Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714 - 1762) is the founder of aesthetics as an independent philosophical discipline. His most significant work on aesthetics as the science of sensory knowledge, which he places alongside logic as equally important, is the Aesthetica (1750/58), which is now available in a complete German translation for the first time in nearly 250 years. Starting from the ontological view of the individual as a consistently determined entity, whose multitude of characteristics eludes the clear understanding of logical analysis but is revealed in the sensory appearance of the phenomenon, Baumgarten recognizes the clear yet confused notions of sensory knowledge as having their own fundamental significance for grasping the real. Based on his psychology and semiotics, Baumgarten understands aesthetics not only as a science.