Gesamtausgabe. Series II: Nachlass. A: Nachgelassene Schriften. Vol. 13: Ästhetische Schriften

Abstract

At the time of his death in 1848, Bernard Bolzano had completed two essays in aesthetics, one on beauty and one on the fine arts (Bolzano, 1843, 1849, 2015, 2017; for background and commentary see Rusnock and Šebestík, 2019, pp. 544–594; Livingston, 2014, 2015, 2016, 2021). Bolzano continued in his final years to work on topics in aesthetics, leaving behind a variety of drafts and notes. The volume under review is the long-awaited publication of this Nachlass. Editorial work on the volume was begun many years ago by the talented and industrious Bolzano scholar, Jan Berg, yet remained incomplete at the time of his death in 2015. The editor-in-chief of the Bernard-Bolzano-Gesamtausgabe, Edgar Morscher, shouldered the responsibility for bringing the project to completion. He was assisted by Kurt F. Strasser and Berg’s long-time collaborator, Peter Michael Schenkel. The contents of this volume can be briefly indicated as follows: This is critical-editorial scholarship at its best. The manuscripts that Bolzano left behind are in a very difficult and, at times, illegible hand. Bolzano used many abbreviations, only hinting at the words he had in mind. He made many corrections, often filled the margins with additions, and struck out lines or even entire pages of legible prose. The transcription of these texts demanded a painstaking and time-consuming process of educated mind-reading, an art that Berg had duly perfected in his editing of many volumes in the Gesamtausgabe.