Constantin Dimitrescu-Iași

[2] Although he joined Junimea in 1878, Dimitrescu-Iași did not endorse its political orientation, indeed condemning its positions in a series of articles that appeared in Drapelul and Democrația from 1897 to 1898.

[1] His philosophical outlook was deeply influenced by the European positivism and evolutionism of the 19th century's second half, from which he adopted numerous ideas, sometimes uncritically.

An adherent of a monism tinged with materialism, he believed in the unity of matter and spirit and advocated an ethics based on scientific data.

He wrote several studies on the sociology of literature (Recenzentul; Spiritul democratic în literatură, arte, știință) that did not consistently apply rigorous argumentation.

[1] In the field of aesthetics, Dimitrescu-Iași attempted to reconcile positivism and evolutionism with the ideas of Romantic German philosophy, starting from Johann Friedrich Herbart's formalism, of which he considered himself a disciple.

He set forth his ideas in Der Schönheitsbegriff ("The Concept of the Beautiful"), which he partly translated in 1895 in România literară și științifică, as well as in several articles that appeared under the pen name Faust in the newspapers Dreptatea (1896), Drapelul and Democrația (1896–1898).

Using Herbart's opinions and the experimental findings of Hermann von Helmholtz, Gustav Fechner, Adolf Zeising, Friedrich Theodor Vischer, and Robert von Zimmermann, he distinguished between two aspects of beauty (one purely formal and objective, the other subjective), and theorized that their coming into harmony defined beauty's essence.