Ästhetik des Hässlichen

"An aesthetic of the ugly? And why not? Aesthetics has become a collective name for a large group of concepts, which again divides into three particular classes. One of these has to do with the idea of the beautiful, the second with the concept of its production, i.e., with art, the third with the system of arts, with the representation of the idea of the beautiful by art in a certain medium. The concepts belonging to the first class we use to group together under the title of the metaphysics of the beautiful. But if the idea of the beautiful is set apart, the investigation of the ugly is inseparable from it. The concept of the ugly, as the negative beautiful, thus constitutes a part of aesthetics. There is no other science to which the same could be referred, and it is therefore correct to speak of the aesthetics of the ugly." [...] The.