Facts about Beauty
Aristotle developed a theory of art and presented it as part in his Poetics, but his ideas and discussions on beauty and art are scattered in diverse works including Metaphysics, Nichomachean Ethics, Physics, and Rhetoric.
Beauty was understood as a natural expression of the cosmos and the norm of human behavior.
The process of ascent through the experience of beauty begins with beauty manifested in human bodies.
The determination of beauty involves the subject as well, who has a certain attitude and pre-understanding.
According to French philosopher Victor Cousin (1792-1867), who inherited the tradition of ancient Greek philosophy, "Moral beauty is the basis of all true beauty.
Thomas Aquinas (c.1225-1274) distinguished beauty and good in terms of meaning (ratio), but he identified them as the same being (subjectum), indistinguishable in reality.
The Greek word kalokagatia ("beauty-good"), combining two terms "beauty" and "good," was a natural combination in the Greek context.
The Chinese character for beauty (?) consists of the components of "sheep" (?) and "big" or "great" (?).
conceived beauty not as an immutable, permanent being existing above the world, but as a property of nature and works of art.
Some argue that the second development has impoverished the modern notion of beauty, while the third issue shows the poverty of modern aesthetics when faced with the requirements of the sciences.
In both Platonic and Neo-Platonic traditions, concepts of "being," "good," and "beauty" are always understood to be inseparable.
After Hegel, studies of beauty were further dissociated from metaphysics, and arts were also separated from the traditional concept of beauty.
Far more subjectivist than Kant were his contemporaries, such as David Hume (1711-1776) and Edmund Burke (1729-1797), according to whom beauty is subjective in that it largely depends on the attitude of the observer.
Pythagoras and the Pythagoreans understood experiences of beauty and contemplations of the mathematical as central to their religious exercises to purify the soul.
The analysis of beauty became one of the major independent branches of philosophy, comparable to epistemology and ethics.
Beauty is therefore often ascribed to virtuous actions, good character, and exemplary life style.
What the views of Classical philosophers, Christian thinkers, and Far Eastern thought have in common is an encompassing view of beauty that unites beauty in nature, in art, and moral beauty as one.
Plato conceived the Idea of good as the supreme one, with all other Ideas, including beauty, existing under it.
The degree to which subjective influence affects one's view of beauty is relevant to discussions of popular taste in film or music.
Augustine maintains the Platonic unity of beauty, goodness, being, perfection, and other virtues.
The experience of beauty is therefore also inseparable from that of being and good.
Beauty manifested in bodies and physical materials is less perfect for Plato, and hence the soul is naturally led to seek permanent and perfect beauty.
According to traditional Western thought from the antiquity through the Middle Ages, beauty is a constitutive element of the cosmos associated with order, harmony, and mathematics.
Classical Philosophy treated and conceived beauty alongside truth, goodness, love, being, and the divine.
After Christian thought receded from the mainstream of philosophy, the discussion of beauty also shifted from its metaphysical treatment to the studies of the perception of beauty.
Modern philosophy shifted the study of beauty from ontology to the sphere of human faculties.
Kant discussed aesthetic judgments of beauty in terms of an individual's subjective feelings, although they are not purely subjective, as Kant had them claim universal validity.
Beauty thus manifested usually conveys some level of harmony amongst components of an object.
Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) was the first major philosopher who developed the study of beauty as an autonomous discipline.
Every human being is born with implicit understanding of the Idea of beauty and all other Ideas.
Aesthetics was meant to discuss how an individual's sensuous perception as a subject occurs in judging beauty.
Harmony is built upon mathematical order and balance, and beauty exists as the objective principle in beings which maintain harmony, order, and balance.
One can argue that nature designed (through the evolutionary process) the mind of an adult male to respond to the shape and movement of the adult female, with feelings of attraction and beauty.
Studies of beauty in German Idealism reached a peak with Schelling, while Hegel approached the arts from a historical perspective.
Classical Greeks and Medieval Christians understood beauty to be primarily what exists objectively in the world, tracing it in the divine realm.
The philosophy of beauty and arts today is one of the important branches of philosophy.
Their conviction of the immortality of the soul, as well as the relationship between beauty and mathematics, had a strong impact on Plato.
Accordingly, the Greeks were concerned with understanding beauty, and how beauty can contribute to the highest good.
Rational understanding of the order and harmony of the cosmos, and recognition of beauty, were stations on the soul's path of purification and ascent to the divine realm.
Beauty was ordinarily discussed within ethical (Confucianism) and cosmological (Daoism) contexts.
Beauty has been recognized as a core value throughout history and in diverse cultural traditions.
The focus of the study of beauty shifted after Kant from the beauty of nature to the arts.
Aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty, which covers the concept of beauty, its values, and expressions of beauty in artistic creations.