From Aesthetica to Aesthetic Theory: German Aesthetic Theory Since 1700

Keynote Speaker: Rachel Zuckert (Northwestern University)

18th century German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten is credited with coining the term aesthetics  as deserving of its own philosophic study. In the centuries following Baumgarten, aesthetics remained an inextricable part of German intellectual history. Aesthetics and the philosophy of art can be traced through the work of Herder, Kant, Schiller, Hegel, Schelling, Heidegger, Adorno, Gadamer, and Sloterdijk, to mention only a few. This conference seeks to address the importance and impact of the German aesthetic tradition, from its inception in the 18th Century to the present. Some questions we hope to address are: Does aesthetics offer a special case for study of subjectivity and intersubjectivity? How does the  aesthetic experience and art influence our interactions with and within the world? Can works of art (and aesthetics, more broadly) affect, and even institute, ethical and political communities? What role, if any, does universality play in standards of taste? What is the significance of the emergence of the German aesthetic tradition in response to  the Enlightenment?  We would also welcome all submissions addressing the relation of aesthetics and nature in the German aesthetic tradition, including but not limited to: beauty and the sublime, expressivism, the relation of the body to the work of art and nature, the relation of the German aesthetic tradition to other traditions, and the relation of aesthetics to other areas of philosophy.