How Does Beauty Impart Any Meaning?
How Does Beauty Impart Any Meaning?
Beauty is commonly defined as a subjective aspect of objects which makes these objects enjoyable to see. Such objects could be sunsets, landscapes, beautiful humans and creative works of art. Beauty, along with personal taste and aesthetics, is the most important theme of aesthetics, another of the three major branches of psychology. Like all the other psychosocial concepts, beauty has been the subject of much debate in the psychological and sociological sciences.
The twentieth century art movement revived the idea of beauty as an Idealist Phenomenon. According to the Idealist School, beauty is not a physical state, but a human experience dependent on the worth of the person as a whole. By extension, then, beauty should not be dependent on a person’s physical attributes, but on the person’s potential for building positive interpersonal relationships and for creating meaningful art. In the history of the twentieth century, however, some philosophers and social scientists pointed out how essential beauty actually is to the psychological and intellectual life of humans. Furthermore, the popularity of the concept of beauty during the middle of the twentieth century gave way to its rejection by the more politically correct camp, to the point that many philosophers who were once beauty lovers turned anti-analysts and anti-pornographers.
Beauty appeals to everyone: to children, to adults, to couples, to teachers, to workers and to politicians. Beauty is the one aspect of everyday life that is open to everybody, so that in our day-to-day lives we do not feel beautiful only when we are in front of the mirror or watching someone else smile. Beauty is therefore a very important concept that has changed little over the course of history. Beauty in our current era can be found in nature, in music, in literature, in technology, and in film; in fact, beauty is so important that when you walk down the street people often mistake you for looking at a billboard.