ISSN 2411-0795
ISSN 2411-0795
Keywords: Venevitinov D.V., Imperial Moscow University, Merzlyakov A.F., Moscow University, Odoevsky V.F., Pavlov M.G., Russian aesthetics, Russian classicism, Russian Romanticism, philosophy of identity, Shevyrev S.P., schellingianism
Bogomolov A.G. Philosophical Debates about Art and Aesthetics in Moscow State University in the First Half of the 19th Century. // Theory and History of Art. 2023. N 3/4, p.10–32
This article deals with the most significant aesthetic concepts and theoretical research in the field of art sciences developed during the first half of the XIX century by graduates and professors of the Imperial Moscow University. The main purpose of this paper is to introduce to those representatives of Moscow university scientific environment whose research actually laid the foundations of the national art science and aesthetics. This article pays attention only to the most significant representatives in the scientific sense and significant in the context of subsequent research.
During the first half of the XIX century Russian aesthetic thought followed the line of Western European concepts and theories. First of all it is about French classicism and its main follower at the Moscow University A.F. Merzlyakov. Since the 10s, at Imperial Moscow University the romantic theory of art and the "philosophy of identity" by Friedrich Schelling, a representative of German idealism, have been gaining popularity. Russian Schellingianism and Russian Romanticism in the person of such representatives as D.V. Venevitinov, N.I. Nadezhdin, S.P. Shevyrev have become the main source of reasoning about the nature of art and the essence of creativity for several decades. It is within the boundaries of the Romantic-Schellingian tradition that the idea of the specificity of Russian aesthetics path begins to form. The main method on the basis of which the national science of art begins to form is proclaimed the "historical method" (S.P. Shevyrev), and at the same time a gradual rejection of the theoretical and speculative idealistic approach begins.