Abstract

Most of the groundbreaking works of Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), who paved the way for modern experimental psychology, psychophysics, and empirical aesthetics, are so far only available in German. With the first full text translation of Fechner’s article on The Aesthetic Association Principle (Das Associationsprincip in der Aesthetik), we want to fill in one of the blank spots in the reception of his Aesthetics from Below (Aesthetik von Unten). In his 1866 article, Fechner devises a fundamental principle that accounts for the role of associations in the formation of aesthetic preferences. Based on concrete everyday examples and thought experiments, he demonstrates how aesthetic choices are largely shaped by the observer’s learning history (associative factors) rather than by an object’s formal properties (direct factors). Fechner’s Aesthetic Association Principle has lost nothing of its initial relevance as the role of content and personal meaning is still grossly underrated in theory and practice of empirical aesthetics today.

Highlights

  • Most of the groundbreaking works of Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), who paved the way for modern experimental psychology, psychophysics, and empirical aesthetics, are so far only available in German

  • Already in Fechner’s early writings on aesthetics, one encounters a principle which has no direct counterpart among the elements of psychophysics: The Aesthetic Association Principle

  • We decided to translate Fechner’s 1866 article because it offers a comprehensive summary of his thoughts on this important matter to him: Based on a public lecture at the Leipziger Kunstverein of the same year, the text was first published in the Zeitschrift fur bildende Kunst and later incorporated into the first volume of his Propaedeutics of Aesthetics (Vorschule der Aesthetik)

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Summary

Introduction

Most of the groundbreaking works of Gustav Theodor Fechner (1801–1887), who paved the way for modern experimental psychology, psychophysics, and empirical aesthetics, are so far only available in German. We do not see the woods and the lake any different than the freshly operated blind person and the new-born child: green and blank or blue patches; but everything we have ever heard, seen, read, experienced, thought with regard to woods and lakes, like anything that may serve as a comparison, contributes to the associations these objects bestow upon us.

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