Aesthetics — From Greek aísthēsis (sense perception). The branch of philosophy investigating the nature of beauty, art, and sensory experience. Although reflection on beauty dates back to Plato (Hippias Major, Symposium) and Aristotle (Poetics), the term was coined by Alexander Baumgarten in 1750 (Aesthetica) to designate the “science of sensory cognition.” Kant’s Critique of the Power of Judgment (1790) constitutes the founding landmark of modern aesthetics, analysing the judgement of taste as universally valid without a concept — the beautiful pleases disinterestedly and exhibits “purposiveness without purpose.” Hegel integrates aesthetics into the dialectical system, defining art as the sensory manifestation of the Idea. In the twentieth century, Adorno (Aesthetic Theory) redefines art as the determinate negation of administered reality, while Heidegger (The Origin of the Work of Art) conceives the artwork as an event of truth (alētheia).
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