Mimesis, Metaphysics and Aesthetic Science in Baumgarten and Nietzsche's The Birth of Tragedy

Abstract

Abstract: This paper investigates the notion of mimesis in Baumgarten's Meditationes (1735), the inaugural text of modern aesthetics, and Die Geburt der Tragödie , as two exemplary texts of aesthetische Wissenschaft . What meanings and functions do they give to 'mimesis' and the Aristotelian doctrine that art is an imitation ( Nachahmung, Abbild ) of nature? The main thesis is that both texts cast art as a Nachahmung of the creative principle of nature (natura naturans), rather than the order of things (natura naturata); a move that displaces traditional (static, dualistic, passive, representational) notions of mimesis with one that is dynamic, creative and tendentially anti-metaphysical, in line with the mimetic turn. They are exemplary texts of aesthetische Wissenschaft because the way they do this places them at opposite ends of metaphysics.