In the reading and discussion group, we want to pursue pre-Kantian perspectives of aesthetic theory, which emerged in very diverse forms in the 18th century. In addition to the study of Baumgarten, the focus will be on English theories in which aesthetic feeling combined with a certain moral attitude of being good and its effects on the politics and sociality of human coexistence in the state are read and discussed (e.g. Shaftesbury). It is also a matter of looking for movements of thought in the history of aesthetics that help us today to develop basic aesthetic questions about the relationship between the arts, ethics and politics, possibly in a new way - questions posed from the perspective of our present time.