a History of

When Professor McNeill began his lectures last semester, I was in his first class for a few minutes and spoke about the relationship between Church history and thehistory of Christian thought. I said there that they cannot be separated from eachother, and that in the history of Christian thought the history of the Church mustalways be presupposed; and vice versa, that in the history of the Church the history of Christian thought is implied. This separation, therefore, into two semestersfollowing each other is artificial.

The history of aesthetics, like the histories of other sciences, may be treated in a two-fold manner: as the history of the men who created the field of study, or as the history of the questions that have been raised and resolved in the course of its pursuit. The earlier History of Aesthetics (3 volumes, 1960-68, English-language edition 1970-74) by the author of the present book was a history of men, of writers and artists who in centuries past have spoken up concerning beauty and art, form and crea­ tivity. The present book returns to the same subject, but treats it in a different way: as the history of aesthetic questions, concepts, theories. The matter of the two books, the previous and the present, is in part the same; but only in part: for the earlier book ended with the 17th century, while the present one brings the subject up to our own times. And from the 18th century to the 20th much happened in aesthetics; it was only in that period that aesthetics achieved recognition as a separate science, received a name of its own, and produced theories that early scholars and artists had never dreamed of.