The Japanese Society for Aesthetics

Aesthetics No.23-24 (2021): 101-107

Book Review

SASAKI Ken-ichi, ディドロ『絵画論』の研究（Study of theTreatise on Painting by Diderot）
Three Volumes Boxed, 976pp. Chūōkōron Bijutsu Shuppan, Tokyo, 2013
KANATA Susumu
University of East Asia, Shimonoseki

Ken-ichi Sasaki is a professor emeritus of aesthetics at the University of Tokyo, and after
being President of the Japanese Society for Aesthetics, held such important posts as President of
the International Association for Aesthetics and a Vice-President of International Federation ofPhilosophical Societies. Professor Sasaki has recently published a set of three volumes entitled,
Study of the Treatise on Painting by Diderot. The first volume is devoted to a meticulous
commentary of the Treatise (pp. 1–506), the second volume assembles historical studies on
Diderot’s aesthetics and philosophy from the viewpoint of the Treatise (pp. 519–842), and thethird volume gives a critical edition of the French text, with a Japanese translation on the opposite
pages (pp. 1–109). The original text of the Treatise amounts to only forty-nine pages in Sasaki’s
critical edition (or sixty-nine pages in the authoritative DPV edition from the publisher Hermann).
On this small-scale text Sasaki spends almost twenty times the amount of space, not only to throwmuch light on Diderot’s aesthetics, but also to offer a close and detailed analysis of thesignificance of 18th century French aesthetics. In fact Sasaki spent more than thirty-five years on
this study.
This is a monumental work commemorating the year of the 300th anniversary of the birthof Denis Diderot (1713–84). Here are found many important proposals and critical suggestions
by Sasaki, for and against Diderot studies today. This reviewer has for more than 40 years been
engaged in building an aesthetics of fine arts, in terms of the tri-stratified structure of the
Bildbewusstsein, based on the Phenomenology of Edmund Husserl. Here he will present andreview Sasaki’s work from this standpoint.
1. Treatise and contemporary aesthetics of image
Casting a glance on contemporary aesthetics, we perceive that image or imagery is
acknowledged to be one of the key concepts. Studies on visual culture have provided many topics
in Anglo-American aesthetics since the final decades of the last century. In the present civilization
which is dominated by consumption, technology for visual communication has developed rapidly
and has penetrated deeply into our daily life: product design, display lighting, photography, TV,
video, animation, cinema etc. Today we look in vain for boundaries between high culture andlow culture, pure art and popular art, culture and subculture. These image theories seem to be

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based on a common ground with Bild (or image) theories from German aesthetics. However, they
very often neglect the historical accumulation of visual culture centered on painting.
Sasaki’s contribution through his Study may shed a new light on contemporary visual culture,through making a scrutiny into the historical view of Diderot. While Sasaki affirms that inDiderot’s century, painting was the paradigmatic art form, i.e., other arts looked to the state ofpainting, he is also interested in various vulgar currents of our time. For him Diderot’s Treatise
on Painting, which is one of the classics of theoretical reflection on painting in the world historyof aesthetics, treating an individual genre, might answer the whole problem of the visual arts,
even today.
This long-awaited book is a very timely and excellent gift for the today’s vivid situations ofvisual culture studies or image studies, and also presents ambitious challenges to the contemporary aesthetics.
Modern aesthetics, under A. G. Baumgarten’s denomination as a science of sensory
cognition on the basis of the system of logics, has been focusing on the linear way of thinking(nacheinander). On the contrary, images or the eikonic forms are based on another sort of logic
which presents different objects, colors, and forms at the same time, or side by side, namely
simultaneously (nebeneinander). The aesthetic thought developed in the Treatise by Diderot isan aesthetics of the latter. We should thus consider Diderot’s Treatise as an important contribution
to contemporary visual aesthetics.
2. Encyclopedia and Salons
Denis Diderot is a philosopher who perplexes us because of his wide-range activities anddiverse impacts on the 18th century French aesthetic history. In the middle 1740’s, he appearedon the stage of philosophy with an adaptation of a book by the 3rd Earl of Shaftesbury. He was
sympathetic to the latter’s notion of the close connection between beauty and virtue. Thissympathy came probably from his moral consciousness, inherited from his father’s pride in hiscraftsmanship of maître coutelier. Sasaki analyzes the differences between the original text of
Shaftesbury and Diderot’s adaptation, so as to make sure of the starting point and life-long themeof Diderot’s aesthetics.
After this Diderot engaged in the editorship of the Encyclopedia (the 1st vol. appearing in1751), at first as joint editor with d’ Alembert, who resigned in 1759. The whole work was
finished in 1772 with a total of 28 volumes, 17 texts and 11 illustrations. In these days he was, so
to speak, “Diderot of the Encyclopedia”. With regard to aesthetics, he wrote a long article “Beau”
in the 2nd volume (1752), well known for its definition of beauty as a perception of relation. This
article was eventually reprinted later in the form of book, and had very much influence on
European academic circles.
Whilst busily occupied with Encyclopedia, Diderot wrote a criticism of the Salons. These
texts are regarded as the most important in this field, and four early texts have meaning for us as
the decisive steps to the Treatise. In those days the Salon of Louvre Palace exhibition was held
every second year, with free admission, and caused a public sensation in Paris. Famous artists

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from the Academie royale de peinture et de sculpture exhibited their works there. The events
attracted not only collectors and art dealers, but also a large public. An official catalogue in a very
simple form was sold, and news, briefs and reports appeared in the “public sphere”. Diderot wasoffered the chance of reviewing these exhibitions by Baron de Melchior Grimm, a German
resident in Paris, for his Correpondance Litteraire (hereafter: CL), a semi-monthly handwritten
magazine.
Diderot wrote nine Salons in total: 1759, 61, 63, 65, 67, 69, 71, 75, 81. But this CL had avery small circulation of no more than fifteen copies, and was addressed only to the royalty within
the Northern Europe, North Germany and Russia. Along with the Salons, several masterpieces ofDiderot, including the Treatise on Painting, were published in the CL. This means that hisachievements in the field of visual art remained beyond the reach of the French public. Diderot
visited the Salons frequently to gather news and listened to the self-explanations by the artists
themselves. Artists also expected his comments, especially concerning the content of their works,
but his aesthetics was unknown in detail in Paris.
It was after the death of Diderot that his criticism of the Salons became accessible tocontemporary people. Diderot’s Salon of 1765 was included in the library of art theories compiled
by Buisson (1795), together with a supplement, under the title of Essais sur la peinture (on the
problem of the authentic title, we shall discuss below). Three years later, the Œuvres de Denis
Diderot (edited by Naigeon) was published, in which all of the nine Salons were collected and socame to be known by members of the French art world. We can state that Diderot’s presence inthe field of visual art theory began to take place after his death.
Diderot’s aesthetics was formed in some of its essential parts through his art criticism ofSalons. His aesthetics must be counted as one of the monumental triumphs of modern aesthetics,
to be ranked with that of the modern German aesthetics. Sasaki’s work convinces us of this.
Firstly, Sasaki reads Diderot’s texts intensively “through a magnifying glass”, secondly, he has
an overview of the surroundings around and behind them, with bird–eye views of 18th century
thought on philosophy, social thought, and art etc, and thirdly, of course, he reads between thelines to show the significance of Diderot’s own intellectual activities through his naked eyes ofan aesthetic philosopher of our times.
3. Salons and the Treatise
In the last quarter of the 19th century, Œuvres complètes de Diderot by Assézat-Tourneux(1875–77) appeared for the first time, with the claim of being “complet”. With this edition, thewhole matter of Diderot’s views on beauty and art became accessible to the public interested in
his aesthetic thought. In those days, however, the new waves of the artworks and exhibitions, forexample, Impressionism, arose in Paris, and then were much involved in the scandalous problemsof the contents of artworks and exhibitions. One of the most important Diderot’s contributions to
the painting was regarded as a pioneer of art criticism, although his philosophical treatises on
painting did not yet awake any interest at that time.
In the latter half of the 20th century, Œuvres esthétiques de Diderot (ed. P. Vernière, Garnier,

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1968) contributed to the infiltration of Diderot’s aesthetics into a wider audience, including thereviewer himself. It was not long before the authorized edition of DPV (1975– ) began to be
published. But the Study by Sasaki shows that even the latest versions mentioned above had left
some problems unsolved and that they are still only a milestone toward the more authentic version,
with the perfect critical text of Diderot’s writings, in particular of his Treatise on Painting. In
order to prove his proposition, Sasaki uncovered unresolved or overlooked problems through his
intensive and extensive research on Diderot’s different versions or manuscripts.
Sasaki has considered the Treatise on painting to be not merely “the most important writingof Diderot’s aesthetics, but also to be one of the leading works in modern European aesthetics”.
Nevertheless, this Treatise has still not been investigated with the eyes of a specialist. No
monograph on it was written before Sasaki’s Study, not only in book form, but also in the formof an academic paper. With a surprising curiosity and attention to detail, Sasaki has been reading
the Treatise for more than thirty-five years with the lucid and lively insights of an excellent
aesthetician, just like a director who elevates words in the script to the live voices of actors andactresses on the stage. And he has been re-reading Diderot’s originals from another viewpoint of
the contemporary thought as well. This is sure to have the impression that Sasaki’s Study stands
at the forefront of the Diderot’s studies today.
4. Sasaki’s new critical edition of the Treatise
Sasaki has not been philologist at all. He started his study on the Treatise, at first using
available editions. However, Sasaki noticed various, either great or small, differences among its
editions, and was driven to make up his own thorough rigorous text-criticism.
Today the original copies of CL, carrying the whole texts of the Treatise, is conserved in thefollowing three institutes: the Kungl Biblioteket of Stockholm, the Russian State Archive ofAncient Acts of Moscow and the Forschungsbibliothek of Gotha. The original handwritten
manuscript by Diderot being lost, we can consider these three copies of CL as the second mostcredible and original texts of the Treatise on Painting. Sasaki visited the former two institutes
and obtained a photocopy from the Library of Gotha. On the basis of these texts he identified thedifferences in details, such as whether the letter is capital or small, and what punctuation is used.
Through this steady effort, he could propose some important revisions, of which the reviewer will
pick up some distinctive issues:a) The first point concerns the title of the work. Essais sur la peinture has long been the title
given to our text. It was in an exceptional case that Naigeon modified the word “essai” from
Buisson’s plural form to singular. Even today, all publications, including DPV, follow thiscustom, probably respecting the fact that it was the first title given to this text. But this title with
Essais deformed fatally the original intention of the author. Differences between treatise andessay apart, the choice between a singular or a plural implies a significance that is much more
serious than it appears. If you say “Essay”, it concerns an integrated work, while “essays” meansa set of collected papers. The decisive fact is that Diderot never called this text otherwise than
Treatise. So Sasaki insists on this original title.

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105b) So Naigeon rectified Buisson’s plural title with a singular. He however betrayed this justcomprehension of the work of Diderot by inserting into it the short article “Examen du claireobscur", by which Naigeon appeared to distinguish his edition from Buisson’s. All the versionsof the Treatise published ever since have adopted Naigeon’s model. Judging that it was an unjust
compilation made by Naigeon, Sasaki sets this short text apart as appendix to the Treatise.
c) Chapter VII is named “un petit Corollaire de ce qui précède”. What does “ce qui précède”
denote? All scholars seem to have taken it as the previous chapter as a matter of fact. Chapter VI
being on architecture, a Vernière and a G. May (in DPV!) called these last two chapters to be the“two chapters about architecture”.
However, Sasaki does not consider the final chapter a mere supplement to Chapter VI, andproposes to read it as an independent chapter of the conclusion, that is, to understand the “ce qui
précède” as all the preceding six chapters. The aesthetic thoughts presented there in a condensed
form are nothing but the principles of criticism which Diderot had formed for 400–500 works intotal since he began to write his Salons. Sasaki summarizes that this chapter exactly answers to
his basic intention of the Treatise, which consists in bringing his principles of the criticism toself-consciousness and also giving the grounds for it.
5. Theory of ‘Taste’
Just a short time before Diderot wrote his Treatise, Aesthetica (I: 1750) was published by
Baumgarten in the German language sphere. The thoughts of both philosophers show us two
different ways of modern aesthetics. Diderot intended to write, so to speak, an aesthetics ofproduction, or aesthetics for the creator, while Baumgarten’s aesthetics was conceived on thelevel of the reception, as a science of sensory knowledge, or the logic of the lower cognition. In
the aesthetics of artistic production, beauty constitutes the aim of the productive work. Diderot’s
aesthetics integrated in Chapter VII demonstrates its basis.
Sasaki is convinced that the subject of Chapter VII is ‘taste’. In fact, this chapter begins with
an ironical question: “What is the meaning of all these principles, if taste is capricious?”. Of
course, taste is not capricious, and it is significant to ask about its principles. Diderot defines taste
as faculty acquired by repeated experience, so as to grasp at a stroke the true or the good with its
circumstances, which makes it beautiful. This is far from Kant’s definition of taste as faculty of
judgment, which is given a priori to everyone. Diderot’s view of taste was probably formed on
the model of craftsmanship, the spirit of which he seems to have inherited from his father, who
was a skilled cutler in Langres, Champagne. In virtue of his good taste, acquired by his repeatedexperiences, Michelangelo was able to give the most beautiful form to the Dome of Saint Peterin Rome, with a curve in which the geometer de la Hire read the highest physical power ofresistance. Diderot pointed out the accumulated taste of the carpenter, who can give the exact
angle to the stay against an inclined wall, and the tact of the craftsman, who knows the right angle

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BOOK REVIEWof the wings of a mill.
Here we notice that beauty is deeply correlated with truth and goodness. For Diderot thetruth was related to the physical order of the cosmic or natural world, while goodness and beauty
were strongly concerned with human beings. It is true that the human intellect cannot grasp allcauses and effects. This is the condition of the human beings. But artists will be able to conquer
these deficiencies with taste, a faculty acquired through the accumulation of experiences.
Diderot defines art as imitation of nature. The first chapter of the Treatise begins with adetailed description of the physical structure of a woman who lost her eyesight in her youth, fromthe deprived eyes to the toes. By a rigorous imitation respecting this physical constitution of thebody, the painter will certainly arrive at a picture which might appear to have been deformed: thehead is too heavy; the feet are too big; the legs are too short etc. But, insists Diderot, tact justifies
these apparent deformations.
Taste and, above all, tact, which constitutes taste, is a personal ability to overcome thecondition of the human being. Tact cannot analyze, but can feel the structure of nature. Sasaki
considered this as the most fundamental concept in Diderot’s aesthetics. In other words, for
Diderot, beauty consists in the beauty of art.
In Chapter VII, Diderot remarks that a basic condition of being a good poet consists in being
well versed in the secret of presenting interesting objects, such as parents, married couples,children. He was a son of an experienced maître coutelier. This remark reflects the spirit ofcraftsmanship, based on tact, i.e. on the grounds of his aesthetics. For Diderot, beauty was thebeauty of art.
The reviewer has above been focusing on some core problems of the Treatise. It goes however
without saying that Sasaki’s copious work comprehends the researches on diverse interesting
problems. Just to mention some, they are : the birth of art criticism, theory of the perception ofrelation presented in the Treatise without being mentioned, critic of the “imitation of beautiful
nature” to be confronted with the imitation of the ideal model, parts of technic and idea whichcorrespond to the respective work of painter and philosopher, aesthetics of proportion, subconsciousness and organism, Diderot’s way of writing, dates of writing each chapters of theTreatise, and difference of aesthetics of Diderot and Goethe, who was the first commentator of
the Treatise.
6. Another Work by Sasaki: Study of the history of the 18th century aesthetics
Before proceeding to the present work, Sasaki published『フランスを中⼼とする 18 世
紀美学史の研究―ウァトーからモーツァルトへ』(Study of the history of the 18th century
aesthetic centered on France — from Watteau to Mozart) (541+34 pp. Iwanami Publishing Co.,Tokyo, 1999). Just as its subtitle shows, Sasaki surveyed there the general art world, in order tograsp historical characteristics of the century from a painter, Watteau (prologue), to a musician,Mozart (epilogue, i.e. so to speak, the prologue of the 19th century). The main subject of the bookis the painting as paradigm of 18th century aesthetics, contrasted with music as a paradigm of the
19th century, and he discusses various notions such as interest, happiness, aesthetic perception
and the birth of subjectivities etc. Sasaki was specially engaged in reading the writings of

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philosophers and poeticians, such as Malebranche, Boileau, Condillac etc. and theories ofpainting, panorama of many paintings. It is obvious that this book was a preparation for thepresent comprehensive work concerning Diderot.
In Diderot’s time, people experienced a serious crisis, which was caused by the collapse of
the ancient theological order. The truth in Diderot was not theological or metaphysical, butscientific. He defined beauty as value based on truth and goodness in a modern sense, so as torecognize it in a new trinity of value: scientific truth, goodness and beauty. Sasaki is convincedof the originality and modernity of Diderot’s aesthetic value theory by comparison with the“beauty=goodness (kalokagathia) theory” from Plato.
The reviewer hopes that the present Japanese book will be translated into any other,
especially western language in the near future, so as to become an international resource for
Diderot scholars today, and thus to contribute to the solution of the problems that Sasaki hassuggested here.