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

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. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]