The German Aesthetic Tradition (review)

This history of German (or more accurately, Germanic) aesthetics surveys the tradition stretching from Alexander Baumgarten to Theodor Adorno. The author has divided his survey into three thematic parts. In the first, "The Age of Paradigms," Baumgarten, Mendelssohn, Kant, Schiller, Schelling, and Hegel establish the principal approaches to aesthetics and the philosophy of art that will structure the tradition. In the second part, "Challenging the Paradigms," Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche raise critical problems with the positions of their forebears. In the final part, "Renewing the Paradigms," Cassirer, Lukács, Heidegger, Gadamer, Marcuse, and Adorno revive elements of the classical tradition for twentieth-century purposes. As one might expect, covering fifteen complex figures in a relatively short book makes for a survey primarily of the surfaces of their thought. Even so, the exercise may be useful for those with no knowledge of German aesthetics who would like a quick introduction.

From the outset the author establishes a plan to consider each philosopher's work in terms of his ontological treatment of art, the epistemic role he attributes to art and beauty, and the practical functions he assigns art. In the early chapters the author dutifully addresses these matters at the end of each chapter, but from Hegel on, the author's commitment to this structure seems to wane. It becomes more difficult to discern these assessments of each philosopher as the book progresses. It is an odd feature of the book that its author announces these "principles of comparison" so explicitly in the introduction, but does not consistently apply them.

There is also inconsistency in the author's choices regarding whose theories to directly criticize. In some cases (with Hegel, Schopenhauer, Nietzsche, and Cassirer, for example), Hammermeister offers quite global criticisms of the philosophers' views, while in other cases (with Kant, Schiller, Schelling, Heidegger, and Gadamer) he provides very little criticism. The book does not advance a philosophical position from which to understand why some figures in this tradition, but not others, warrant sharp criticisms that on occasion (with Kierkegaard, for example) amount to blanket dismissals.

The second part of the book, "Challenging the Paradigms," stands in an uncertain relationship to the first part, "The Age of Paradigms." Hammermeister advertises Schopenhauer, Kierkegaard, and Nietzsche as thinkers intent on dismantling the aesthetic-theoretical systems of their predecessors, and there is no doubt much truth in this assertion. Yet these chapters offer little in the way of explicit elaboration of precisely which views of which prior thinkers each of these rebels seeks to undermine. Schopenhauer, for example, is presented as a champion of Kantian aesthetic disinterestedness, while his delirious antipathy for Hegel is hardly discussed. Kierkegaard's famous disagreements with Hegel receive little attention, either.

The third part, "Renewing the Paradigms," advances one of the author's principal claims in the book: that twentieth-century German(ic) philosophers recapitulate the sequence of positions in the classical Kant-Schiller-Schelling-Hegel development. Cassirer revives Kant; Lukács and other neo-Marxist thinkers revive Schiller; Heidegger is far more indebted to Schelling than he acknowledges. To some extent the author's proposal is a useful heuristic, especially regarding Cassirer and Lukács. With Heidegger problems begin to arise. Hammermeister argues that Heidegger shares with Schelling a view of art as a "truth-event," but this, of course, would be a view that Heidegger also shares with Hegel. When Hammermeister notes (189) that for Heidegger truth can happen in practices other than art, this strengthens a comparison to Hegel (despite the profound differences between Heidegger and Hegel), rather than to Schelling (for whom art alone is the organon of truth, at least in the System of Transcendental Idealism that Hammermeister treats as the most Schellingian of Schelling's texts).

As with the author's other overarching structures for the book, the paradigm-renewal claim also loses momentum halfway through. Hammermeister appropriately presents...