Empfindungen. Zur Rekonstruktion philosophischer Ästhetik vom mittleren 17. Jahrhundert zum beginnenden 19. Jahrhundert

Defining sensation as neuronal processing of stimuli received via the senses: this is considered today as evidence resulting from fertile epistemological controversy and its superseding scientific exploration. In the course of the eighteenth century the historical becoming aware of sensation also lead to a new philosophical discipline. Aesthetics, before its hypostasis as philosophy of art within classical philosophy (after Kant), has been a theory of sensation that tried to expand the relation of cognition to objects beyond the objects of scientific knowledge. A world was meant whose beauty and other aesthetically interesting phenomena would be revealed in nature, society, and the arts. This concept of sensation including sentiment is to be traced in the analyses of thought from the mid 17th century through the beginning of the 19th century. The special task is to uncover the seam joining scientific- philosophical sensation and aesthetic-literary sensation/sentiment. The aim of proposed research project is to work out a book length philosophical study. for the clarification of the role of philosophical aesthetics today it will be attempted, methodically coming from a philosophical-conceptual analysis in its history, to contribute to an interdisciplinary understanding of sensation.