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Learning Objectives
- Understand historical definitions of beauty.
- Understand the difference between liking and universal standards of beauty.
- Be able to identify different types of aesthetic experience.
Questions to Keep in Mind
- What is beauty?
- What is art?
- Why do you like the things you like?
- Is liking something enough to define it as beautiful?
- Who gets to define what is beautiful?
Introduction
Aesthetics is the study of beauty, art, and taste. We all know beauty when we see it, but it is harder to understand exactly why we say some things are beautiful and other things are not. We have to make judgments of beauty, and aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that tries to understand what we ought to do to make good judgments about art, beauty, and taste.
Like many areas of philosophy, art and beauty provide no easy answers. One person might think that one work of art is beautiful, but another person might hate it. Who is right? How did one person decide an object or thing is beautiful while the other person came to another conclusion? Is beauty part of the world? Does it exist naturally? Does it only exist when it is created?
These readings will help you understand these questions so you can form your own opinions on the subject of aesthetics.