II
However, aesthetics had a prominent part in the
evolution of the idea in question. The Dutch critic ten
Kate seems to have been the first to use Ideal as a
substantive (also Idéalité), in a sense still very close
to that of Bellori; but for him the peak (partie sublime)
of the Ideal is a je ne sais quoi, being an harmonieuse
Propriété, a touchante Unité, a convenance pathétique
(ten Kate, 1728). This doctrine played a leading role
in Diderot's aesthetics, where it underwent some im-
portant transformations: the Idea or the ideal model,
far from being extra-empirical, is conceived almost as
of experimental origin, and understood as representing
the perfect “type” of a certain kind of objects. The
Idea is animated through imagination and feeling, and
is strictly connected with moral values: every great
Idea is a moral maxim, and is, at the same time, the
unity of the work of art (Belaval, 1950). The influence
of Diderot's doctrine of the ideal model was limited
by the fact that his most significant works in this con-
nection were published posthumously. The Ideal, as
a substantive, is used by Diderot only occasionally, and
probably not before 1765 (Diderot, 1875-77 ed.).
Otherwise, eighteenth-century French authors are
not very receptive to “ideal” aesthetics. Batteux,
among the few, gives attention (1746) to the beau idéal
(Batteux, 1764); and Louis Racine distinguishes, in art,
between le vrai simple and le vrai idéal, which
“embellishes” (embellit) (Racine, 1747). The Dutch
philosopher and critic Hemsterhuis at times mentions
(1769) ideal beauty (Hemsterhuis, 1846). Ideal, as a
substantive, is not listed in Diderot's Encyclopédie; it
appears for the first time in 1777 in the Supplement
to this work, in an article influenced by Winckelmann,
Mengs, and probably by Sulzer (Nouveau Dictionnaire,
1776-77). British aesthetics, although permeated in
some of its principal trends by Platonism, makes little
use of the terms in question. In his original elaboration
of the notion we are studying, Shaftesbury (Charac-
teristicks, 1711) uses, for example, such expressions as
“forming forms,” “interior numbers,” etc. (Shaftesbury,
1790). But Webb discusses “ideal” or “inventive”
(versus imitative) painting (Webb, 1740); and Sir Joshua
Reynolds (writing in the 1770's) fully revives Bellori's
doctrine of the “Idea of Beauty” (Reynolds, 1884).
