著者

浜下 昌宏

出版者

美学会

雑誌

美學 (ISSN:05200962)

巻号頁・発行日

vol.36, no.4, pp.13-23, 1986-03-31

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We must ascertain the position of Gerard in the 18th-century British aesthetics. Among the contributions Gerard has made to aesthetic theories, the most distinguished is, in our view, his associationist aesthetics. His theory of association is made up of the two renovated conceptions : imagination and association of ideas. First, imagination is, to Addison, a faculty of aesthetic perception, which is identified with Hutcheson's concept of an internal sense of beauty. In contrast, Gerard thinks imagination to be a faculty of an association of ideas. Second, association is, to Locke, a cause of a false judgement, and to Hutchson, it is only an accidental cause of a variety of taste. It means little in aesthetics. But, to Gerard, association has a much more positive significance. It enables us to appreciate the aesthetic by associating some aesthetic quality with its related meaning. Imagination, by associating ideas, makes up for the loss of memory and goes further to produce a whole of images which are not in reality. Thus, according to Gerard, imagination is indispensable both in taste and in genius.