The Reception of British Aesthetics in Germany: Seven Significant Translations, 1745-1776 (7-volume-set)

2176 Pages·2001·57.63 MB·English

by  Heiner F. Klemme

The Reception of British
Aesthetics in Germany
Heiner F. Klemme
Manfred Kuehn,
Editors
THOEMMES
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THE RECEPTION OF BRITISH
AESTHETICS IN GERMANY:
Seven Significant Translations,
1745-1776
Volume 1
Edited and Introduced by
Heiner F. Klemme
and
Manfred Kuehn
THOEMMES
The Reception of British Aesthetics in Germany
Seven Significant Translations, 1745-1776
Edited and Introduced by Heiner F. Klemme, University of Magdeburg
and Manfred Kuehn, University of Marburg
Volume 1
Anthony Ashley Cooper, 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
Translated by Johann Joachim Spalding
Die Sitten-Lehrer oder Erzehlung philosophischer Gespräche, welche die Natur und die
Tugend betreffen. Nebst einem Schreiben an den Übersetzer (1745)
Volume 2
William Hogarth
Translated by Christlob Mylius
Zergliederung der Schonheit, die schivankenden Begriffe von dent Gescbmack festzuselzen
(1754)
Volume 3
David Hume
Translated by Friedrich Gabriel Resewitz
Vier Abbandlungen: 1. Die natürliche Geschichte der Religion. 2. Von den Leidenscbaften.
3. Vom Trauerspiel. 4. Von der Grundregel des Geschmacks (1759)
Volume 4
Francis Hutcheson
Translated by Johann Hemrich Merck
Untersuchung unsrer Begriffe von Schönheit und Tugend in zwo Abhandlitngen (1762)
Volume 5
Alexander Gerard
Translated by Karl Friedrich Flögel
Versuch über den Geschmack. Nebst Zivo Abbandlungen über eben die Malerie vom
Herrn von Voltaire und Hrn. von Alembert (1766)
Volume 6
Edmund Burke
Translated by Christian Garve
Philosophische Untersuchungen über den Ursprung unsrer Begriffe vom Erhabnen und
Schönen (1773)
Volume 7
Alexander Gerard
Translated by Christian Garve
Versuch über das Genie (1776)
Printed in England by Antony Rowe Ltd, Chippenham
DIE SITTEN-LEHRER ODER
ERZEHLUNG PHILOSOPHISCHER
GESPRÄCHE, WELCHE
DIE NATUR UND DIE
TUGEND BETREFFEN
Anthony Ashley Cooper,
3rd Earl of Shaftesbury
Translated by
Johann Joachim Spalding
With an Introduction by
Heiner F. Klemme
THOEMMES PRESS
This edition published by Thoemmes Press, 2001
Thoemmes Press
11 Great George Street
Bristol BS1 5RR, England
http://www.thoemmes.com
The Reception of British Aesthetics in Germany
7 Volumes : ISBN 1 85506 899 0
Editorial selection © Heiner F. Klemme and Manfred Kuehn, 2001
Introduction © Heiner E. Klemme, 2001
This volume is reproduced courtesy of
Universitatsbibliothek Marburg
British Library Cataloguing-in-Publication Data
A CIP record of this title is available from the British Library
Publisher's Note
The Publisher has gone to great lengths to ensure the
quality of this reprint but points out that some
imperfections in the original book may be apparent.
This book is printed on acid-free paper, sewn, and
cased in a durable buckram cloth.
GENERAL INTRODUCTION
On the eve of the nineteenth century, the historian of philosophy
Johann Gottlieb Buhle wrote in his Geschichte der neuern
Philosophie:
Around the middle of the century which has just passed,
German scholars became increasingly familiar with the French
and the English languages and their writings in the arts and
philosophy. Their more intimate knowledge not only made
them aware of the deficiencies and imperfections of the German
language and the German national taste in the sciences and fine
arts; it created not only the most lively passion to educate, to
refine the sciences and the arts, and to compete with the
foreigners in all kinds of beautiful representation. It also made
the method of the Leibniz-Wolffian school distasteful to the
better talents. The strict systematic form, which the Wolffians
had accepted, appeared to put oppressing chains upon the free
flight of philosophical genius. Moreover, a number of philo-
sophical works of the foreigners also showed thoroughness
and systematic spirit, but without betraying pedantry and
coercion...even the textbooks of foreign philosophers were
much more readable than those of the Germans. 1
In 1778, Johann Gottlieb Herder was still sceptical:
Winkelmann, Mengs, Lessing, Mendelssohn, Sulzer,
Hagedorn, and Kästner published almost at the same time
dissertations on the beautiful. These writers spurred each
other on and influenced each other. Furthermore, since
Hutcheson, Home, Burke and Gerard wrote at almost the
same time in Britain and Diderot reawakened in France the
I |. (i. Buhle, Gschicbte der neuern Philosophie seit der Epoche der
Wiederherstellung der Wissenschaften (Göttingen, 1805), vol. 6, pt 2, pp.
,503-504.
V
vi General Introduction
ideas of Shaftesbury, André's and others; I believe that the
traces, which this age left on such matter, will be such that they
cannot be erased and the good that they obtained will be
inherited by the following generations. Mediocre criticism, the
animus of the reviewers and the spirit of faction have been the
reason why we followed this course in the last half decade.
(Lustrum)2
In the Göttingisches Magazin der Wissenschaften und Litteratur
of 1782, this opinion was echoed and given a nationalist twist:
Our literature has developed in such to such a high degree,
there are so many masterpieces of so many different kinds, we
have experienced so many revolutions that one should be of
the opinion that it would have to be transformed into
something complete, that it would acquire a character that is
in keeping with the taste of the enlightened and educated past
of the public and would fix the uncertain taste among us....
But it would be a quite futile undertaking to indicate the
special character of German literature, even if we had
permission to engage in endless disputes about it. It was
always chaotic. One cause is easy to discern: We were the
last.... If Germany had been entirely isolated...it could have
founded a literature of its own. But because the Germans
became acquainted with foreign masterpieces without having
created their own, they made an unwarranted leap....
Imitation was the impetus that moved the Germans all at
once.... In this way so many foreign and contradictory things
were introduced that...foreigners long expected that the
Germans would never produce fruits of their own. But the
first great talents that appeared showed that German literature
could really have a character of its own that was appropriate
to our way of thinking and feeling. Lessing, Mendelssohn and
Abbt found it, and they united to educate Germany.3
2 J. G. Herder, Denkmahl Johann Winkelmanns, 1778, in Bernhard Suphan (ed.),
Sämmtliche Werke (Berlin: Weiclmannsche Buchhandlung, 1892), p. 461.
3 Anonymous, 'Ueber die deutsche Litterarur', Göttingischcs Magazin der
Wissenschaften und Litteratttr, ed. Georg Clhristoph Lichtenberg and Georg
Forster, 2. Jahrgang, 2. Stuck (1782), pp. J57-9.
General Introduction vii
According to the anonymous author, the thorough and deep
philosophising about man was later continued by Wieland,
Herder and Goethe. But neither Lessing and Mendelssohn nor
Herder and Goethe can be understood without their foreign and
especially British sources - as they themselves more or less openly
acknowledged. The transfer of intellectual ideas between
European countries during the period known as the
Enlightenment was largely dependent upon the abilities of trans-
lators and philosophers, who had to convey and make compre-
hensible, complex and new ideas expressed in one language to
those who thought and wrote in another. Often, they had to
invent or conceive a completely new terminology to express what
the British authors intended to say. That many of the terms they
introduced are now part of common German is a sign of their
abilities. It was not least through the endeavours of men like
Spalding, Mylius, Resewitz, Flögel and Garve that the aesthetic
ideas of Shaftesbury, Hogarth, Hume, Gerard and Burke found
followers and critics away from home. The translations
published in this series are, in fact, essential for understanding
Lessing, Mendelssohn, Herder, Goethe and others. But they are
also indispensable in any discussion of the broader developments
of German Literature and philosophy in the second half of the
eighteenth century. Even Kant cannot be understood without
them.
The translators themselves were important in these devel-
opments. Many of them had studied with Alexander Gottlieb
Baumgarten or his follower Georg Friedrich Meier, who were
both important for the early development of aesthetics in
Germany. Meier found Locke especially important and
lectured on him, thus preparing the way for the reception of
these aestheticians.
Johann Joachim Spalding, whose 1745 translation of Anthony
Ashley Cooper, Third Earl of Shaftesbury's work is called Die
Sitten-Lebrer oder Erzebhtng philosophiscber Gespräche, welcbe
die Natur und die Tugend betreffen, was one of the most
important enlightenment theologians in Germany. Christlob
Mylius, the translator of William Hogarth's Zergliederung der
Schönheit, die scbwankenden Begriffe von dent Gescbmack
festzusetzen (1754), had the closest connections with Lessing
and Mendelssohn and was important in their earliest period.
Since he died in the same year that his translation appeared, his
viii General Introduction
influence remained restricted to that period. Friedrich Gabriel
Resewitz, who translated David Hume's Vier Abbandlungen
(1759), was an important writer on theological and pedagogical
subjects, whose reviews of some of Kant's precritical writings
were important. Johann Heinrich Merck, who translated Francis
Hutcheson's Untersuchung unsrer Begriffe von Schönheit und
Tugend in zwo Abhandlungen (1762), was one of the most
important figures of the Sturm und Drang, and was for a time
closely allied with Goethe. Karl Friedrich Flögel, who translated
Gerard's Versuch über den Geschmack (1766), was an influ-
ential anthropologist and literary critic. Finally, Christian Garve,
who translated Edmund Burke's Philosophische Untersucbungcn
über den Ursprung unsrer Begriffe vom Erhabnen und Schönen
(1773) and Alexander Gerard's Versuch über das Genie (1776),
was one of the most important of the so-called popular philoso-
phers. Even more important were Shaftesbury, Flogarth, Hume,
Hutcheson, Gerard and Burke themselves. As the Introductions
to the individual works show, they had indeed a lasting influence
on aesthetic theory in Germany, freeing it - at least to some
extent - from the narrow confines of Leibniz-Wolffian specu-
lation.
One way to bring out how these British authors were important
for the specifically aesthetic discussion in Germany during the
second half of the eighteenth century is to note Friedrich Schiller's
comment in his Kallias oder über die Schönheit. Schiller notes
that his own theory is a fourth possible way to explain beauty.
'Either one explains it objectively or subjectively, and thus one
is either subjectively sensible (like Burke and others) or subjec-
tively rational (like Kant) or objectively rational (like
Baumgarten, Mendelssohn and the entire swarm of men of
perfection) or finally objectively sensible'4 (like Schiller himself).
Mendelssohn and the other Germans remained ultimately closer
4 Letter to Gottfried Körner, 25 January 1793, in Edith Nahler and Horst
Nahler (eds.), Schillers Werke. Nationalausgabe, vol. 26 (Weimar: Verlag
Hermann Böhlaus Nachfolger, 1992), pp. 175-6. See Michael Albrecht,
'Descartes, Hutcheson, Hume, Kant und andere Ästhetiker. Historische
Erkundungen der subjektiven und relativistischen Äsrhetik des 17. und 18.
Jahrhunderts', in Angela Giebmeyer and Helga Schnabel-Schiile (eds.), 'Das
Wichtigste in der Mensch.' Festschrift für Klaus Gerteis zum 60. Geburtstag
(Mainz: Verlag Philipp von Zabern, 2000), pp. 3-20, esp. p. 8.