Philosophy of Art

As far as the history of the science of art is concerned, Plato remains the model among the ancients, as he established the idea of true beauty; in more recent times, the Italians Petrarch, Boccaccio, and Dante worked after him. Among the Germans, Winckelmann established both principles of art in the spirit of Plato and judgments of works of art according to him. Besides Plato, Aristotle is also remarkable among the ancients, just as he dominated posterity in the arts as he did with his philosophy. As he is a sharp analyst and a great empiricist in the latter, so he is in art, according to his only remaining works. In his de poetica arte on the art of poetry, he demands primarily logical perfection for a work of art and an organic whole, taken in the sense of empiricism. The French adhered strictly to him; Corneille, for instance, judged his works at the end according to Aristotle's principles, and Voltaire also presented his rules when defending his own works. The Germans learned from him the imitation of nature. Longinus among the ancients is the inventor of the sensitive and feeling representation.