Beauty is a complex, subjective experience that connects people to objects and art. It is the combination of qualities such as shape, color or form that pleases the aesthetic senses.
In general, it is a quality that can be found in nature and in the works of art, literature, and music that we enjoy. It is a trait that makes us feel good about ourselves, makes our lives better and inspires others to love themselves and their world.
The idea of beauty was once a central philosophical category, soberly debated by Greeks and carefully delineated in 18th-century minds. During the 20th century, the concept of beauty became more ambiguous. In the 1990s, many philosophers reclaimed a classical understanding of beauty.
Classical conceptions of beauty are based on the notion that something must be composed of integral parts, organized according to proportion, harmony, and symmetry. This conception is embodied in classical and neo-classical architecture, sculpture, and literature. It is particularly strong in the West and has remained an important part of Western culture since Plato.
However, modern thinkers often struggle with the question of beauty. They have a suspicion that beauty might distract from or conceal political realities. Moreover, they are suspicious of the hedonistic expressions associated with wealth and decadence that have traditionally defined beauty in the West (see Levey 1985).
There is also a tendency to view beauty as a function of an object’s properties. This leads to a number of accounts of beauty, all of which differ greatly from one another.
Some philosophers believe that beauty is a combination of qualities such as shape, color, or form that pleases the aesthetic senses. Some philosophers also consider that beauty is a form of pleasure or joy.
Aristotle and Plato both recognized the idea of beauty as a function of the harmony, proportion, and symmetry of an object’s components. In Timaeus, for example, he recognises that “to be beautiful, as a living creature, and every whole made up of parts, must present a certain order in its arrangement of parts” (Aristotle volume 2, 2322 [1450b34]).
Other philosophers believe that beauty is not a function of an object’s qualities, but is instead a response to the object itself. For Augustine, for instance, the beauty of a person is a function of the way that they give delight to others.
This idea of beauty is a conflation of the idea that something must be ordered and harmonious to be considered beautiful and the idea that it must call out a response of love or adoration. This is a conflation that is often criticized, but it is a very powerful idea.
Professor Zeki has shown that people tend to find faces attractive, even if they are not symmetrical, and that this is because of the activity in the medial orbital frontal cortex. This is the reward and pleasure center of the brain.
This is a very interesting study because it shows that there are a variety of factors that contribute to the perception of beauty, which is a very big change from what the classical conception of beauty is. These include the human face and body, and our cultural preferences and trends.
Comentarios