This new study of eighteenth-century aesthetic theory situates it in theological contexts that are crucial to explaining why it arose.

Simon Grote is currently the Wellesley Faculty Assistant Professor of History at Wellesley College, Massachusetts, where he has taught since 2013. He previously spent three years at Princeton University's Society of Fellows in the Liberal Arts after graduating with a Ph.D. in History from the University of California, Berkeley (2010), an M.Phil. in Political Thought and Intellectual History from the University of Cambridge (2006) and an A.B. from Harvard College, Massachusetts (2001).

1. Christian Wolff's critics and the foundation of morality; 2. Pietist aisthesis, moral education, and the beginnings of aesthetic theory; 3. Alexander Baumgarten's intervention; 4. Francis Hutcheson at the margins of the Scottish Enlightenment; 5. William Cleghorn and the aesthetic foundation of justice; Conclusion.