A. G. Baumgarten grounds the aesthetics of which he was the founder on widely poetic and rhetoric in his ‘Aestetica’ (1750/58). Nevertheless, what is significant here for him is to validate the individualist right of ‘sensitive knowledge.’ The word ‘aesthetics’ (αíσυŋгηικόç) here is strictly attached to its basic meaning which is ‘related to sense and perception,’ and ‘sensually understandable.’ The aesthetics of Baumgarten is the philosophy of sensual knowledge and perception, and its sensitivity cannot be perceived as the material of outer stimulation and logic; contrarily, it sincerely sees it as a special genre of the knowledge. Hence, the aesthetics is defined as the ‘science of sensitive knowledge.’ With this study, it has been targeted to draw a general outline of Baumgarten’s aesthetics understanding by discussing the basic chapters of ‘Aestetica.’
Keywords: Aesthetics, The Science of Sensitive Cognition, Beauty, Inferior Knowledge Faculty, Superior Knowledge Faculty
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