An Introduction to the Concept of Beauty

An Introduction to the Concept of Beauty

Beauty is often defined as a particular aesthetic feature of certain objects, which makes these objects pleasant to see. These objects include sunsets, landscapes, beautiful people and artistic works of art. Beauty, along with aestheticism, is the most significant part of aesthetics, among the major branches of natural philosophy. Philosophy of beauty was first proposed by the French linguist Emile Zola in his book L’Amour Non aux Refutations (Zoology, vol. II, p. 7).

According to him, beauty is a certain aesthetic quality which finds its ultimate and perfect definition in an object. Aesthetics then, he argued, are mainly concerned with finding pleasure or satisfaction in the visual experience. The definition of beauty, therefore, differs from a subjective point of view in that the aesthetic sense is not related to the beauty of an object, but rather the pleasure one gets from looking at it. According to Zola, beauty includes certain aspects of the human personality such as symmetry, proportion, shape, line, the expression of certain emotions, the resistance to change, and so on.

The aesthetic object is something which satisfies some pre-determined standard of beauty. This standard varies according to various philosophers. For instance, in some schools of art, beauty is primarily the aesthetic quality of a work of art, while in others, beauty is a synonym for elegance, magnificence, loveliness and other aesthetic qualities. In English, the word ‘beauty’ is often used to refer loosely to a generic term, ’eminence, ”style’ or ‘gorgeousness.’ On a broader sense, beauty – in the broadest sense – can be defined as the beauty of the entire form of an object, and not just the visible part of the object, or even its vital points (such as the eyes and the nose).