IOKU Yoko

This paper clarifies the Wolffian theory of proper names by focusing on the work of Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten’s disciple, Georg Friedrich Meier. Previous studies have indicated that Baumgarten describes the proper name as poetic. However, he directly applies the ontological notion of individuals’ “complete determination” to the aesthetic problem of proper names in literature. Relying on Meier, who is often underestimated as a “popularizer” of his master, we explain the relationship between the complete determination and the poetic effect of proper names from two aspects: “emphasis” and “mathematical infinity.” Meier defines a proper name as a type of emphasis which thus has a rhetorical function of evoking the individual’s notes to the cognitive agent. The individual’s notes, which should be finite from the transcendental perspective, cannot be fully grasped by human cognition as they are mathematically infinite. Hence, because proper names represent the individual as an inexhaustible entity, their use does not necessarily have to evoke numerous notes; rather, the name of the individual itself could bring about beauty through an abundance of latent notes. This paper suggests that these are two sides of the same coin: keenly aware of human cognitive limitations, Meier found the potential of aesthetics as a new science.