Beauty is a term that means many different things, but its most common usage is to describe an object that has a pleasant appearance. The term can also be used to describe a combination of qualities, such as symmetry, weight, age, race, gender, or any combination of these. It is a term that is often associated with aesthetics and has close connections to the concept of harmony.
There have been many attempts to define beauty. Historically, most accounts of beauty have been objective in nature. For example, in the classical period, the word Bellus was widely used to refer to women, but a pejorative meaning was also attached to it for men.
Other accounts of beauty have emphasized the subjective aspect of the experience. In the eighteenth century, for instance, the philosopher David Hume believed that beauty was a matter of opinion and that it was therefore subject to change. George Santayana, on the other hand, argued that the experience of beauty could be a source of profound pleasure and that it may serve as a meaning for life.
Until the eighteenth century, the dominant philosophical accounts of beauty treated it as an objective quality. Those accounts tended to place beauty in particular qualities of an object, such as its color or its weight.
However, in the twentieth century, the concept of beauty was abandoned as an important goal in the arts. Instead, artists devoted themselves to more urgent projects. These new works were often hedonistic and tended to be associated with wealth and power. This led to a number of theorists attempting to address the antinomy between taste and beauty.
Some philosophers, including Thomas Aquinas, attempt to unify the concepts of taste and beauty. For example, Aquinas explains that the concept of beauty can exist empirically in the physical world, if it is the result of good design. He also argues that the rules of aesthetics are the product of good design.
Although the definitions of beauty vary, they all include the basic requirements of symmetry, proportion, and consonance. Moreover, they require clarity to avoid ambiguity. They also have a tendency to relate to the human senses.
The first requirement for beauty is integrity. If something is genuinely beautiful, it will be pleasing to the eye, but it will not necessarily be a good thing. Another prerequisite is that it is suited to the purpose for which it was created.
Throughout history, there have been a number of controversies over the definition of beauty. Often, these debates are based on the question of whether the definition is truly subjective or objective. Sometimes, the reasons for these controversies can be convincing. But other times, these arguments can only be based on an incomplete understanding of the concept.
One of the major challenges that arose in the twentieth century is that of how to make the concept of beauty both meaningful and comprehensible. It is not easy to find an answer to this challenge.