Beauty is that the ascription of a property or characteristic to an animal, idea, object, person or place that gives a percept of delight or satisfaction. Beauty is studied as a part of aesthetics, culture, psychology and sociology. An “ideal beauty” is an entity which is admired, or possesses features widely attributed to beauty during a particular culture, for perfection. Ugliness is that the opposite of beauty.
The experience of “beauty” often involves an interpretation of some entity as being in balance and harmony with nature, which can cause feelings of attraction and emotional well-being. Because this will be a subjective experience, it’s often said that “beauty is within the eye of the beholder.” Often, given the observation that empirical observations of things that are considered beautiful often align among groups in consensus, beauty has been stated to possess levels of objectivity and partial subjectivity which aren’t fully subjective in their aesthetic judgement.
Ancient Greek
The Attic noun that best translates to the English-language words “beauty” or “beautiful” was kaloskallos, and therefore the adjective was kalos, kalos. However, kalos may and is additionally translated as ″good″ or ″of fine quality″ and thus features a broader meaning than mere physical or material beauty. Similarly, kallos was used differently from English word beauty therein it first and foremost applied to humans and bears an erotic connotation.
The Koine Greek word for beautiful was ὡραῖος, hōraios, an adjective etymologically coming from the word ὥρα, hōra, meaning “hour”. In Koine Greek, beauty was thus related to “being of one’s hour”. Thus, a ripe fruit (of its time) was considered beautiful, whereas a girl trying to seem older or an older woman trying to seem younger wouldn’t be considered beautiful. In Attic Greek, hōraios had many meanings, including “youthful” and “ripe old age”.
The earliest Western theory of beauty are often found within the works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, like Pythagoras. The Pythagorean school saw a robust connection between mathematics and wonder . especially , they noted that objects proportioned consistent with the golden ratio seemed more attractive. Ancient Greek architecture is predicated on this view of symmetry and proportion.
Plato considered beauty to be the thought (Form) in particular other Ideas. Aristotle saw a relationship between the gorgeous (to kalon) and virtue, arguing that “Virtue aims at the gorgeous.
Middle Ages
In the Middle Ages, Catholic philosophers like Aquinas included beauty among the transcendental attributes of being. In his Summa Theological, Aquinas described the three conditions of beauty as: integrates (Wholeness), consonantal (harmony), Clarita’s (radiance of form)[8]
In the Gothic of the High and Late Middle Ages, light was considered the foremost beautiful revelation of God, which was heralded in design. Examples are the glass of Gothic Cathedrals including Notre-Dame de Paris and Charts Cathedral.
The 20th century and after
The 20th century saw an increasing rejection of beauty by artists and philosophers alike, culminating in postmodernism’s anti-aesthetics. This is often despite beauty being a central concern of 1 of postmodernism’s main influences, Friedrich Nietzsche, who argued that the desire to Power was the desire to Beauty.
In the aftermath of postmodernism’s rejection of beauty, thinkers have returned to beauty as a crucial value. American analytic philosopher Guy Sir cello proposed his New Theory of Beauty as an attempt to reaffirm the status of beauty as a crucial philosophical concept. Elaine Scary also argues that beauty is said to justice.
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