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 DebateIntentionalism 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 QuestionWhat 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 DebateWhether 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 Aesthetics
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Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Environmental Philosophy (Wikipedia)
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
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.
Source Philosophy of Sport (Wikipedia)
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Founded By
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
Via the 1757 Enquiry into the Sublime and Beautiful, a genuinely aesthetic as well as political body of work.
Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Source Friedrich Schiller (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Source Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
In the Other Atlases
- Also in Arts and Music Atlas: Dada, was influenced by this subject there.
Sources
1. Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy
Stanford University, Center for the Study of Language and Informationentry: 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
View the Source Encyclopaedia Britannica
Friedrich Schiller (Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy)
Stanford Encyclopedia of PhilosophyIncludes: Friedrich SchillerView the Source Environmental Philosophy (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Environmental Philosophy, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Environmental Philosophy, Lead section
Environmental philosophy includes environmental ethics, environmental aesthetics, ecofeminism, environmental hermeneutics, and environmental theology.
Philosophy of Sport (Wikipedia)
WikipediaAssociated With: Philosophy of Sport, Lead sectionQuote, Associated With: Philosophy of Sport, Lead section
These issues cover many areas, but fall primarily into five philosophical categories: metaphysics, ethics and moral philosophy, philosophy of law, political philosophy and aesthetics.
Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (Wikipedia)
WikipediaFounded By: Alexander Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Wikipedia, lead sectionQuote, Founded By: Alexander Baumgarten, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, Wikipedia, lead section
He established aesthetics as a philosophical discipline.
Frequently Asked Questions
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.
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