Je ne sais quoi

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The je ne sais quoi [ ʒənəsɛˈkwa ] (French, German: “I don't know what”, in the sense of “the indeterminable, certain something”) is an aesthetic term that denotes the impossibility of a final linguistic and conceptual definition of the aesthetic object.

The term appears in Dominique Bouhours ( La Manière de bien penser , 1687) towards the end of the 17th century and then becomes central in the context of French sensualism , especially in Marivaux (in Le Cabinet du philosophe , 1734). In his Allegory of the Two Gardens, Marivaux describes how beauty (clarity, regularity, perfection) and Je ne sais quoi (complexity, movement, fascination) contrast.

Web links

Reception in the German Enlightenment Aesthetics

See also

literature

  • Erich Köhler: “Je ne sais quoi”. A chapter from the conceptual history of the incomprehensible . In the S. (Ed.): Esprit and Arcadian freedom. Essays from the world of Romania . Fink, Munich 1984, ISBN 3-7705-2263-X , p. 230-286 .
  • Richard Scholar: The Je-Ne-Sais-Quoi in Early Modern Europe. Encounters with a certain something . Oxford University Press, Oxford 2005, ISBN 0-19-927440-1 .