Abstract

In his first work, the poetics Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus. Baumgarten frequently cites Horace’s Ars Poetica. Horace was highly esteemed by Baumgarten and his contemporaries, especially in the fields of poetics and art theory. Baumgarten uses Ars Poetica throughout Meditationes. but it is especially in the paragraphs introducing some of the key concepts of his philosophy that there is a significant amount of excerpts from Horace’s poetics. In this article, I examine if and how contemporary scholarly interpretations may have influenced these uses of Horace’s text and maybe even Baumgarten’s theory. Following a brief account of relevant commentaries as well as Horace’s position in contemporary art theory, I explore the implied interpretations of Ars Poetica in Baumgarten’s excerpts, focusing on his three key terms, phantasia. heterocosmica and methodum lucidam. Compared to the conception of Horace as expressed in the commentaries, this study suggests a complex interaction between those and Baumgarten’s art theory.