Baumgarten begins with philosophy and attempts to apply it to this aspect of experience. Of course, Baumgarten had to struggle with the notorious philosophical difficulty of perception. For the Greeks, that which was aisthetos was that which was perceptible, that which offered itself to sensory experience. It was concerned with sensory perception. Therefore, aesthetics is always in a precarious position.
Several questions emerge.
Another way to ask this question, as we shall see, is to inquire into the relationship between the beautiful and the sublime. Baumgarten did not have to worry about Picasso and friends. The first will occupy the majority of the semester and will be rigorously philosophical in nature and scope. The second will complete the semester and will consist of three works on or by contemporary artists. Immanuel Kant, Critique of Judgment , Pluhar trans, Hackett Publishing.