Karl Axelsson’s research while affiliated with Uppsala University and other places

The eighteenth century witnessed the historical change from aesthetic instrumentalism to aesthetic autonomy. Aesthetic research has often attempted to capture this change in teleological terms, wherein British aesthetic instrumentalism appears to contain the seeds of its own decline. The purpose of this article is to restore a balance between these two major historical modes of appreciating art, and to display the uniqueness of British aesthetic instrumentalism. During especially the first half of the eighteenth century, aesthetic instrumentalism was revitalised due to a new rationale for art in the reinforcement of a national body politic and in the strengthening of a British identity. In order to recognise the distinctiveness of aesthetic instrumentalism, as well as to acknowledge by what means it operated, I make essentially two claims: (1) aesthetic instrumentalism rediscovered its effective interaction with a national body politic by exploring a possible nexus between Britain and classical antiquity, and (2) although the philosophy of art advanced by Joseph Addison (1672–1719) frequently is held as a possible commencement of aesthetic autonomy, it was, first and foremost, characterised by a systematic aesthetic instrumentalism intended to reinforce the British body politic.

The attempt to influence public opinion on the subject of taste constitutes a primary aim in Joseph Addison's (1672-1719) and Richard Steele's (1672-1729) essay-periodicals, The Tatler (1709-1711), The Spectator (1711-1712, 1714), and The Guardian (1713). Addison and Steele emphasize the need for a progressive culture of education, where human nature is continuously refined and improved, and where man is expected to cultivate his nature and his judgement of taste as part of a process of personal self-fulfilment. However, along with such beliefs, Addison and Steele explore a less recognized trait where nature (human nature as well as the chain of being) is much less dynamic and where education and the cultivation of taste are regarded as reprehensible unless they reproduce a predetermined order of nature. By occasionally calling attention to such a trait, Addison and Steele appear to wish to lend balance to the discourse on education and taste, and to reduce the risk implicit in a too radical cultivation of taste and nature, namely, the threat of a blurred concept of the chain of being and a certain indistinctness between diverse social groups.

Joseph Addison’s (1672–1719) essays in The Spectator occupy contradictory positions in the history of aesthetics. While they are generally considered central to the institution of aesthetics as a scholarly discipline, their reception has throughout history entailed a strong questioning of their philosophical and scholarly importance. In the following paper, I consider this dual feature as regards reception, and set out to clarify how this has come about. A re-examination of the arguments advanced by Addison makes clear that his role is not that of a philosopher, but that of a public educator. As such he aims to raise the standard of general education of the British ‘middling orders’ in the early eighteenth century, and by using art for didactic purposes he seeks to contribute to the shaping of morally accomplished individuals.