Abstract

The topical focus of the following inquiry is the critical engagement of French scholars and writers ca. 1800 – for example, Madame de Staël or Charles de Villers – with German philosophical aesthetics. With regard to this case study, the changing relationship of literary criticism and aesthetics within different national contexts can be brought into view. In France, the concept »esthétique«, which was imported as a translation of the German neologism »Ästhetik« current since the publication of Baumgarten’s work, met with firm resistance from the middle of the 18th century on. The task of the following contribution is to analyze the reasons for this rejection in French intellectual circles at the end of the 18th and the beginning of the 19th centuries. In the background of these often quite intensely conducted discussions lies the question whether philosophy can legitimately claim to produce a specific discourse regarding literature.