Definition Aesthetics - Definition

Marc

Fully vaccinated are you?
Leader
Aesthetics - a dimension of quality that refers to subjective sensory characteristics such as taste, sound, look, and smell.

From Wikipedia reference-linkAesthetics :
Aesthetics (also esthetics) is the philosophy of beauty and art.

Thinkers and sages have pondered beauty and art all over the world for millennia, but the subject was formally distinguished as an independent philosophical discipline in the 18th Century by German philosophers. Before this period authors viewed the study as inseparable from other main topics, such as ethics in the Western tradition and religion in the Eastern.

The word in English was not used much until the beginning of the 19th Century. Its use comes from the German ästhetisch or French esthétique, (both from the Greek αισθητική meaning a perceiver or sensitive) and mainly facilitated translations of Immanuel Kant. It meant "the science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception." Elsewhere the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten had taken it in German to mean "criticism of taste." Despite Kant's efforts to correct Baumgarten, this definition survived and Baumgarten is credited with inventing the modern use of the term. Thus, aesthetics is also an important part of critical theory.

The meaning of aesthetic as an adjective may be illuminated by comparing it to anaesthetic, which is by construction an antonym. If something is anaesthetic, it tends to dull the senses or cause sleepiness. In contrast aesthetic may be thought of as anything that tends to stimulate or enliven the senses.

It is also a popularly used noun meaning "that which appeals to the senses." In this sense, for example, the aesthetics of mathematics would refer to those things in mathematics which appeal to the senses, and not necessarily a body of philosophical principles on the subject.
 
Top Bottom