A Study Of Baumgarten’s Inferior Cognitive Faculty

Baumgarten,the "Father of aesthetica",defined aesthetica as "the science of perceptual cognition and expression"("Metaphysics"),which is a science that can "guide inferior cognitive faculty and understand things from perceptual aspects"("Philosophical Meditations of Poetry").Therefore,for the first time in the history of philosophy,Baumgarten has established its own disciplinary territory for inferior cognitive faculty that have been criticized for a long time.As early as in 1735,Baumgarten proposed the concept of aesthetica in his doctoral thesis "The Philosophical Meditation of Poetry".However,a detailed and systematic discussion of the various inferior cognitive faculty included under the concept of aesthetica is presented in the works Metaphysics in 1739 and Sensibility in 1750.Baumgarten’s term "inferior cognitive faculty" or perceptual cognitive faculty,specifically includes senses,imagination,perspicasiousness,memory,invention,foresight,judgment,anticipation,and characterization.Based on the discussion of inferior cognitive faculty in "Metaphysics" and "Perceptual Science",(1)this article first sorts out the relevant divisions of soul ability in the history of Western philosophy;(2)Secondly,it combs Baumgarten’s exposition of the relevant rules inferior cognitive faculty,explains the specific embodiment of various inferior cognitive faculty in aesthetics,and explores the relationship between inferior and superior cognitive faculty,that is,their similarities and differences;(3)Finally,the relationship between perceptual cognitive activities and aesthetic activities-are the two equal or different? This also involves our translation of aesthetica,which is whether it is better to translate into "perceptual science" or "aesthetics".