Aesthetics: A Brief Introduction

There seems to be some confusion around the term “aesthetics” and its meaning. In contemporary usage, it is often employed to denote a specific style or taste, as in – My home’s mid-century modern Scandi aesthetic is super on trend. Or – My wardrobe aesthetic screams Audrey Hepburn meets French girl cool. The word also seems to be a favorite among business names for plastic surgeons and medical spas – a fact which I found mildly puzzling until I discovered that the term “aesthetic medicine” is widely used to denote those medical specialties of the cosmetic variety.

The Study of Beauty

Generally, when people employ the word “aesthetics” today, it is in one of these contexts. There is, however, a far older usage that we tend to overlook. In that sense, Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy, closely related to the study of art, that examines the nature of beauty and related concepts like the sublime. It attempts to uncover the form and characteristics of beauty by asking fundamental questions like – What is beauty? How do we know beauty when we see it and how can we define it? What is the value of beauty and our experience of it?

In getting at these questions, philosophers posit that an aesthetic experience (such as our experience of beauty) is comprised of two primary components. The first is a sensory element, or how we visually, audibly, or otherwise perceive beauty in the world around us. It’s the act of taking in stimuli from the external environment, be that in the form of a snow-capped mountain scene or a violin concerto. Then there is the experiential component, or how we process beauty both emotionally and intellectually. Our experience of a beautiful object consists of an emotional response elicited upon viewing it – awe, inspiration, gratitude, wistfulness, contentment, melancholy – and the cerebral value that we derive from contemplating it.

A Matter of Taste

Here we might digress into a discussion on the value judgments that we form around objects of beauty – that is, taste. As in – My penchant for fine Italian fabrics and Rothkos is a clear signal of my refined taste. Taste – a critical judgment of an object’s aesthetic value – and theories defining it became popular in philosophy circles in the eighteenth century. Enlightenment philosopher David Hume is perhaps best known for his work in this area.

Hume posits that beauty does not exist objectively as a property of an object, but as subjective impression, or sentiment, in the mind of the beholder. We form judgments, or determinations, regarding the beauty of an object and its merit relative to other objects of the same type. As an uncontroversial example, we might say that a painting by Rembrandt is generally regarded as superior to, or more beautiful than, my unskilled attempts at the same exercise. While taste is shaped in part by individual predilections and the presiding cultural norms, “good” taste can be cultivated by refining our faculties of perception. In other words, through practice and comparison, we can become better at perceiving and judging beauty in objects, à la the literary or art critic.

So Judgmental

Immanuel Kant, well-regarded contemporary of Hume who wrote extensively on aesthetics and taste, upheld this view that our experience of beauty is subjective. He argues, however, that aesthetic judgments are universal, in that there are standards of taste to which we adhere and expect others to abide. For instance, I may rationally understand that beauty is subjective and that your tastes may be different from my own. This, however, does not prevent me from arguing that Nabokov is superior to Rowling and subsequently judging you for your taste in literature.

Kant also makes the case that in order to form a true aesthetic judgment, we must take a disinterested stance in the object. This means that we should take pleasure in a thing for no other reason than that we find it to be beautiful. To find it beautiful because it is pleasurable or because we can derive some purposive or monetary value from it, is not a true aesthetic judgment. Thus aesthetic judgement is conducted independently from other human interests and desires. Whether this is the correct understanding of the aesthetic experience – indeed, many have argued against this line of reasoning – there is no doubt that Kant’s theories laid the groundwork for formalism in aesthetics in modern philosophy.

Homework Assignment

Because any introductory discussion of aesthetics would be remiss without mention of Hume and Kant, they have – predictably – been the focus of this post. There have of course been many other important and influential thinkers (and no doubt many more mediocre and obscure) to opine on the nature of beauty. We will look to these in subsequent posts, but in the meantime – for some light reading – check out these resources if you wish to read more:

• “The Concept of the Aesthetic,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aesthetic-concept/

• “Aesthetics Introduction,” The Basics of Philosophy, https://www.philosophybasics.com/branch_aesthetics.html

• “Hume’s Aesthetics,” Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/hume-aesthetics/

• “Immanuel Kant,” Internet Encyclopedia of Philosophy, https://www.iep.utm.edu/kantaest/