Branches of Philosophy

Aesthetics

ess-THET-iks

Also Known As Philosophy of Art

Aesthetics

The branch of philosophy concerned with beauty, art, and taste: what makes something beautiful, whether beauty is a real property of objects or a response in the perceiver, and what art is for. The term itself was coined by Alexander Baumgarten in 1735 to name a science of sensory knowledge, but the underlying questions are ancient: Plato treated beauty as a form that particular beautiful things imperfectly share in, and worried that poetry and representational art could mislead the soul, while Aristotle's Poetics defended tragedy as a source of catharsis, an emotional purification, rather than a moral danger. Kant's Critique of Judgment later argued that a genuine aesthetic judgment claims universal validity, that everyone ought to agree a thing is beautiful, while resting on nothing more than a subjective feeling of pleasure, a tension that still structures debate over whether taste can be objectively wrong.

Facts

Disputed

Key Debate

Intentionalism versus anti-intentionalism: whether the artist's intended meaning fixes the correct interpretation of a work, as intentionalists hold, or whether a work's meaning is independent of, and can exceed, what its maker intended, a dispute sharpened by W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's naming of the intentional fallacy. 1

W.K. Wimsatt and Monroe Beardsley's essay naming the intentional fallacy did not end the dispute; intentionalist critics continue to defend the author's intended meaning as interpretively decisive.

Central Question

What makes an object or an experience beautiful, and is beauty a real property of the thing itself or a response that belongs to the perceiver? 1

Key Debate

Whether beauty is objective, an intrinsic feature of things waiting to be perceived correctly, or subjective, residing in the response of the perceiver: Kant located aesthetic judgment in a subjective feeling of pleasure that nonetheless claims universal agreement, a position that satisfies neither a fully objectivist nor a fully relativist reading of taste. 1

FAQs

Is beauty an objective property of things, or does it depend on the person perceiving it?

Philosophers disagree over whether beauty is an intrinsic feature of an object waiting to be perceived correctly, or a response that belongs to the perceiver; Kant located aesthetic judgment in a subjective feeling of pleasure that still claims universal agreement.

Philosophers disagree over whether beauty is objective, an intrinsic feature of things waiting to be perceived correctly, or subjective, residing in the response of the person perceiving it. Kant located aesthetic judgment in a subjective feeling of pleasure that nonetheless claims universal agreement from everyone else, a position that satisfies neither a fully objectivist nor a fully relativist reading of taste, and that unresolved middle position still shapes how philosophers argue about beauty today.

Connections

Associated With

Aristotle

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Environmental Philosophy

Source Environmental Philosophy (Wikipedia)

Immanuel Kant

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Philosophy of Film

Philosophy of film is standardly treated as an applied branch of aesthetics directed at the moving image, matching the same associated-with shape already live between Aesthetics and Philosophy of Sport.

Philosophy of Sport

Source Philosophy of Sport (Wikipedia)

Plato

Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Founded By

Alexander Baumgarten

Baumgarten established aesthetics as a distinct philosophical discipline in the 18th century (Aesthetica, 1750/58).

Additional Source Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (Wikipedia)Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Wikipedia, lead section

Includes

Watsuji Tetsuro

Source Watsuji Tetsuro (Wikipedia)

Yuriko Saito

Source Yuriko Saito - Wikipedia

Showing 51 to 52 of 52 in Includes, page 2 of 2.

In the Other Atlases

Influenced By

Dada

Also in Arts and Music Atlas: which influenced this subject.

Sources

1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy

Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Information

entry: The Concept of the Aesthetic
Introduced into the Western European philosophical lexicon during the 18th century, the term 'aesthetic' has come to designate, among other things, a kind of object, a kind of judgment, a kind of attitude, a kind of experience, and a kind of value.
s.v. Aesthetics
s.v. Kant's Aesthetics and Teleology
s.v. The Definition of Art
Associated With: Plato, entry: Aesthetics
Associated With: Aristotle, entry: Aesthetics
Associated With: Immanuel Kant, entry: Aesthetics; Kant's Critique of Judgment
Includes: On the Aesthetic Education of Man
Includes: Theodor W. Adorno