Gestalt e intuizione: la “psicologia del Bello” di Alois Höfler

This essay is about the aesthetics of Alois Höfler (1853-1922). A pupil of Brentano and Meinong, Höfler was mostly influenced by the latter, with whom he coauthored a Logik (1890). In his writings concerning psychology, Höfler lays the grounding for his aesthetics. Pivotal to Höfler’s “psychology of Beauty” is the idea that aesthetic “emotions” (Gefühle) refer to mental presentation of beautiful objects, i.e. of “Gestalts”, which are made up of both physical and mental elements, e.g. the emotions of a dramatic character, or those of the poet himself. Accordingly, in a Platonic vein, Höfler claims that any truly beautiful artistic form is atemporal: it is «discovered» rather than «created» by the artist.