Background
Dessoir, Max was born in 1867 in Berlin.
Dessoir, Max was born in 1867 in Berlin.
Universities of Berlin and Würzburg.
1897-1820. Assistant Professor, then full Professor (1920), University of Berlin.
Main publications:
(1889) Karl Philipp Moritz als Ästhetik. Berlin
H. Sieling.
(1894) Geschichte der neueren deutschen Psychologie, Berlin
C. Duncker.
(1906) Ästhetik und allgemeine Kunstwissenschaft, Stuttgart: F. Knke (English translation. Aesthetics and Theory of Art, Irans. Stephen A. Emery. Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 1970). (1911) Abriss einer Geschichte der Psychologie, Heidelberg: C. Winter (English translation. Outlines of the History of Psychology, trans. D. Fisher, New York: Macmillan. 1912).
(1923) Vom Diesseits der Seele. Leipzig: Dürr and Weber.
(1936) Einleitung in die Philosophie, Stuttgart: F. Enke.
(1940) Die Rede als Kunst. Munich: E. Reinhardt. (1947) Das Ich. der Traum, der Tod, Stuttgart: F. Enke.
Secondary literature:
Aster. Ernest and Becher, Erich, et al. (1925) Lehrbuch der Philosophie herausgegeben von Max Dessoir, 2 vols, Berlin: Ullstein.
Having studied philosophy at Berlin, and then medicine at Würzburg, from 1906 Dessoir founded and edited the Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kuntswissenschaft, becoming Director of the said association in 1909. Renowned as an aesthetician, he mixed with many internationally regarded scholars and artists in Berlin. However, from 1933 he faced increasing interference from the National Socialist government, until Goebbels finally prohibited him from speaking, teaching or publishing. Dessoir and his wife left Berlin in August 1943, settling in Bad Nauheim. Dessoir died four years later.
Having studied philosophy at Berlin, and then medicine at Würzburg, from 1906 Dessoir founded and edited the Zeitschrift für Ästhetik und allgemeine Kuntswissenschaft, becoming Director of the said association in 1909. Renowned as an aesthetician, he mixed with many internationally regarded scholars and artists in Berlin. However, from 1933 he faced increasing interference from the National Socialist government, until Goebbels finally prohibited him from speaking, teaching or publishing.
Dessoir and his wife left Berlin in August 1943, settling in Bad Nauheim. Dessoir died four years later.
Dessoir thought critical philosophy should not be wholly dismissive of our ordinary world understandings. Although possibly mistaken, our worldviews may serve basic human needs and yearnings.
He most notably brought his psychological interests to bear upon aesthetics and. in particular, towards developing a general science of art. He experimentally investigated aesthetic responses and, partly on the basis of his studies, argued that aesthetic objects, whether artworks, parts of nature or mental or social constructs, are such by virtue of their purposiveness. manifested in the formal elements of harmony, proportion, rhythm, metre, size and degree. According to Dessoir. the artist conceives of some definite form, resulting from emotional excitement, and works it through until a unifying vision is manifested in the execution.
It is only when an aesthetic attitude, variable in degree and kind, is brought to bear upon such an aesthetic object that the experience afforded is both pleasurable and aesthetic.
In developing his taxonomy of the arts, Dessoir suggests that all the main classificatory categories of art are significantly related to other fundamental aspects of human culture. Hence, he argues, a merely aesthetic understanding of art must be inadequate. Art possesses a cultural and moral function, in particular, enhancing the sensibilities of the informed appreciator.
However. only a relative few may be informed and critical enough to be engaged and thus cultivated. Art’s highest moral function is ultimately spiritual. Through reconciling our subjective and objective worlds' art may reveal the unified grounding of the human world and the divinely created universe.