Ernst Cassirer, Erwin Panofsky

Eidos und Eidolon. Das Problem des Schönen und der Kunst in Platons Dialogen
Idea. Ein Beitrag zur Begriffsgeschichte der älteren Kunsttheorie
VOLUME 172

Idea(s) of Beauty

Erwin Panofsky’s study on the aesthetic conception of the “idea” has been hailed as a “preeminent example of philosophically trained erudition in Germany between 1920 and 1930” (G.R. Hocke). It was conceived in response to Ernst Cassirer, who, in his lecture on Eidos and Eidolon, demonstrated that Platonic philosophy left no room for a philosophical aesthetics, while also laying the foundations for a future theory of art. Picking up where Cassirer left off, Panofsky reconstructs how the metaphysical doctrine of ideas and the young discipline of art theory come together in the sixteenth century. Inspired by Neoplatonic philosophy, the art theorists of the High Renaissance and Mannerism are the first to develop the concept of a creative “idea” that is fundamental both to the work of art and to its contemplation.

This transformation of the Platonic “idea of beauty” is a vital key to an understanding of Renaissance, Mannerist, and Neoclassical art—and importantly also of the genesis of the modern theory of art. Gathered in a double edition, the two texts enter into a philosophical dialogue.

Ernst Cassirer (1874–1945) taught philosophy in Germany, the United Kingdom, Sweden, and the United States. He is best known today as a philosopher of culture (Philosophy of Symbolic Forms, 1923–1929).

Erwin Panofsky (b. Hannover, 1892; d. Princeton, U.S., 1968) was one of the foremost art historians of the twentieth century and made seminal contributions to the development of iconology. He taught at the University of Hamburg until he was removed from his position when the National Socialists seized power in 1933. He then left for the U.S., where he taught at a series of universities.