Tomáš Hlobil

Bernard Bolzano on the Picture, the Image and the Visual Depiction

Even before he wrote his two aesthetic treatises On the Concept of the Beautiful (1843) and On the Classification of the Fine Arts (1849), Bolzano had already concerned himself with the questions of what is a picture (Bild), what is an artistic image as a kind of picture, what is the relationship between the picture and the depicted object (das Abgebildete), and what is representation (Darstellung). His earlier reflections on these questions can be found in his manuscript Philosophical Diaries, in his correspondence with Franz Exner, a professor of philosophy at Prague University, and in his main philosophical work Theory of Science (1837). The variety of motives which led to these considerations caused Bolzano to attribute differing, sometimes almost contradictory, characteristics to the picture. The present study describes Bolzano’s views on these questions and aims to demonstrate that, although Bolzano dealt with the fundamental issues relating to the nature of the picture repeatedly, in different contexts and in a stimulating fashion, he did not do so in the form of an integral theory. The study outlines the reasons for his approach and its causes.

Author's email:

hlobil@udu.cas.cz

DOI: https://doi.org/10.54759/ART-2024-0201

Full-text in the Digital Library of the Czech Academy of Sciences:
https://kramerius.lib.cas.cz/uuid/uuid:6a486e01-eb38-4930-92ab-d54fd4e8593e

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