Noskov, A. Repin, I. (2025) The Movement from Aesthetics of Enlightenment to the Practical Aesthetics of Modernity – МЕЖДУНАРОДНЫЙ ЖУРНАЛ ИССЛЕДОВАНИЙ КУЛЬТУРЫ

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Alexei A. NOSKOV
Saint Petersburg State University of Industrial Technologies and Design
18, Bolshaya Morskaya street, Saint Petersburg, 191186, Russian Federation
Lecturer
e-mail: alexei.yoyo@gmail.com
ORCID: 0000-0003-3346-877X

Igor D. REPIN
Saint Petersburg State University
5, Mendeleevskaya line, Saint Petersburg, 199034, Russian Federation
Research Engineer at Institute of Philosophy, Postgraduate Student at Aesthetics and Philosophy of Culture Department
e-mail: igor.repin@spbu.ru
ORCID: 0009-0008-0461-1681

Noskov, A. Repin, I. (2025) The Movement from Aesthetics of Enlightenment to the Practical Aesthetics of Modernity

Abstract: This study proposes to apply an archaeological approach to the foundation of the philosophical theory of sensibility. In other words, using the method of the history of ideas in aesthetics to discover the main forms of practice from the middle of the 18th century to the end of the 19th century. It is appropriate to consider the transformations of the meaning of the term “practice” in aesthetics within the framework of historical epochs: Enlightenment, Romanticism and Modern. In the Enlightenment, the article can distinguish the founder of aesthetics A. Baumgarten, I. Kant and the figure of F. Schiller, also close to Romanticism. For the founder of aesthetics, the key theme is human education, and becoming human is rooted in the ancient concepts of self-care and the art of life. Further, the techniques of education in the texts of I. Kant and F. Schiller are replaced by the search for reference models for such human education. Learning through art is transformed into an interest in art objects. Art objects allow to “read” or certify with words in reasoning the ideas stored by art, available for edification and compassion of the subject, in particular by means of ekphrasis. The intellectuals of the Romantic era are searching for the ideal of art. The aesthetics of G.F.W. Hegel and his interpreter K. Rosenkranz are interested in the search for the forms and foundations of art, slowly eclipsing the original teaching with the resources of rhetoric in aesthetics. Finally, in the Modern era, the first theorists of practical aesthetics, among them G. Semper, look for the meaning of art in craft to organise industrial production. This search for the sense of art brings up the question of the creator or artist and the limits of his freedom, as well as the origin and meaning of art itself and its applied forms. According to P. Sloterdijk, the scientific progress of cynical positivism gets rid of the unnecessary and gives art only a social function. As D. Dickie notes, modernity also offers the opposite position: the figure of the artist refutes this reduction to the function of art, destroying the very idea of the usefulness of the art object in the social institution of artistic creation and its public expression. The arbitrariness of the artist reopens the question of the foundations of all creativity. Obviously, creativity is broader than art, because it allows for different experiences in the process of play.

Key words: history of ideas, art, enlightenment, romanticism, modernism, design, fantasy, experience, art of living, self-care.

References:

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For Citation:

Noskov, A. Repin, I. (2025) The Movement from Aesthetics of Enlightenment to the Practical Aesthetics of Modernity. International Journal of Cultural Research, 2 (59). 42–56. DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_2_42

DOI: 10.52173/2079-1100_2025_2_42