The study explores the genesis of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline in German post-Wolffian rationalism, and that as a theory of the lower spi-ritual powers or sensory knowledge developed by A. G. Baumgarten and G. F. Meier. It demonstrates the origins of this rationalistic aesthetics in the Leibnizian-Wolffian tradition of thought, especially in noetics, less so in Leibniz's ontology of beauty. In the aesthetics of the mid-18th century, the theory of the spiritual powers [Vermogen] of man was developed in favor of those powers which precede distinct conceptual knowledge, and sensuality and imagination were appreciated as a necessary complement of reason, which ensured its connection with the empirical world and life. The development of aesthetics was related to the psychologization, anthropolization, and historicization of the rationalist concept of man and significantly expanded this concept. Aesthetics mediated the relationship between rationalist philosophy and literature, and with this made a fundamental contribution to the wider cultural and social affirmation of the values of Enlightenment rationalism.
