Baumgarten, Reflections

PHIL 202, Modern philosophy, Fall 2026

1 Introduction

  • Outline of the Reflections
  • Leibnizian background
  • §§115–117
  • §§1–44
  • §§110–114

2 Outline of excerpts from the Reflections

  • §§1–11: Definitions
  • §§12–15: Clear and confused knowledge
  • §§16–22: Intensive and extensive clarity
  • §§23–27: The affects

3 Outline of excerpts from Reflections (cont’d)

  • §§28–41: Image, picture, poem
  • §§42–44: Memory and wonder
  • §§110–114: Imitation and other definitions
  • §§115–117: On aesthetics

4 Leibniz and Baumgarten

  • Leibniz: Beauty results from a “calculation that we are not aware of”—analysis into distinct parts
  • Baumgarten: Analysis involves a loss

5 The Leibnizian background

Principles of Nature and Grace, §17:

Music charms us, even though its beauty consists only in the harmonies of numbers and in a calculation that we are not aware of, but which the soul nevertheless carries out, a calculation concerning the beats or vibrations of sounding bodies, which are encountered at certain intervals.

6 The Leibnizian background (cont’d)

Principles of Nature and Grace, §17 (cont’d):

The pleasures that sight finds in proportions are of the same nature, and those caused by the other senses amount to something similar, even though we might not be able to explain it so distinctly.

7 Baumgarten’s response

Aesthetica, §560:

Thus, from the objects of the human disciplines and sciences that have arisen in this way — universals, §559 — there is born in the minds of the solidly learned a truth that is certainly perfect, often beautiful, and logical in the stricter sense.

8 Baumgarten’s response (cont’d)

Aesthetica, §560 (cont’d)

But now the question is whether such a universal has a metaphysical truth equal to that of its individual, which is contained under it. I think it can by now be entirely evident to philosophers that whatever exceptional formal perfection the universal has must have been bought at the cost of much and great material perfection in cognition and logical truth.

9 Baumgarten’s response (cont’d)

Aesthetica, §560 (cont’d)

For what is abstraction, if not loss? In the same way, you would not make a marble globe out of marble of irregular shape except with at least as much loss of material as the greater value of roundness will demand.

10 §§115–117: On aesthetics

What is aesthetics? How does it differ from logic? What is the purpose of aesthetics?

11 §§1–11: Definitions

Consider just the form. What does it say about the kind of science aesthetics is? about the kind of thing Baumgarten thinks poetry is?

12 §§12–15: Clear and confused knowledge

  • Which is more perfect? a clear or an obscure poem?
  • Is poetry distinct? Why not?
  • Consider the poem in the remark to §14. Why is it so bad? Why does that matter?

13 §§16–22: Intensive and extensive clarity

  • What is extensive clarity?
  • Why does clarifying the poetic import of extensive clarity matter to Baumgarten’s view?

14 §§23–27: The affects

Leibniz, Principles of Nature and Grace §17:

The pleasures of the senses themselves come down in the end to intellectual pleasures—they strike us as sensory rather than intellectual only because they are known in a confused way.

15 §§23–27: The affects

Consider:

  • §25: Affects are “given in the representing of something to oneself confusedly as good or bad”
  • §26: “We represent more in those things which we represent as good or bad for us that if we do not so represent them”

What’s the difference between this view and Leibniz’s?