Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten

Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-62), German philosopher, born in Berlin. He studied with the German philosopher and mathematician Baron Christian von Wolff at the University of Halle and was influenced early by the work of another German philosopher, Baron Gottfried Wilhelm Leibniz. Baumgarten, the first modern philosopher to approach the question of beauty systematically, introduced the term aesthetics and defined the experience of beauty as the sensory recognition of perfection. In 1750-58 he issued two volumes of his Esthetics. He also wrote Ethics (1740), Natural Law (1765), and General Philosophy (1770).