The aesthetics not only addresses the structures of art but also a core issue of modern societies: the question of how forms of sensory perception develop within them and unfold a critical potential. In the course of current discussions about aestheticization, affective labor, artist critique, and creativity dispositifs, it is becoming increasingly clear that the relationship between modernity, the social, and forms of the aesthetic requires fundamental reflection. This volume brings together the most important sociological and cultural studies texts for this debate from 1900 to the present, from Georg Simmel to Luc Boltanski.