Never has art been more visible, present, and influential than today, and never has it simultaneously been such a mere part of societal processes: a commodity, a form of entertainment, an opinion, a realization, an action. The societal omnipresence of art is accompanied by an increasing loss of what we can call its aesthetic "power." "Power" - in contrast to our "rational faculties" - refers here to the unconscious, playful, enthusiastic state without which there can be no art. The philosophical reflection on this state leads Christoph Menke to the determination of aesthetic categories - artwork, beauty, judgment - and to the outline of an aesthetic politics, that is, a politics of freedom from the social and equality without determination.