Concept of Beauty According to the Western Philosophers
Concept of Beauty according to the Western Philosophers
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
John Keats
Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of thing. The ideas of beauty is found in almost every culture and at almost every time in human history, with many similarities. Beauty was and still is a term of great esteem linking human beings and nature with artistic practices and works since the early civilizations.
From the early cultures, beauty, goodness and truth are customarily related. Beauty here carries a double meaning, inclusive and exclusive.
In the inclusive sense, beauty pertains to anything worthy of approbation, to human virtues and characters, to nobility and goodness, to hidden things and truth, to the natural and divine worlds.
In the exclusive, restricted sense, it pertains to how things appear, their manifestations, and to the joys human beings experience when presented with beautiful things, human bodies, artifacts, natural creatures and things.
When we talk about the beauty in works of art, we are talking about this latter beauty, and experiencing this beauty refers to the aesthetic experience. Such beauty is the higher degree of it and the experience of it last in us beyond the time and space.
The nature of beauty and its role in philosophy and aesthetics was explained from the early periods and its evolution as described by the philosophers and writers as follows:
~PLATO~
( 428 or 427 - 348 or 347 B.C )
Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some love for the arts, because he talks about them often, and his remarks show that he paid close attention to what he saw and heard. He was also a fine literary stylist and a great story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a poet before he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty. That is all ye know on earth, and all ye need to know”
John Keats
Beauty is an emotional element, a pleasure of ours, which nevertheless we regard as a quality of thing. The ideas of beauty is found in almost every culture and at almost every time in human history, with many similarities. Beauty was and still is a term of great esteem linking human beings and nature with artistic practices and works since the early civilizations.
From the early cultures, beauty, goodness and truth are customarily related. Beauty here carries a double meaning, inclusive and exclusive.
In the inclusive sense, beauty pertains to anything worthy of approbation, to human virtues and characters, to nobility and goodness, to hidden things and truth, to the natural and divine worlds.
In the exclusive, restricted sense, it pertains to how things appear, their manifestations, and to the joys human beings experience when presented with beautiful things, human bodies, artifacts, natural creatures and things.
When we talk about the beauty in works of art, we are talking about this latter beauty, and experiencing this beauty refers to the aesthetic experience. Such beauty is the higher degree of it and the experience of it last in us beyond the time and space.
The nature of beauty and its role in philosophy and aesthetics was explained from the early periods and its evolution as described by the philosophers and writers as follows:
~PLATO~
( 428 or 427 - 348 or 347 B.C )
Plato had a love-hate relationship with the arts. He must have had some love for the arts, because he talks about them often, and his remarks show that he paid close attention to what he saw and heard. He was also a fine literary stylist and a great story-teller; in fact he is said to have been a poet before he encountered Socrates and became a philosopher. Some of his dialogues are real literary masterpieces. On