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This paper identifies an aesthetics implicit in Spinoza’s philosophy through the concept of a genesis of the aesthetic. A genesis of the aesthetic indicates that a philosophy of art is not yet fully formed in his work, but can emerge as a consequence or effect of his thought. This theory would evaluate the work of art primarily in its relationship to truth. Following the architectonics of Spinoza’s own thought, this paper constructs a progression – from the imagination, to reason, to intuition – toward a concept of aesthetic practices that aligns itself ever more closely with the freedom, perfection, and affirmation of infinite substance itself. The specific forms of aesthetic reception and production flowing from Spinoza’s ideal of wisdom unite two seemingly disparate paradigms: the aesthetic as essentially affirmative, as a joy in the individual power of every individuated thing, on the one hand; and the cultivation of a critical, ethically informed aesthetics of liberation, one capable of occupying different positions (obedience, autonomy, resistance) with respect to state or sovereign power, on the other hand.

In this essay, I argue that the questions raised by Rosi Braidotti with regard a posthuman understanding of death are not new and that they connect in unexpected ways Goethe-era physician Christoph Hufeland’s treatise on Macrobiotics, or the Art of Prolonging Life. More generally, I also show how there are elements of the posthuman theories of death more grounded in historical writing conventions than have previously been acknowledged by posthuman thinkers.

In the treatise Aesthetica (1750), Alexander Baumgarten describes the aesthetic exercise as a training of the senses through which innate sensual and spiritual proclivities are developed and perfected. He formulates aesthetics not merely as an epistemological theory, but as a way of life capable of generating a happy human being. Throughout the course of the eighteenth century, the aesthetic exercise functions as a model for poetic practices, both in the production and reception of poetry. For Hölderlin, the harmony of the natural and historical world is not something given, but something that one has to be trained to perceive amidst the facticity of suffering and violence. The deliberate confusion of Hölderlin's poetry, triggered by complex syntactical structures and a dense semantic texture, challenges the human mind to find evidence of the divine in its own mental and poetic self-organization. Disjunction and chaos eventually triumph over organization, leading to a form of aesthetic exercise that undermines rather than bolsters a conception of nature and history as self-organizing, harmonious systems. Novalis rejects a philosophical conception of the absolute in favor of a "physiological absolute," redefining the absolute as an intensification of stimulation rather than a realm of undifferentiated identity. For Novalis, poetry exercises the mind by generating imaginative multiplicities and differences, continually overturning orders of representation, and creating magnetically attractive signs and permeable poetic spaces. In Die Lehrlinge zu Saïs, Novalis uses poetry to disorganize the normative structure of institutionalized regimes of bodily and mental exercise, thereby differentiating the aesthetic exercise from disciplinary forms that produce stable subjects.Following Baumgarten's definition of the aesthetic, which fuses sense perception and artistic activity, the rhetoric of Anacreontic and Rococo poetry functions as an exercise in sensory cognition. Anacreo

In the treatise Aesthetica (1750), Alexander Baumgarten describes the aesthetic exercise as a training of the senses through which innate sensual and spiritual proclivities are developed and perfected. He formulates aesthetics not merely as an epistemological theory, but as a way of life capable of generating a happy human being. Throughout the course of the eighteenth century, the aesthetic exercise functions as a model for poetic practices, both in the production and reception of poetry. For Hölderlin, the harmony of the natural and historical world is not something given, but something that one has to be trained to perceive amidst the facticity of suffering and violence. The deliberate confusion of Hölderlin's poetry, triggered by complex syntactical structures and a dense semantic texture, challenges the human mind to find evidence of the divine in its own mental and poetic self-organization. Disjunction and chaos eventually triumph over organization, leading to a form of aesthetic exercise that undermines rather than bolsters a conception of nature and history as self-organizing, harmonious systems. Novalis rejects a philosophical conception of the absolute in favor of a "physiological absolute," redefining the absolute as an intensification of stimulation rather than a realm of undifferentiated identity. For Novalis, poetry exercises the mind by generating imaginative multiplicities and differences, continually overturning orders of representation, and creating magnetically attractive signs and permeable poetic spaces. In Die Lehrlinge zu Saïs, Novalis uses poetry to disorganize the normative structure of institutionalized regimes of bodily and mental exercise, thereby differentiating the aesthetic exercise from disciplinary forms that produce stable subjects.Following Baumgarten's definition of the aesthetic, which fuses sense perception and artistic activity, the rhetoric of Anacreontic and Rococo poetry functions as an exercise in sensory cognition. Anacreo