List of aestheticians

This is a list of aestheticians, notable philosophers of art, who theorize about the nature of art and beauty.

Born before 17th century

 * Abhinavagupta
 * Thomas Aquinas
 * Aristotle
 * Augustine of Hippo
 * Yusuf Balasagun
 * Liu Xie
 * Longinus
 * Plato
 * Plotinus

Born in the 17th or 18th century

 * Georg Anton Friedrich Ast
 * Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten
 * Jean Anthelme Brillat-Savarin
 * Edmund Burke
 * Victor Cousin
 * Jonathan Edwards
 * Georg Wilhelm Friedrich Hegel
 * Johann Friedrich Herbart
 * Johann Gottfried Herder
 * David Hume
 * Francis Hutcheson
 * Immanuel Kant
 * Gotthold Ephraim Lessing
 * Thomas Reid
 * Friedrich Wilhelm Joseph von Schelling
 * Friedrich Schiller
 * August Wilhelm Schlegel
 * Karl Wilhelm Friedrich von Schlegel
 * Arthur Schopenhauer
 * Johann Georg Sulzer
 * Tyagaraja

Born in the 19th century

 * Vissarion Belinsky
 * Clive Bell
 * Walter Benjamin
 * George Birkhoff
 * Georg Brandes
 * Ferruccio Busoni
 * R. G. Collingwood
 * Benedetto Croce
 * John Dewey
 * Ralph Waldo Emerson
 * Etienne Gilson
 * Eduard Hanslick
 * Søren Kierkegaard
 * Susanne Langer
 * Vernon Lee
 * György Lukács
 * Herbert Marcuse
 * Jacques Maritain
 * Friedrich Nietzsche
 * Walter Pater
 * Hans Pfitzner
 * Edgar Allan Poe
 * John Ruskin
 * George Santayana
 * Viktor Shklovsky
 * Algernon Charles Swinburne
 * Jun'ichirō Tanizaki
 * Oscar Wilde

Born in the 20th century

 * Theodor Adorno
 * Rudolf Arnheim
 * Sri Aurobindo
 * Roland Barthes
 * Georges Bataille
 * Max Black
 * Maurice Blanchot
 * Harold Bloom
 * John Cage
 * Stanley Cavell
 * Arthur Danto
 * Jacques Derrida
 * Umberto Eco
 * Michel Foucault
 * Hans-Georg Gadamer
 * Nelson Goodman
 * Clement Greenberg
 * John Hospers
 * Siri Hustvedt
 * Mani Kaul
 * Joseph Kosuth
 * Jean-François Lyotard
 * André Malraux
 * Michael Oakeshott
 * Ayn Rand
 * Roger Scruton
 * Eli Siegel
 * Richard Wollheim