MEIER, GEORG FRIEDRICH
(1718–1777)

Georg Friedrich Meier was a German philosopher and aesthetician. A pupil of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Meier succeeded Baumgarten as extraordinary professor at the University of Halle in 1740 and became a full professor in 1748, holding that position until his death.

Meier, a prolific writer, developed and commented on Baumgarten's doctrines as an extension and revision of Wolffianism and went far beyond Baumgarten in the reform of Wolffianism. His treatises, used as textbooks in many universities, were perspicuous, sophisticated, and modern renderings of Wolffian doctrine; by their thorough discussion of basic concepts and attention to details they give one of the best insights into the Wolffian system and its problems. Christian Wolff's and Baumgarten's ideas were rendered more fluid by Meier's work, establishing connections between disparate problems and establishing new distinctions. Meier's style was closer to the style of the "popular philosophers" than to that of orthodox Wolffians, and he made little use of the Wolffian mathematical method in philosophy.

Meier's Vernunftlehre introduced into the traditional frame of Wolffian logic lengthy psychological and methodological discussions like those of the Pietist philosophers A. F. Hoffmann and C. F. Crusius. He also presented a detailed typology of concepts. In a marked departure from Wolff, he stressed the limits of the human understanding, devoting an entire work to the subject (Betrachtungen über die Schranken der menschlichen Erkenntniss ).

Meier's Metaphysik, although in general rather close to Baumgarten, shows the same individual features. For instance, in empirical psychology Meier advocated a subjectivism like that of Crusius. He held that the nature of our understanding determines what we can or cannot think. This determination, like the principle of cogitabilis in Crusius, is the foundation of the principle of identity.

Meier devoted several pamphlets to the immortality of the soul, which he held could not be theoretically demonstrated. Any a priori proof of God's existence must be completed by an a posteriori one. And in general Meier would not extend the power of reason much beyond basic truths and human experience.

Meier's most typical work was his Anfangsgründe aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften (Principles of All Beautiful Arts and Sciences). He was opposed to the classical thesis that art imitates nature. He stressed the importance of sensitivity (the "lower faculty") and the indispensability of a knowledge of the beautiful within one's whole outlook on the world. Besides Baumgarten, whose views it is difficult to extricate from Meier's because of their close collaboration, Meier was influenced by the Swiss critics Johann Jakob Bodmer and Johann Jakob Breitinger and by English aestheticians. Like Baumgarten, he gave the term aesthetics a broad interpretation and, like Baumgarten's, his work contains an extensive discussion of scientific methodology.

See also Aesthetics, History of; Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb; Crusius, Christian August; Identity; Scientific Method; Wolff, Christian.

Bibliography

principal works by meier

Anfangsgründe aller schönen Künste und Wissenschaften. 3 vols. Halle, 1748–1750.

Gedanken über die Religion. Halle, 1749.

Vernunftlehre. Halle, 1752.

Philosophische Sittenlehre. 5 vols. Halle, 1753–1761. A much extended version of Baumgarten's Ethica Philosophica.

Metaphysik. 4 vols. Halle, 1755–1759.

Betrachtungen über die Schranken der menschlichen Erkenntniss. Halle, 1775.

works on meier

Bergmann, E. Die Begründung der deutschen Aesthetik druch A. G. Baumgarten und G. F. Meier. Leipzig: Röder and Schunke, 1911.

Böhm, Hans. "Das Schönheitsproblem bei G. F. Meier." Archiv für die gesamte Psychologie 56 (1926).

Langen, S. G. G. F. Meier. Halle, 1778.

Makkreel, Rudolf. "The Confluence of Aesthetics and Hermeneutics in Baumgarten, Meier, and Kant." Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism 54(1) (1996): 65–75.

Giorgio Tonelli (1967)

Bibliography updated by Tamra Frei (2005)