A. Alexander Baumgarten
B. Thomas Carlyle
C. Oscar Wilde
D. Walter Peter
Explanation:
The term “aesthetics” was appropriated and coined with new meaning by the German philosopher Alexander Baumgarten in his dissertation Meditationes philosophicae de nonnullis ad poema pertinentibus (“Philosophical considerations of some matters pertaining the poem”) in 1735; Baumgarten chose “aesthetics” because he wished to emphasize the experience of art as a means of knowing. Baumgarten’s definition of aesthetics in the fragment Aesthetica (1750) is occasionally considered the first definition of modern aesthetics.