Beauty is the pleasure that an object or experience causes in a person. It is defined by many different philosophers as a variety of things, including proportion, harmony, or elegance.
Aristotle, for example, believed that beauty is the result of symmetry and proportion. He also believed that objects should be in a symmetrical or harmonious form, and that they should be well-designed so that they fit together in pleasing ways.
The classical theory of beauty, which was developed by Plato and Platonists, is that beauty consists in symmetry between composite parts or in elegant relationships between parts that combine to make a unified, whole form. It has been used as a model for the aesthetic principles of music, mathematics, and architecture, among other areas.
Another classical theory of beauty, which was developed by Pythagoras and was later used by the ancient Greek philosophers, is that beauty consists in symmetrical or harmonious proportions. The golden ratio is often used as a model for this concept, but it can be applied to any number of things, such as a musical piece or a mathematical problem.
This theory explains how beauty can be the result of symmetry or harmonious proportions, and it accounts for the pleasure that people feel when they encounter such objects. But it does not explain why this pleasure is felt in the first place, since such things do not exist on their own.
It is the human desire for order and symmetry that provokes this pleasure in us. It is the reason why we admire certain types of architecture and design, for example.
Kant rejected the classical view of beauty, arguing that it was too subjective and that it lacked any universal criteria. He thought that the subjective nature of aesthetic judgments was a dangerous idea, as it would allow us to judge everything as beautiful. He was also a humanist and believed that beauty should be centered around the goodness of mankind, but he could not figure out how this would give us a sense of purpose in life.
Aquinas, in contrast, argues that beauty is the result of symmetry between composite parts or in elegant relationships that combine to make a unified, harmonious form. He also argued that the principles of aesthetics must be empirically proven in the physical world, which is not easy to do when beauty is so abstract.
He believed that beauty consists in symmetry and proportion, and that it should be used as a model for the aesthetic principles that govern music, mathematics, and architecture. This theory also explains how beauty can be the result of good design, as Plotinus would agree, and it answers Kant’s innate intuition that beauty inspires a sense of purpose in life.
There have been various political associations of beauty over the centuries, and it has often been criticized by social justice philosophers as a tool of oppression or wealth inequality (see Levey 1985). It is now rediscovered in feminist philosophy and art criticism, and is subject to renewed interest and critique by many contemporary theorists.