Throughout the ages, the concept of beauty has attracted a great deal of attention. In the past two centuries, different approaches have been brought forward to explain how and why we experience the aesthetic sense. The debate over whether beauty is objective or subjective is one of the most popular in literature. Despite its popularity, the true definition of the concept of beauty is somewhat ambiguous.
For many years, most philosophical accounts of beauty placed it in a beautiful object. These accounts also treated the idea of beauty as an objective quality. However, the true definition of the concept of beauty varies among individual minds. Aristotle and Plato differed on the question of what beauty is. For Aristotle, beauty is an aspect of nature. He says that living things must present order in their arrangement of parts.
Other authors have tried to define the concept of beauty in a more abstract sense. Santayana argues that beauty is the objectification of pleasure. Another example is the ‘Canon’, the statue that was held as the standard of harmonious proportion.
Regardless of the definition, the best way to understand beauty is to consider its many aspects. To this end, I will discuss several of the most popular approaches to the topic.
In the first half of this article, I will cover some of the main theories of beauty. In the second half, I will examine the most important element of the concept. I will discuss what is required in order to perceive beauty and its broader implications. In short, there are four requirements for achieving a good level of beauty: clarity, integrity, consonance, and proportion.
The most basic requirement of a good beauty is integrity. In other words, an object’s integrity must be consistent with its meaning and purpose. This means that it must be free of errors. Moreover, it must have the power to evoke an emotional response. For instance, a man may respond to the appearance of an adult female with feelings of attraction. And similarly, an object may be perceived as different colors in different environments. The difference is not in the object itself, but rather in the individual’s perception of the object.
The simplest explanation of the concept of beauty is that it is the result of the process of art giving pleasure to the senses. The experience of beauty connects the individual to objects and to communities of appreciation. Although the idea of beauty is not limited to visual experience, the ability to perceive it is sometimes referred to as a’sense of taste’.
The most interesting theory of beauty is the hedonist conception, which posits that an object is beautiful if it evokes a loving response. This idea was revived in the 1990s by feminist philosophers and others, such as Dave Hickey. Other theories, including Kant’s, emphasize subjectivity.
Aquinas formulated the concept of beauty in a typically Aristotelian pluralist formulation. His explanation explains why form and function can co-exist in the same object. He explains that beauty is a by-product of the process of good design.