Beauty is a combination of qualities, such as shape, colour, or form, that pleases the aesthetic senses. It also has an underlying meaning, such as the concept of purity or authenticity. It is sometimes used in reference to a person or something, but more often than not it refers to art.
Beauty has been a central part of Western thought since classical times. It is embodied in architecture, sculpture, literature, and music wherever they appear. This classical conception of beauty involves the arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole, according to proportion, harmony, symmetry, and similar notions.
This idea has its origins in ancient Greek culture and continues to have a significant impact on art and architecture in the West today. The concept of beauty is also a crucial part of the philosophy of religion.
Aristotle’s Poetics explains that beauty is the arrangement of integral parts into a coherent structure, which can be considered to have a certain order. The mathematical sciences also demonstrate that a beautiful object is one that has a symmetrical and definite structure.
But there is a problem with this definition of beauty, and it has caused many philosophers to question whether it is the most accurate way to understand the world around us. Aristotle’s conception of beauty implies that it should be objective, but this is not necessarily the case.
In fact, most twentieth-century philosophers abandoned the idea of beauty as an objective concept. They saw that if it was completely relative to individual experiencers, it would cease to have a defining role in our understanding of the world. They also observed that the concept of beauty was prone to controversies, which could be resolved only through reasoned argument.
Fortunately, there have been a few philosophers who have defended the concept of beauty and maintained that it can exist as an objective quality. These include Santayana, Kant, and Hume, who argued that if beauty is not an objective state, it will have no real status in the mind or in the world.
While this account of beauty is objective, it does not explain why we experience a feeling of pleasure when we see or hear it. It may be that the pleasure we experience is a result of our relationship with the beautiful object, and that it gives us a sense of purpose in life.
The theory of aesthetics, however, argues that beauty can be an objective quality. In the words of Augustine, “Beauty is that which makes you glad for no other reason than that you are happy.”
But what is more important to Aquinas is that beauty is a part of good design, and that this part of good design is what gives us the sense of pleasure. This, he says, is a more accurate explanation of the phenomenon that gives rise to aesthetic pleasure than Plato’s or Plotinus’s accounts, which both treat beauty as a response to love and desire.
While some of these theories of beauty might be true, others are not. For example, if we are looking at a piece of sculpture and we find it beautiful, that does not mean that it is a good work of art. Likewise, if we are watching a movie and it is beautiful, that does not mean that the film is a good work of art.