Karl Philipp Moritz

Die Signatur des Schönen
und andere Schriften zur Begründung der Autonomieästhetik
VOLUME 180

A Radical Aesthetics of Autonomy

Before Kant, Schiller, and Gautier, and more radical than they, Karl Philipp Moritz was a theorist of aesthetic autonomy: What is beautiful need not also be useful. And what is not useful is often by the same token beautiful. The volume Die Signatur des Schönen gathers all major writings by Moritz on the subject, making it easy for the reader to trace the evolution of his thinking. As though en passant, it also reveals that the ostensibly so unpolitical and unhistorical aesthetics of autonomy is closely bound up with the emergence of the capitalist culture business: far from being an aesthete with his head in the clouds, Moritz, who was perpetually pressed for money, was a journalist who wrote way too much, scholar for hire, editor of magazines, and rapid-fire author of advice booklets and travel guides, grammar textbooks and children’s books. A dependent cultural worker envisioned the independence of art.

For too long, Karl Philipp Moritz (1756–1793) was known only as the author of Anton Reiser, one of world literature’s first psychological novels. More recently, his writings on mythology, linguistics, and above all on aesthetics have received growing attention. Moritz is now widely regarded as one of German classicism’s and early Romanticism’s most versatile and most interesting minds.

Stefan Ripplinger (b. St. Ingbert, 1962) works as a journalist, essayist, and translator. He regularly publishes writings on literature, fine art, and cinema.