Aesthetic Experience and Aesthetic Context

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Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty. The word aesthetic, based on the Greek work “aesthesis” (perception), was first used by the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 to describe the process in which people judge what is beautiful. Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment, published in 1790, clarifies Baumgarten’s original aesthetic ideal and concludes that beauty is subjective – in the eye of the beholder.