Abstract

The study examines the concept of the interesting in the aesthetic system of Anton Müller (1792–1843), full professor of aesthetics and classical literature at Prague University in the years 1823–1842. The study describes how he worked with the concept of the interesting; it compares his approach with the earlier German reflections on this concept, selected according to their response in Bohemian and Austrian aesthetics, and compares these findings with the existing literature about the interesting. The study shows that the privileged role of the interesting in Müller’s theory is caused by the restraint of a significant part of the Austrian pre-March aesthetics towards the Critique of Judgment, which, despite Kant’s objections, insisted on the significance of the interesting for beauty and art. The condition described does not allow Müller’s privileged way of dealing with the concept of the interesting to be regarded as an attempt to revive the concept, which had been forbidden by Kant, as his approach could have been understood from the perspective of German aesthetics, but rather as the highest possible level of privileging of the interesting, crowning the traditional Austrian approach to this concept.