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There is a great volume of commentaryon Leibniz, and an extraordinarilywide rangeof interpretation:Cassirer'sLeibnizis not Russell's.
This is undoubtedlydue to the fecundity of Leibniz's thought coupled
with the diversity of his interests and the ad hoc nature of much of
his writing.In addition,his tendencyto treat the positions of others as
partialmanifestationsof his own more comprehensiveview helped bring
about syntheseswhich later critics have found unstableenough to justify
chargesof inconsistencyor even of writing in bad faith.
While it is a commonplace among historians of philosophy that
Leibniz'swritingsare laden with the past and pregnantwith the future,
there has been little recognitionin the English speaking world of his
role in the developmentof modem aesthetic. Works of art and their
making, however, are often used by Leibniz to throw light on metaphysical,epistemological,and ethical problems;he makes aestheticexperience a specific kind of knowing, he relates this kind of knowing to
other kinds of knowingunderthe relationshipof the one and the many,
and he deals with the problem of the combinedpresence of originality
and intelligibilityin the work of art. These are the problemswith which
I am primarilyconcernedin this paper. The concluding section points
to Leibniz's influence on Baumgarten and Kant, two philosophers
frequentlymentionedas the foundersof modern aesthetic.
II
For Leibniz, the Cartesiancriteria of clearness and distinctnessare
not sufficient for a proper classificationof our ideas. The content of
the Meditations on Knowledge, Truth, and Ideas of 1684 1 appears as
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Ibid., I, 449.
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"....
of things in general, that is, quality in general or similarityand dissimilarity."9 This art is superiorto algebrain being more comprehenOn Wisdom, Loemker, II, 697.
Ibid., p. 699. Cf. the Preface to the Codex Juris Gentium Diplomaticus of
1693 (Loemker, II, 690-691): "Thus the contemplation of beautiful things is in
itself pleasant, and a painting of Raphael affects him who understands it, even
if it offers no material gains, so that he keeps it in his sight and takes delight
in it, in a kind of image of love."
9 On Universal Synthesis and Analysis, Or the Art of Discovery and Judgment,
Loemker, I, 359.
7
8
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melody, making a good poem, promptly sketching architecturalornaments or the plan of a creative painting require that our imagination
itself acquire a habit after which it can be given the freedom to go its
own way without consultingreason.... reason must afterwardsexamine
and correct and polish the work of the imagination;that is where the
precepts of art are needed to produce something finished and excellent." 13
'3
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has been
22 See Otto Schlapp, Kants Lehre vom Genie und die Entstehung der 'Kritik
der Urtheilskraft'(Gdttingen, 1901), p. 70.
23 See Hermann Cohen, Kants Begrfindung der Aesthetik (Berlin, 1889), pp.
28-29.
24 Knox, p. 170.
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28
Ibid., p. 160.