Continental
Model, pp. 193-205; here, pp. 197, zoo, and 204.
Art of Criticism, p. 5 I .
73
58
i:
j
59
Rhetoric, IU.10.1404b6-1z, 141ob1o-I 3, 141za17, 141obzo-26; on the pleasure

associated with change, and accordingly with wonder and lcaming new things, see
I 37 1az5-34. I quote the W. Rhys Roberts translation from The Works of Aristotle.
ed. W. D. Ross (Oxford: Clarendon Press, n.d.1, citing the Bekker marginal page
numbers.
Ibid., 1354a14, I 35sa4-17, 1357a1z-18, I 395 b2z-33. Referring to enthymemes
(as syllogisms), Aristotle writes that "those are most applauded of which we foresee the conclusions from the beginning, so long as they are not obvious at first
sight - for part of the pleasure we feel is at our own intelligent anticipation; or
those which we follow well enough to see the point of them as soon as the last
word has been uttered" (1400bz9-34). Bouhours says more pleasure is given when
hearers or readers are allowed to complete thoughts on their own, whereas spelling
everything out awakens resentment.
74
Enthymeme like metaphor steers a course between the obvious and

the obscure, mingling the attractions of clarity and curiosity.
In both the Rhetoric and the Poetics he considers metaphor the
chief resource of diction, and in each case this points beyond style to
a cognitive capacity. "But the greatest thing by far is to be master of
metaphor. It is the one thing that cannot be learned from others; and
it is also a sign of genius, since a good metaphor implies an intuitive
perception of the similarity in dissimilars." "Metaphors must be
drawn from things that are related to the original thing, and yet not
obviously so related - just as in philosophy also an acute mind will
perceive resemblances even in things far apart."60 GraciBntsagudeza
seems to have taken its original hint here, as did the corresponding
conception of ingenio, esprit, or 'wit' in the innovative sense of a
particular "acute" faculty - contradistinguished from judgment which perceives subtle resemblances and correspondences.
The importance of Aristotle's Rhetoric for the seventeenthcentury developments we have briefly considered does not consist
simply in particular affinities or borrowings, however, but concerns
the general intellectual and cultural role which the "logic" of taste
or aesthetics in Baumgarten's sense tried to take on. Aristotle had
conceived his rhetoric on the model of his logic of demonstrative
reasoning, construing the enthymeme as a weak sort of syllogism
appropriate to matters in which probable knowledge had to serve
because necessary knowledge could not be had. Aristotle's main
intention was to reform rhetoric, however, to give it cognitive interest by shifting its focus from techniques of persuasion to grounds
of persuasion, and not so much to develop a logic of probable reasoning in its own right. The epistemological side of rhetoric was also
scarcely pursued after Aristotle. The preponderance he gave to demonstrative reasoning, out of all proportion with the role it plays in
science, the science of his day or ours - to say nothing of its role in
human life - left the task of clarifying the principles and methods
of empirical knowledge in its shadow for almost two millennia.
"Aesthetics" seems originally to have been conceived in part to fill
this need.
60
Poetics, 1459a5-8, tr. Igram Bywater, in Works, ed. Ross; cf. Rhetoric, 140537-10,
1412a9-12.
AESTHETICS I N BAUMGARTEN'S
-
'
SENSE
In his I 73 5 dissertation the twenty-one-year-old Baumgarten maintained that poetry represented a sensuous mode of knowledge
complementary to the rational mode characteristic of philosophy.
Poetics, the discipline concerned with "sensuous discourse," presupposed sensuous "ideas" (representationessensitivae, mental representations in thc sense of "ideaft established by Descartes and
Locke) and a "lower cognitive faculty" that traditional logic, oriented exclusively to rational knowing, had neglected. The distinction between two levels in the cognitive powers was in fact a recent
innovation of Christian Wolff, who assigned knowledge founded
in distinct ideas to the hgher and that founded only in indistinct
ideas to the lower. But what Baumgarten meant was that nondemonstrative logic regarding empirical knowledge based in sense
perception had yet to be founded.
In the closing paragraphs Baumgarten called for a new science,
based on principles provided by psychology, "which might direct the
lower cognitive faculty in knowing things sensately," just as logic
guides intellectual or rational cognition. Referring to the classical
Greek opposition between aistheta (things perceived) and noeta
(thngs known), and identifying the latter with the object of logic,
Baumgarten dubbed the new science aesthetica, the discipline of
aisthesis, or sensuous knowing, including not only sense perception
but sensuous imagination. In his later lectures on aesthetics Baumgarten projected the idea of "confusion" back into the Greek origins
of his term aesthetica: "in Plato aistheta are opposed to noetois as
indistinct to distinct representations." "As they made logike from
logikos, the distinct, so from aisthetos we make aisthetike, the science of all that is s e n s u ~ u s . " ~ ~
Baumgarten referred to aesthetica in his first major work, the
61
75
A. G. Baumgarten, Medtationes phdosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus, tr. H. Paetzold as Philosophische Betrachtungen iiber einige Bedingwen
des Gedchtes (Hamburg: Meiner, 1983)~
pp. 84-7; Reflections on Poetry, tr. Karl
Aschenbrenncr and W. B. Holther (Berkeleyand Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1 9 ~ 4pp.
) ~38-9, 77-8. For the lecture notes, see Baumgarten, Texte zur
Grundlegung der Aesthetik, rd. Hans Rudolf Schweizer (Hamburg:Meiner, 19831,
PP. 79-80.
allusion to a then fashionable topos. In the earlier text he used it as

an analogy to illustrate the confused nature of sensation. We cannot
explain to a blind man what red isj it has to be experienced. But the
"idea" of red is not for that reason logically simple:
Metaphysica of 1739 (inPart 3, dealing with empirical psychology),as

the science of knowing and presenting what one knows sensuously
(sensitive cognoscendi et proponendi). The Leibnizian background of
'
this notion had been made clear in earlier paragraphs where
repraesentatio non distincta was called sensitiva, after "confused

thinking" (confusecogito)had been defined as that in which one does
not distinguish the marks (notns) of the object of thought.62 AS
[Tlhe concepts of these qualities are composite and can be resolved, for they
certainly have their causes. Likewise we sometimes see painters and other
artists correctly judge what has been done well or done badly; yet they are
often unable to give a reason for their judgment but tell the inquirer that the
work which displeases them lacks "something, I know not what."ss
Leibniz had originally explained this:

Knowledge is clear, therefore, when it makes it possible for me to recognize
the thing represented. Clear knowledge, in turn, is either confused or distinct. It is confused when I cannot enumerate one by one the marks [notasj
which are sufficicnt to distinguish the thing from others, even though the
thing may in truth have such marks and constituents into which its concept
[notio] can be resolved. Thus we know colors, odors, flavors, and other
particular objects of the senses clearly enough and discern them from each
other but only by the simple evidence of the senses and not by marks that
can be stated.63
Confused knowledge is based on "ideas" taken simply as they are

given in experiencej a sensuous idea is an unanalyzed whole that
may include a number of undifferentiated elements fused together.
When Leibniz repeated this explanation two years later in French,
he added, "In this way we sometimes know clearly, . . . if a poem or
a picture is well done or badly, because it has a certain 'something, I
know not what' w h c h either satisfies or repels us. But when I can
explain the marks I have, my knowledge is called distinct."64
Leibniz's reference to a je ne sais quoi is more than simply an
i*
The composite nature of color is a "con-fusion" constituting sensation in a way similar to the reliance of artistic creation and appreciation on felt but unformulated values. We will come back to this
conception of sensation in the conclusion of the paper. It is clear for
now that an idea may be lively, rich, and fruitful in proportion to its
confusion. The advantage Baumgarten will draw from the "confusion" of sensuous ideas is suggested by 9517 of his Metnphysica:
:
'
:
"The Inure marks a perception contains, the stronger it is," and "a
confused perception which includes more than a distinct one is
stronger than it" and is accordingly called "pregnantmU66
Baumgarten
applying
the termwhich
sensitiva
to ideas
ring
to Wolff's justifies
definition:
"an appetite
follows
frombyarefercon-
>
! fused representation of the good [i.e., object or goal] is called sen: suous, and a confused representation is gained through the lower
part of the cognitive faculty just as an obscure one is."h7 The term
sensitivn (Baumgarten seems to be implying) applied originally to
r
(New York: Scribner, 195 I), p. 325 : "explain the peculiarities which a thing has."
The original reads "expliquer lrs marques que j'ai," explain [or make explicit?) the
distinguishing marks w h c h I have for a thing in my idea of it, traits attributed to
the object and more intrinsic and essential to knowing than any "criteria."
! 6s Pl~hilosophical
Papers, p. 29 I. The concluding passage of thc text, p 294, blends two
levels of the constitution of color: "Moreover, when we perceive colors or odors,
we are having nothing but a perception of figures and motions, but of figures and
motions so complex and minute that our mind in its present state is incapable of
observing each distinctly and therefore fails to notice that its perception is compounded of single perceptions of exceedingly small figures and motions. So when
we mix yellow and blue powders and perceive a green color, we are in fact sensing
nothing but yellow and blue thoroughly mixed; but we do not notice this and so
assume some new nature instead."
66 Texte zur Grundlegung, p. 8.
r 6-I Phlosophische Betrachtungen, pp. 9 and xi.
Baurngarten, Texte zur Grundlegung, pp. 16, 10, and 4. Schweizer, p. 5 , muddles
things in his German translation of $ 5 10 by making it a question of Istinguishmg
the marks from one another, rather than simply distinguishing them, although
Baumgartcn himself may have encouraged this with his distinction in $520 between perceiving a thing in its difference from other things and just perceiving it.
In 5zz he uses characteres as a synonym for notae (distinguishing traits) and calls
a representation distinct if it has clear notas, sensuous if its notae are obscure. He
thus makes things murher by failing to distinguish between "confused" and "obscureI1'as in 5s 10.
63 "Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas" (1684)~
in Leibniz, Philosophical
Papers and Letters, ed. Leroy E. Loemker (Dordrecht: Reidel, 1969), p. 291.
64 ' l D i ~ ~ ~on
u Metaphysics,"
r~e
$24, in Philosophical Papers, pp. 318-19. Loemker's
rendering of the last part ("explain the criteria I use") blurs the point, as does - in
the opposite duection - the translation in Leibniz, Selections, ed. Philip P. Wiener
62
77

appetite because of the sense-dependent and therefore confused
nature of the ideas that gave rise to it. The terminological scruple is
exaggerated, but this may be a roundabout way of suggesting that the
confusion intrinsic to sensuous representations derives from their
relation to desire, a factor brought out in Descartes and even more so
in Malebranche. This is not an aspect of sensuous cognition that
Baumgarten will give emphasis to in his later elaborations, yet it
remains a significant, positive factor in the Leibnizian heritage he
passes on, under the name aesthetics, to Mendelssohn and Schiller.
It is a significant break with this line of thinking when Kant insists
that aesthetic pleasure must be "free of interest," that is, free of
concern for the actual existence of the object.
In his lectures on aesthetics Baumgarten says that "sensuous
knowledge is the basis of distinct knowledge, and thus, if the understanding is to be improved as a whole, aesthetic must come to the
aid of logic." He equates the sch one Wissenschaften with "sciences
of our lower cognitive powers," adhng, "or, if you want to speak
more sensuously, you could follow Bouhours and call them 'logic
without thorns."' He goes on to cite Bouhours again, along with
Crousaz (for h s llaitb du beau), Bodmer, and Breitinger, as writers
who have opened the way for his a e s t h e t i ~ . ~ ~
Compared with h s probable model, Christian Wolff's Psychologia
Baumgarten's "lower cognitive faculty" includes a
empirica (1732)~
wealth of new rubrics, many of which show the influence of
the ideas we have traced in the seventeenth century. In addition
to Wolff's conventional headings - sense, memory, imagination Baumgarten treats acumen, the ability to make fine discriminations
of thngs depending on awareness of their characteristics (notae),
balanced by ingenium, an ability to see similarities in disparate
He also inthings. Together these two constitute perspi~acia.~9
cludes iudicium, judgment of a sensuous sort, identified with taste
(gustus, sapor, palaturn), w h c h is both the basis and the object of
aesthetica critica. Complementing these "aesthetic" powers are the
related or even overlapping faculties of praevisio, the anticipation of
future events based on experience, which shades over into that part
of aesthetic known as mantica (divination)based in the interpreta68
69
Texte zur Grundlegung, pp. 80, 82.

Ibid., p. 38, 3 5 75 : "The aesthetic of perspicacity is the part dealing with ingenious
and acute knowing and presenting."But for the reference to "aesthetic"this sentence could come from Gracik.
79
tion of signs, and which further is hardly Merent from praesagitio,

premonition, equated with the expectation of similar cases, a fac, ulty shared by man and animal that takes the place of reason in
animals and which is based on natural signs, a form of the association of ideas, and finally the fucultas characteristica, which takes
'
one thing as a sign of the existence of another. Quite dstinct from
linguistic signs, such natural signs are a means of knowing the reality of another thing because there is a nexus significativus in the
world that grounds our mferen~es.~O
When Baumgarten comes to discuss the aesthetica characteristics, or science of sensuous knowledge of signs (circa signa) and of
the corresponding presentation of knowledge, it is clear that linguistic signs are a subordinate part, philologia or grammatica in a
broad sense. But in other outlines of his aesthetic, perhaps as early as
1742, he sharply separated its two parts, the first dealing with sensuous knowing or thinking, the second with its lively (lebhaft)
presentation and thus akin to the traditional disciplines of poetics
and rhetoric, and he seems to have identified this second part of
aesthetica as "ars signandi et signis cognoscench, CHARACTERISTICA
(Semiotics, Semiologia, S y m bolica)."71
This produces a major confusion because signs and semiotic already play important roles in sensuous or empirical cognition itself
and in the first part of aesthetica, and here in the second it cannot be
merely a question of substituting significanda for propenendo72 in
the definition of aesthetica, because an ars signis cognoscendi, art of
: knowledge by means of signs, is included in this characteristica. I
will postpone considering the knotty question of cognitive signs in
: Baumgarten, whlch I will take up in a history of conceptions of
natural signs as the elements of perception and thinlung.73
: Baumgarten finally answered his own call for the new science in
! " Ibid., pp.
48 (praevisio, sg5-61, 58 (praesagitio, 95612-1 3 J, and 62 (characteristic~,6j61g-20), cf. p. 97. Following Leibniz ("Monadology,"526). Wolff re) ferred to praesagitio as analogon rationis. The conception goes back to Hobbes's
idea of (animal)prudence.
:' 71 Phllosophia generalis, 5147, a posthumously published text from the early 1740s~
1 in ibid., p. 75.
72 In student notes from Baumgarten's lectures on aesthetica, in ibid., p. 83.
3 Meanwhile, for a further development of the conception of natural signs as the
basis of cognition in the Leibnizian tradition, see JeffreyBamouw, "The Philosophical Achievement and Historical Signhcance of JohanNicolas Tetens," Studies in
Eighteenth-Centuly Culture (Madson: University of Wisconsin Press, 1979)~
vol.
9, PP. 301-35.
,
80
I 750
with the first volume of his Aesthetica. In its opening paragraph he defined aesthetics as "the science of sensitive cognition,"
adding a series of synonyms: "Aesthetics, as the theory of the liberal
arts, lower-level epistemology [gnoseologiainferior], the art of thinking finely [arspulchre cogitandi], and the art of the analogy of reason
[that mode of inference which man shares with higher animals], is
the science of sensitive cognition."74 But there was a new emphasis
here that went beyond what one could anticipate from the earlier
writings.
The experience and appreciation of beauty in nature, including
the sublime, and of works in the fine arts, including poetry, were
included in the scope of Baumgarten's aesthetics, but only as applications of the capacity that was its central concern, and even then
not the most important ones. It was rather in the art of common life,
particularly the development of a well-rounded graceful individual
who could play a spontaneous and articulate role in society, that
aesthetics was supposed to have its key influence as a practical discipline (itself an ars) concerning - and nurturing - the "lower," sensuous-sensitive faculties.
In addition to improving knowledge beyond the boundaries of
what can be distinctly known and creating a basis for practice in the
fine and liberal arts, aesthetica should make accessible whatever is
known scientifically and accommodate it to the common mind.
Thus it lends a certain excellence in the practical affairs of common
life.75 The nature of this last accomplishment is hard to convey
without awkwardness in English:
As beauty or fineness of cognition [pulchritude cognitionis]cannot be any
greater or more noble than the vitality [vivislof the person who is thinking
Baumgartcn, Aesthetica, ed. and tr. Hans Rudolf Schwcizcr, as Theoretische Aesthetik (Hamburg: Felix Meiner, 1983)~p. 3. Other interpretations of Baumgarten's
aesthetics are Ursula Franke, Kunst als Erkenntnis: Die Rolle der Sinnlichkeit in
der Aesthetik des Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1972);
and Hans Rudolf Schweizer, Aesthetik als Philosophie der sinnlichen Erkenntnis:
Eine Interpretation der "Aesthetica" A. G. Baumgartens (Basel: Schwabe, 1973).
More recently, Hans Rudolf Schwcizer, Vom ursprunglichen Sinn der Aesthetik
(Zug: Kugler, 19761, and Horst-Michael Schmidt, Sinnlichkeit und Verstand
(Munich: Fink, 1982)~
consider and assess its historical sigmficance in ways differing from mine.
75 Theoretische Aesthetdi, p. 2, 53.
74
81
finely [pulchre], we must first of all delineate the genesis and ideal image of
one who thinks finely and thus the character of the fortunate or successful
aestheticus.76
This felix aestheticus is characterized by a native ingenium (wit)

that is beautiful and fine (venustum et elegans), its lower faculties
being easily excited and apt for elegance of cognition. These
qualities are further specified using terms familiar from Baumgartents Metaphysica: the capacity for acute sensing, in the inner
senses and intimate consciousness as well as the external; a disposition for perspicacity, which is refined (literally, polished) by working together with acumen and ingenium; and the gift of taste
(sapor), not of the common sort but delicate (delicaturn), which
together with acumen constitutes the "judgment of the senses."77
The most prominent and essential quality of beauty in cognition
seems to be life, vitality, or liveliness. Baumgarten insists that the
qualities needed in the effective presentation of knowledge are already crucial to fine or beautiful cognition itself, including an ele"
on the Leibnizian (originally
ment of sensuous i n t ~ i t i o n . ~Drawing
Stoic] conception of marks or notae within representations, Baumgarten later argues that the universals of demonstrative knowledge
are gained through abstraction at the cost of material fullness or
perfection of representation. ''What is abstraction, if not loss [iact ~ r a ] ? It" ~is~in the same vein that Baumgarten, at the butset of
Aesthetica, anticipates an objection to his conception of aesthetic as
a logic of sensuous or confused representation, thinking, and knowledge, namely that confusion is the mother of error, and answers that
it is rather "a conditio sine qua non for the discovery of truth."80
76
77
78
79
80
Ibid., p. 16, 527. Neither "aesthetician" or "aesthete" seems a proper rendering of

aestheticus. "Man of sensibility" might do, but not in the modish sense of the
later eighteenth century.
Ibid., pp. 16-20, $529. 30, 32, and 3s. Iudex inferior is glossed by a cross-reference
to Metaphysica, $608, where "taste" (gustus)was iudiciunl sensuum. A faculty
which I have omitted here and above in the Metnphysica is the "poetic," whlch is
characterized as combining and taking apart (pmescindendo) mental images
(phnntasmata)($341, i.e.. concentrating attention on a part of a perceptio ($589).
Ibid., p. 22, $936 and 37.
Ibid., pp. 142-4, $$ssg-60.
Theoretische Aesthetik, p. 4, 57. Here Baumgarten confuses the difference between obscure and clear with that between confused and dstinct, but Schweizer's
translation corrects (obscures!) this.
82
JEFFREY BARNOUW
would require insight into the constitution of red, insight that

would have to be taken up into the sight of red (in order to be a part
of the "idea" of red), which would undermine the confusion and thus
the very constitution of red. In the New Essays he responds to
Locke's point that "if our senses were acute enough, sensible
qualities such as the yellow color of gold would then dsappear, and
instead of it we should see an admirable texture of parts. . . . T h s
microscopes plainly discover to us." True, Leibniz answers, "but the
color yellow is a reality, all the same, like the rainbow," and moreover, if our eyes became "more penetrating, so that some colors or
other qualities disappeared from our view, others would appear to
arise out of them."82
Later in the same book Leibniz criticizes Lockets definition of
confused ideas, which he contrasts with "Descartes's language: for
him an idea can be at once clear and confused, as are the ideas of
sensible qualities, . . . e.g. the ideas of color and of warmth." Such
ideas "are not distinct, because we cannot distinguish their contents. Thus, we cannot define these ideas: all we can do is to make
them known through examples; and, beyond that, until their inner
structure has been deciphered we have to say that they are a je ne
sais q ~ o i . " ~Ideas
3
which distinguish their objects, that is, allow
them to be identified, need not be dstinct, only clear, whereas only
those are distinct "which distinguish in the object the marks which
make it known, thus yielding an analysis or definition."g4
Unfortunately, it was the epistemological dimension of "aesthetic"

that Baumgarten never fully worked out.
Baumgarten's contributions to our understanding of the thinking

and knowing that remain rooted in sensation a r e not that impressive, when compared with those of Leibniz, but his launching of
aesthetics as a formal discipline was important because it provided a
frame for a rich group of ideas that had been diffused throughout
Leibniz's writings. Understanding Leibniz's conception of sensation
is essential to an appreciation of the original meaning and intention
of aesthetics, not simply in the sense that Baumgarten gave explicit
and systematic form to something that was suggested at various
points in Leibniz, but further in that what is formulated in outline
and envisaged as a whole by Baumgarten can be given richer content
and a deeper, broader foundation by a return to Leibniz. In undertaking to show how this is so, the conclusion of the present essay is
engaged in something quite different from discovering in Leibniz
elements of an interest or a theory that could be considered aesthetic in the conventional sense of the term.81
In effect Leibniz understood sensation in a way which revealed
continual cognitive achievements in everyday perception of the sort
which Gracih and Bouhours had made the privilege of polite society. But the "aesthetic" function of sensation goes far beyond cognition, since it is the basis for determining desires, motives, habits,
and character. Before we take up this most fundamental aestheticpractical aspect of Leibniz's thought, a second, more technical look
at the conception of confusion as the hallmark of the sensuous will
help us avoid certain misconceptions.
A hstinct "idea" of red is a paradoxical concept for Leibniz. It
82
I
81
See Cllfford Brown, "Leibniz and Aesthetic," Philosophy and Phenomenological

Research 28 (1967): 7-80; and Romano Galeffi, "A propos de 11actu&t6 de
Leibniz en esth6tique1" in Akten des II. Interna tionalen Leibniz-Kongresses
(Wiesbaden: Steiner, 1 9 7 ~vol.
) ~ 3, pp. 217-28. The section on "The Relation
to Aesthetics" in Ernst Cassirer, Leibniz' System in seinen wissenschafthchen
Gmdlagen (1902; Hildesheim: Olms, 1962))pp. 458-72, is even further from the
focus of the present essay insofar as Cassirer sees the basis of Leibniz's contribution to conventional aesthetics in a proto-Kantian idea of the spontaneity of consciousness vis-a-vis phenomena, an idea intrinsically opposed to finding value in
"confusion."
83
'
f1
E 84
I
New Essays on Human Understand.mgl tr. P. Remnant and J. Bennett (Cambridge:

Cambridge University Press, 1981)~bk. 11, ch. xxiii, 512, corresponding to the
divisions of LocketsEssay. T h s edition has no pagination of its own but uses that
of the Akademie edition by Robinet and Schepers in the margins, hcre p. 219.
Against Locke's view of "simple ideas" (TI.ii.1; p. 120) Lcibniz says, "these sensible
ideas appear simple because they are confused and thus do not provide the mind
with any way of making discriminations in what they contain." He again cites the
apparent simplicity of both green (composed of blue and yellow) and blue itself
(composed of motions).
Descartes had already used the phrase in this neutral sense, void of the implications of nuance and subtle sensibility that characterized most seventeenthcentury usage, to refer to the otherwise unknown cause of our perceptions. It is
not surprising that the phrase disappears in translation: "when we say that we
perceive colours in objects, this is really just the same as saying that we perceive
something [je ne sais quui] in the objects whose nature we do not know, but which
produces in us a very clear and vivid sensationJJ(Principles cf Philosophy. 1, 970, in
The Phjlosophcal Writings of Descanes, tr. John Cottingham, Robert Stoothoff,
and Dugald Murdoch [Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 19851, 1, p. 218).
New Essays, 1I.xziix.q; p. 2 5 5 .

There is an apparent ambiguity in Leibniz's usage since he also
holds that distinct or distinguished perceptions are a prerequisite of
sensation, but what this means is simply that certain perceptions
(perceptions being defined in the same context as "representations
of the compound, or of that w h c h is without, in the simple")
must be prominent or concentrated enough to make themselves
noticed.85 He says that "when there is a large multitude of small
perceptions with nothing to distinguish them, we are stupefied, as
when we turn continuously in the same direction several times."
"From this we can see that If we have nothng distinctive in our
perceptions, and nothing lifted out, so to speak, and of a higher
apparent
flavor, we should always be in a state of stupor."8"he
contrahction is resolved when two levels are distinguished. Minute
perceptions must be con-fused in(to)an aggregate - but sufficiently
distinguished as an aggregate - for sensation to occur.
A different way of regarding Leibniz's conception of sensible ideas
as intrinsically confused has been developed in the critical literature
of the last two decades and should be distinguished from the approach proposed here. Hide Ishiguro argued that ideas of sensible
quahties like heat or red are not simple for Leibniz, as they were for
many empiricists, because he believed that these ideas could always
be further analyzed logically through "redescription of the same
idea by a combination of other words, each of which has a more
general use." She says that for Leibniz "sensible qualities, or what
we learn by our senses, are properties of objects or phenomena, not
properties of our experiences." In principle we should be able to
learn about these properties by means other than our senses, and
this would make analytic redescription possible. "For example,
85
R6
"The Principles of Nature and of Grace," $52 and 4, in Philosophical Papers,

pp. 636-7; Cf. Selections, pp. 523-4.
"The Monadology," $521 and 24, in Philosophical Papers, p. 645; cf. Selections,
p. 5 37. The danger of ambiguity is perhaps greatest in "Principlesof Nature and of
Grace," 5 I 3, and in a passage quoted by G. H. R. Parkinson, "The 'Intellectualization of Appearances': Aspects of Leibniz's Theory of Sensation and Thought,"in
Leibniz: Critical and Interpretive Essays, ed. Michael Hooker (Minneapolis:University of Minnesota Press, I g82), p. 6: "If [the soul] should arrive at that state in
whch it has perceptions that are almost all confused, we call this 'death.' " But
Parlunson shows that the paradox that "a sensation is both a distinct perception
and a confused perception . . . disappears when it is remembered that the sense of
'confused' to which 'distinct' is opposed is different from that in whch a sensation is called 'confused'" (p. 10).
:'
8s
every time one says 'There is something redt, one can say 'There is
the whirling of . . .I,and if the truth-value of the two propositions is
always the same; then, according to Leibnizls substitutivity salve
veritate principle [the subject of her first substantive chapter], 'red'
and 'the whirling'of . . .Iare identical terms."87
Ishguro is relying on a passage in a I 702 letter to Queen Charlotte
of Prussia in which Leibniz's emphasis seems to press in the opposite direction from hers. He writes:
We use the external senses as, to use the comparison of one of the ancients, a blind man does a stick, and they make us know their particular
objects, which are colors, sounds, flavors, and the qualities of touch. But
they do not make us know what these sensible qualities are or in what they
consist. For example, whether red is the revolving of certain small globules
which it is claimed cause light; whether heat is the whirling of a very fine
dust; whether sound is made in the air as circles in the water when a stone
is thrown into it, as certain philosophers claim; this is what we do not see.88
In line with Ishiguro's emphasis Leibniz does say, with a hint of

witty paradox, that sensible qualities can be regarded as occult
qualities "and that there must be others more manifest which can
render the former more explicable." But he does not suggest that
these others could be substituted, insofar as sensible knowledge is
concerned, for the immediate "occult" qualities. We do not have,
and (I believe he implies) cannot have, nominal definitions of sensible qualities, which would give us sufficient marks to recognize
them.
'
Assayers have marks by which they distinguish gold from every other
metal, and even if a man had never seen gold these signs might be taught
: him so that he would infallibly recognize it if he should some day meet with
! it. But it is not the same with these sensible qualities; and marks to recog, nize blue, for example, could not be given if we had never seen it. So that
blue is its own mark, and in order that a man may know what blue is it must
i necessarily be shown to him. . . . It is an I know not what of which we are
'
t Iconscious, but for whlch we cannot account.89
Y ,This seems to mean that qua qualities they cannot be characterized

? or accounted for in principle. This is what makes them occult.
87
88
iL
Hide Ishiguro. Leibniz's Philosophy of Logic and Language (London:Duckworth,

19721' PP. 53-4.
Selections, p. 35 5 . 8' Ibid., pp. 356-7.
86
Leibniz goes on in the same letter to distinguish the occult sense

qualities from ideas provided by sense but not proper to any single
sense, that is, ideas of "common sense" such as the idea of figures or
"the idea of numbers, which is found equally in sounds, colors and
touches," which are capable of definition and of being distinctly
conceived. This possibility depends on the soul's being able to compare number or figure in the different senses and thus of its having
"an inner sense, in which the perception of these different external
senses are found united." Here he adds, "This is what is called the
imagination, which comprises at once the notions of the particular
senses, which are clear but confused, and the notions of the common sense, which are clear and distinct."90
This important distinction is overlooked by Nicholas Jolleywhen
from the definition of "distinct idea" appropriate to the assayer's
recognition of gold he infers that "there is no reason in principle
why we should not have a distinct idea of red, or moreover, why
such an idea should not be communicated to a blind person." The
oversight is exacerbated when Jolley speaks of "color concepts," concerning which he finds Leibniz ambivalent, which actually shows
that Jolley has conflated a sense of the term "idea" appropriate to
"occult" sense qualities with an incompatible sense of "concept."
Jolley then tries to "explain Leibniz's seeming incoherence regarding
ideas of sensible qualities" by following Margaret Wilson's suggestion "that Leibniz has only half succeeded in dstinguishing conceptual abilities and perceptions," a confounding that also "underlies Leibniz's claim that ideas of colours are necessarily c0nfused."9~
It is important to note that Leibniz opposes confused to distinct
knowledge only as a relative differentiation w i t h a continuum.
90
91
JEFFREY BARNOUW
Ibid., p. 3 5 7. Cf. New Essays, 1I.xxix.I 3; pp. 26 1-2.

Nicholas Jolley,Leibnjz and Locke: A Study of the New Essays on Human Under- ,
standing (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1984). pp. 184-5. Cf. Margaret D. Wilson!
"ConfusedIdeas,"in Essays on the L~bilosophyof Leibniz, ed. Mark Kulstad, Rice
University Studies in Philosophy, 63 (Houston: Rice University Press, 1977)~
pp. 123-37. She deliberately does not enter into his theory of confused perceptions
beyond distinguishing thein from "confused notions or ideas," the hrst being,
"particular-presentings,"the latter constituting conceptual abhties, but she does
claim that he "runs together" the two main senses of "confused"that she has
drstinguished. The inconsistency she finds in Leibniz's treatment of colors seems
to be the result of ambiguities generated by hcr fusing Ishguro's approach with
Leibniz's own contrary tendency.
87
Distinct "is the knowledge of an assayer who discerns the true gold
from the false by means of certain tests or marks which make up the
definition of gold. But distinct knowledge has degrees, because ordinarily the conceptions which enter into the definitions will themselves be in need of definition, and are only known confusedly."92
Almost all knowledge, he suggests, relies at some points on factors
that are felt but not focused on, a tacit or aesthetic dimension.
Leibniz had shown an affinity to Bouhours by characteristically
using the phrase "a je ne sais quoi" to suggest advantages that a
confused knowledge might have over a distinct one. It is ironic that
his references to Bouhours criticize him implicitly for failing to have
grasped the lesson of the je ne sais quoi. In his "dialogue" with
Locke, New Essays on Human Understanding, Leibniz writes:
Witty [spirituelles, from esprit; LC., imaginative] thoughts must at least
appear to be grounded in reason, but they should not be scrutinized too
minutely, just as we ought not to look at a painting from too close. It seems
to me that Father Bouhours, in his Right Thinking in the Exercise of Wit,
has gone wrong on this count more than once.93
;
:
;
,
'
1
/
Later in the same work he writes of a "picture whose parts one sees
distinctly, without seeing what they result in until one looks at
them in a certain way," that is, an anamorphosis as described by
Niceron in La perspective curieuse ( I 638), but his analogy could be
extended to viewing paintings in general, whlch must be viewed
from a certain distance, a principle that holds analogically for all
aesthetic perception. Such a painting, he says, "is like the idea of a
heap of stones, which is truly confused . . . until one has distinctly
grasped how many stones there are and some other properties of the
heap." Finding the right position to view the picture from is "the key
to the confusion - the way of viewing the object which shows one
its
intelligible pr0perties."9~
I
With respect to Bouhours the implication was, on the contrary,
that taking too close or minute a view destroyed the aesthetic effect,
jvhich was a con-fused impression of the whole. As he wrote in an
extended criticism of Bouhours, in a letter to Queen Sophie Char-
92
i,
'
93
"Discourse on Metaphysics," 924, in Selections, p. 325; Philosophical Papers,

p. 319. See also 533, Selections, pp. 338-9.
NewEssays,II.xi.z;p. 141. 94 i b i d . , I I . x x i x . 8 ; p p . ~ ~ ~ - 8 .
88
lotte, "Often one cannot perceive the defects of the expressions

which he censures until one views them from too close."95-~nswering Baylets criticism of his "system of preestablished harmony,"
Leibniz uses the analogy of reading a musical score and perceiving
the melody in a similar way.
"But," says Mr. Bayle, "must not the soul recognize the sequence of the
notes (distinctly),and so actually think of them?" I answer "No"; it suffices
that the soul has included thcm in its confused thoughts in the same way
that it has a thousand things in its memory without thinking of them
distinctly.96
What is sensed or consciously perceived is the melody; if we attend

to the individual notes, we lose the melody, the sense of the whole.
The context of this example is a vindication of Leibniz's idea that
"the present is pregnant with the future" on the grounds that our
thoughts are never simple and the mind is accordingly led from one
to the next. The confusion of thoughts that.results from the part
played by the body is not, he argues, opposed to our spontaneity.
[I]t is believed that confused thoughts are entirely different in kind from
distinct ones, whereas they are merely less distinguishable and less developed because of thcir multiplicity. The result is that certain movements,
rightly called involuntary, have been ascribed to the body in such a way that
nothing is believed to correspond to them in the soul; and reciprocally, it is
believed that certain abstract thoughts are not represented at all in the body.
But there is an error in both of these views, as usually happens in such
distinctions, because we notice only what is most apparent. The most abstract thoughts are in need of some sense perception. And when we consider
what these confused thoughts are which are never absent from even the
most distinct thoughts which we can have - as, for example, those of colors,
odors, tastes, heat, cold, etc. - we recognize that they always involve the
infinite and not only that which takes place in our body but also, by means
of it, that which happens outside of it.
It is "present perceptions, along with their regulated tendency to

change in conformity to what is outside, which form the musical
score which the soul reads." In this way Leibniz feels justified in
extending "spontaneity to confused and involuntary thoughts," al95
96
Leibniz, Die ptulosophischen Schriften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin, 1885). VI,

pp. 522-8 (quotationfrom p. 523).
Phdosophical Papers, p. 580.
89
though he is quick to quallfy this: "there is spontaneity in the confused as well as the distinct. In another sense, however, we are justified in speaking, as did the ancients, of that which consists of
confused thoughts, where thcre is an element of the involuntary and
unknown, as perturbations or pas~ions."~7
, On the one hand, "confused thoughts," taken as including sense
qualities, constitute wholes whlch are aesthetically or practically
advantageous even though (or perhaps because) they do not enable or
even allow us to know what they are composed of. In this respect,
which will be considered further, they afford a kind of spontaneity
or facilitation to human action. On the other hand, "confused
thoughts" are those clouded by passion, which restricts freedom.
Leibniz evokes a Platonic Christian version of t h s view when he
concludes, "our confused thoughts represent the body or the flesh
and constitute our irnperfe~tion."~"
In fact Leibniz did incorporate something of this latter view into
his system of preestablished harmony, maintaining that
the soul is free in its voluntary actions, where it has distinct thoughts and
shows reason; but since confused perceptions are regulated according to the
body, they arise from the preceding confused perceptions without it being
necessary that the soul want them or foresee them. . . . They do not happen
without cause or reason, the succession of confused thoughts being representative of the moverncnts of the body, the multitude and minuteness of
which do not allow them to be distinctly apperceived.
,
"Confused perceptions are regulated by the laws of the movements

they represent; the movements of bodies are explained by efficient
causes; while final causes still appear in distinct perceptions of the
soul, where there is libert~."~9
This is an archrationalist position which virtually equates dependence on sense experience with lack of freedom. But, as Robert
Philosophical Papers, pp. 5 80-1. For some modem versions and vicissitudes of t h s
conception of passion, see JefheyBamouw, "Passion as 'Confused' Perception or
Thought in Descartes, Malebranche and Hutcheson," loumal of the History qf
Meas 53 119921: 397-424.
9,s Phlosophical Papers, p. 5 8 I.
99 Die philosophischen Schrjften, ed. C. I. Gerhardt (Berlin, I 880)~lV,pp. sg I , 5 92.
Also "Monadology," $49: "action is attributed to the monad in so far as it has
distinct perceptions, and passivity in so far as it has confused perceptions"(Selections, p. 543; cf. 960, p. 5 4 5 , and "Theodicy,"966).
97
McRae has pointed out, Leibniz was quite inconsistent on t h s

point, at times claiming that "perceptions spring from one another
by the laws of the appetites or of the final causes of good and evil"
and at other times that both methods of explanation apply universally. loo Furthermore, he seems to have considered this conception
of confused thoughts as less weighty than the proto-aesthetic one.
Responding to the view of Bishop Lamy that the mind is more closely united to the body by confused thoughts than by distinct, Leibniz
writes:
That is not without some basis, for confused thoughts mark our imperfection, passions, and dependence on a mass of external things or matter, while
the perfection, force, empire, liberty and action of the soul consist principally in our distinct thoughts. However it does not cease to be. true that at
bottom confused thoughts are nothing else than a multitude of thoughts
which are in themselves like the distinct, but which are so' small that each
separately does not excite our attention and cause itself to be distinguished.
We can even say that there is all at once a virtually infinite number of them
contained in our sensations. It is in this that the great difference between
confused and distinct thoughts really consists.lo1
The element of Leibniz's thinking that is our particular interest

here, however, finds advantages for human practice, indeed a kind of
freedom or spontaneity, in the confused character of sensation, even
where it stems from a closer relation to appetites and passions.
It is significant in this context that Bouhours went so far as to
identify the "I know not what" with the source of our passions, in a
positive vein that reversed the derogatory implications of the conventional "stoic" view of the passions as disturbances of the mind
arising from inadequate conception.
This mysterious quality is, if it is rightly understood, the focal point of most
of our passions. Besides love and hatred, which give impetus to all the
impulses of the heart, desire and hope, which fill up the whole of man's life,
have practically no other foundation. For we are always desiring and hoping,
loo Robert McRae,#Leibniz:Perception, Apperception, and Thought (Toronto: University of Toronto Press, 19761, pp. 67-8, quoting "The Principles of Nature and
of Grace," 53.
101 McRae, Leibniz, p. 127, translated from the Gerhardt ed., IV, pp. 574-5.
I,
91
because beyond the goal we have set for ourselves there is always something
else to which we unceasingly aspire and which we never attain.102
Leibniz applies the idea of the infinitesimal to make pain or displeasure a constituent of desire and pleasure itself, as minute perceptions "cause that disquiet [inquiitude, what Locke terms "uneasiness"] which I show to consist in somethng whch differs from
suffering only as small from large, and yet which frequently causes
: our desire and even our pleasure, by giving it a sort of spice."lo3He is
referring ahead to his refutation of Lockets idea that uneasiness can' not coexist with happiness and therefore that all motivation comes
down to "the removing of pain."lo4
I Inquiitude must be hstinguished from pain, which includes an
element of awareness or apperception. It operates at a subconscious
level: "These minute impulses consist in our continually overcoming small obstacles - our nature labors at this without our thinking
i: about it." This leads Leibniz to an affirmation of desire itself: "Far
I
'
from regarding this uneasiness as something incompatible with happiness, I find that uneasiness is essential to the happiness of created
beings, which never consists in a perfect possession, which would
make them insensible and stuporous, but rather in a continual uninterrupted progress toward greater goals."15
In the preface to the N e w Essays he writes that there are many
indications (marques, used in an extended sense) which lead us
to conclude that at every moment there is in us an infinity of perceptions,
unaccompanied by awareness or reflection; that is, of alterations in thc soul
itself, of which we are unaware because these impressions are either too
102
,
'03
'04
105
Ellcdge and Schier, eds., Continental Model, pp. 190- I ; cf. p. I 7 I . This passage is
reminiscent of Hobbests rejection of the idea of an ultimate aim: "the Felicity of
this life consisteth not in the repose of a mind satisfied. . . . Felicity is a continuall progresse of the desirc, from one object toanother; the attaining of the
former, being still but the way to the later" [Leviathan [Baltimore: Penguin,
1968],p.160].
New Essays, p. 5 6.
Locke makes inactivity a main source of uneasiness and is thus closcr to Hobbes
and Leibniz than it seems, but the difference is sigdicant. See JeffreyBarnouw,
"The 'Pursuit of Happiness' in Jefferson, and Its Background in Bacon and
Hobbes,"Interpretation: A lournal of Political Philosophy I I (19831:225-48, esp.
PP- 244-7.
New Essays, II.xxi.36; pp. 188-9.
92
JEFFREY BARNOUW
minute and too numerous, or else too united. SO that they are not sufficiently distinctive on their own. But when they are combined with others
they do nevefiheless have their effect and make themselves felt, at least
confusedly, within the whole. lo6
Every action has its sufficient reason, but this is often only the
summation of countless insensible impulses.
impression has an effect, but the effects are not always noticeable.
When I turn one way rather than another, it is often because of a series of
tiny im~rcssionsof which I am not aware but which make one movement
slightly harder than the other. All our undeliberated actions result from a
conjunction of minute perceptions; and even our customs and passions,
which have so much influence when we do deliberate, come from the same
source; for these tendencies come into being gradually, and so without the
minute Perceptions we would not have acquired these noticeable dispositions.109
'
of the roar of the Ocean, which is cornLeibniz uses the

posed of the noise of every one of the waves "although each of these
little noises makes itself known only when combined confusedly with all the others, and would not be noticed if the wave which
made it were by itself." In an analogous Way, it would seem, every
sensation is an assemblage confus, a composite emerging into consciousness.
These minute perceptions, then, are more effective in their results than has
~ h constitute
~ y
that ie ne sais quoi. those flavors, those
been
clear in the aggregate [QssemblageI but conimages of sensible
fused as to the parts; those impressions which are made on us by the bodies
around us and which involve the infinite; that ~0n.nectionthat each being
has with all the rest of the universe. It can even be said that by virtue
these minute perceptions the present is big with the futwe and burdened
[chargd]with the past.lo7
These momentous effects result from the composite or confused

nature of sensation, which always contains more than we can be
aware of. The indistinctness of sensation Creates relative wholes
that can be dealt with far more easily, spontmeousl~tin practical
life than could their constituent parts taken singly. Moreover, as
Bouhours suggested, the confusion of sense also includes desire, as
urninUte perceptions" are at the same time "minute appetitions" or
urninUte solicitations." "It is these minute perceptions which determineour behavior in many situations without our thinking of
them, and which deceive the unsophisticated with an appearance of
indifference of equilibrium - as if it made no difference to us1 for
instance, whether we turned left or right."lo8
106
107
bid., p. 53. Remnant and Bennett translated des as "unvar~ing"where I sub(cf. "fused"). They may have been anticipating a subsequent
stituted
referenceto impressions that lack "the appeal of novelty" and therefore escape
notice.
Ibid., pp. 54-5.
lo8 Ibid.] P. 56.
93
The conception of sensation as awareness or apperception of a mass

of confused, that is, undifferentiated perceptions is continuous with
his understanding of the insensible formation not only of particular
motives and passions but of customs and character.
Leibniz sees the minute "appetitionsu of uneasiness as nature's
way of letting us "enjoy the advantage of pain without enduring its
discomfort." The "spur of desire" is the advantage, but the way we
benefit from insensibility of minute perceptions goes beyond that
and the avoidance of actual pain to the very constitution of sense:
[Ilfwhat goes on in us when we have appctite and desire were sufficiently
amplified, it would cause pain. That is why the infinitely wise Author of
our being was acting in our interests when hc brought it about that we are
often ignorant and subject to confused perceptions - so that we could act
the more quickly by instinct, and not be troubled by excessively distinct
sensations of hosts of objects.
In their con-fusion, sensations represent a practical simplifying and

reduction to human scale that allows us to cope. Leibniz follows
this idea UP in a vein that was later to strike Swift. " ~ many
0
people we observe who are inconvenienced by having too fine a
sense of smell, and how many disgusting objects we would see if our
eyesight were keen enough!"110
The concept of human scale is crucial to Leibnizfsappreciation of
sensation as a beneficial confusion of minute perceptions. if^ is not
conducted by science or covered by logic. An interesting illustration
1 0 9 1 b i d . , I I . i . ~ ~ ; p p . ~ ~ ~1 -1~061.b i d . l U . ~ ~ . 6 ; p . ~ 6 ~ .
94
of this is a contrast Leibniz draws between two lunds of judgment,

which Kant will later call the logical and the aesthetic.lll
[A] mathematician may have precise knowledge of the nature of nine- and
ten-sided figures, because he has the means for constructing them, yet not
be able to tell one from the other on sight. The fact is that a laborer or an
engineer, perhaps knowing little enough of the nature of the figures, may
have an advantage over a great geometrician in being able to tell them apart
just by looking and without counting; just as there are porters and pedlars
who will say what their loads wcigh, to within a pound - the world's ablest
expert in statics could not do as well. It is true that this empiric's kind of
knowledge, gained through long practice, can greatly facilitate swift action
such as the engineer often needs in emergencies where any delay would put
him in danger. Still, this clear image that one may have of a regular tensided figure or of a gg-pound weight - this accurate sense that one may have
of them - consists merely in a confused idea.112
Such a sense of the whole works, in Leibniz's view, in much the

same way sensation itself does. The same readiness of response
comes with sensation, not because sensation is something irnmedate, but, on the contrary, because sensation imperceptibly - like an
empiricts knowing - draws on a distillation of past experience in the
form of myriad minute perceptions that are at the same time appetitions.
The Influence of Leibniz in "aesthetic" thinking is not limited to
Baumgarten and his progeny but turns up in the most disparate
contexts. Montesquieu wrote that "imagination, taste, sensibility
and vivacity depend on an Infinite number of minute sensations."
Diderot maintained that taste or sensibility was the result of "an
infinity of delicate observations" or minute experiments (petites expbriences but also essais) w h c h may have been forgotten but which
continue to shape our capacity to respond. The sixth sense is a
metaphysical fantasy, for everything in us, he says, is expbrimental.
"1
"2
JEFFREY BARNOUW
Kant, Critique of ludgment, tr. J . H . Bernard (New York: Hafner, 195I), pp. 25-7
(Introduction,$7) and pp. 37-8 ($1);see also p. 30; aesthetic judgment is "the
faculty of judging . . . by means of the feeling of pleasure or pain"; logical judgment is that whch works by means of understanding and reason. Unlike Leibniz,
however, Kant claims feeling tells us nothing about the object, so the point of his
distinction was different. Schiller reversed the implications of Kant's terms by ,
preserving a Leibnizian sense of the cognitive roles of aisthesis (Empfindung,
Gefiihl) in an implicit critique of Kant.
New Essays, II.xxix.13; p. 262.
95
If the motives or premises of a judgment are present to us, we have

what they call science, but if they are not consciously in our memory, we have what they call taste, instinct, and tact.113
Leibniz rarely wrote about taste, but a reading of Shaftesbury's
Characteristics drew the followingfrom him: "Taste as distinguished
from understanding consists of confused perceptions for which one
cannot give an adequate reason." He added that Shaftesbury "is right
in comparing those who seek demonstrations everywhere and are
incapable of seeing anything in every-day light to people who are
called moon-blind because they can see only by moonlight."ll4 The
kind of knowing that relies not only on sensuous experience but on
assessment by feeling has been little studied because so many
thinkers have been reason-blind, but Gracihn, Pascal, Bouhours, Leibniz, and Baumgarten were notable exceptions. The inquiry of these
writers into subtle modes of perception and thinking opened the way
for the "aesthetics" of Schiller, Peirce, and others.
"3
"4
Montesquieu, Oeuvres completes, ed. Andre Masson (Paris: Nagel, ~gso),I,

p. 615; idem, The Spirit of the Laws, tr. Thomas Nugent (New York: Hafner,
I 949),p. 222. Diderot, Conespondance, ed. Georges Roth (Paris:Editions de Minuit, 1958 and 1962)~
IV, p. 125, and W, pp. 163-4; Diderot's Letters to Sophie
Volland, tr. Peter France (London: Oxford University Press, 1072)~
pp. I rz and
167.
Philosophical Papers, p. 634.
Eighteenth-Century
Aesthetics and the
Reconstruction of Art
Edited by Paul Mattick, Jr.
CAMBRIDGE
UNIVERSITY PRESS

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I

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

work of a proponent of that spirit, a Boileau or Pascal.' Indeed, far

The term "aestheticsu was coined by A. G. Baumgarten in

ct these tendencies can be recognized as aesthetic in

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

The concept of p s t o , which had come to mean taste in matters of

or test."5 The background of the word "taste" (from Middle English

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

or occasion. Circumstances provide matter and motive energy to

quick ranging of mind . . is joined with curiosity of comparing the things

Judgment is a "sudden" discerning, construed in analogy to fancy (or

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

to analyze or elucidate such ~apacities.~'

The reference to instinctive judgment (the approval implicit in the

following Aristotle's use of the term asteia in the Rhetoric

Although the differencesfrom a scientific or mathematical model of

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

tlety, and acuity is similar to Pascal's roughly contemporaneous idea

Ibid., pp. 8, 9, 11.

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

mystical ineffability going back to Augustine, and he finds that the

(nos. 585-6, Lafuma ordering).

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

Quoted from Balzac's second Discours in E. B. 0. Borgerhoff, The Freedom of

Mere's account (which has generally been taken to refer to Pascal

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

confrontation of the intelligence of geometry and that of finesse,

Other examples could be offered of this proto-aesthetic that ranged

and inclinations are well founded but cannot say how.51

Bouhours, Entretiens d'Ariste et dDEug8ne(Paris: Bossard, ~ g z o Jpp.

(quotationshorn pp. 196, 199-201). An English translation of this chapter is found

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

can be seen as anticipating one of Leibniz's most characteristic ideas,

finest workings, like the structure of an almost invisible insect.

delineating a mode of thinking - different from discursive reasoning

See the preceding note.

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

by metaphor, and by the further power of surprising the hearer;

Rhetoric, IU.10.1404b6-1z, 141ob1o-I 3, 141za17, 141obzo-26; on the pleasure

Enthymeme like metaphor steers a course between the obvious and

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

allusion to a then fashionable topos. In the earlier text he used it as

Metaphysica of 1739 (inPart 3, dealing with empirical psychology),as

(sensitive cognoscendi et proponendi). The Leibnizian background of

this notion had been made clear in earlier paragraphs where

repraesentatio non distincta was called sensitiva, after "confused

Leibniz had originally explained this:

Confused knowledge is based on "ideas" taken simply as they are

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

Texte zur Grundlegung, pp. 80, 82.

tion of signs, and which further is hardly Merent from praesagitio,

! " Ibid., pp.

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

This felix aestheticus is characterized by a native ingenium (wit)

Ibid., p. 16, 527. Neither "aesthetician" or "aesthete" seems a proper rendering of

The Leibnizian conception of sensation

would require insight into the constitution of red, insight that

Unfortunately, it was the epistemological dimension of "aesthetic"

Baumgarten's contributions to our understanding of the thinking

See Cllfford Brown, "Leibniz and Aesthetic," Philosophy and Phenomenological