The Development of the Doctrine of the Three Faculties in German Aesthetics

Considering the importance of the concept of taste in 18th-century aesthetics, it is surprising that the development of the doctrine of the three faculties of the mind or the soul (Dreivermögenslehre) has not received the attention it deserves. Actually Kant's definition of this concept was preceded by a lengthy discussion of faculties of the mind, their function, and their numbers. Johann Ulrich König, Friedrich Justus Riedel, Johann Georg Sulzer, Johann Nikolaus Tetens, Herder, and Moses Mendelssohn took part in this discussion. A tripartite concept of the soul's cognitive ability can be found in Sulzer's Theorie der angenehmen und unangenehmen Empfindungen (1751/52). A division of the three faculties of the mind into a faculty for truth, goodness, and beauty came with the publication of Friedrich Justus Riedel's Theorie der schönen Künste und Wissenschaften in 1767. In the following years the faculty of taste was considered to be equal to and independent of the other two faculties by the sensualist school, while the rationalists tried to preserve the unity of all the abilities of the human soul in order to preserve the primacy of the mind.