Beauty is one of the most fundamental and universal human feelings. It is a crucial component of the moral order of the world: the contemplation of beauty affirms and sustains life, even in the face of the most degrading tragedies: rape, senseless death, unstopped environmental decay and pollution. Beauty is a motivating force for building culture and the foundation for personal growth and the quest for meaning. When individuals lose sight of beauty society collapses and humanity retreats to deathlike existences or shallow hedonistic pleasures. In a world where so much of what is beautiful is destroyed by war, poverty and environmental degradation a renewal of interest in the beauty of things offers a prospect for human salvation.
There are several different philosophical approaches to or theories of beauty, but the core debate is over whether beauty is objective or subjective. Most ancient treatments of beauty, including Aristotle’s, treat it as objective: it is the thing itself that is beautiful, or its qualities that make it so. Thus, for Aristotle “beauty” means a perfect arrangement of parts, such as proportion, harmony and clarity.
Other philosophers, particularly those with a hedonistic perspective, have taken a very different approach to beauty, arguing that beauty is simply pleasure. For example, Schopenhauer defines beauty as a pleasurable experience that is derived from an object’s aesthetic properties; his definition has influenced many subsequent interpretations of beauty. The most adamantly subjective line on beauty comes from Santayana, who defines it as the sensation that something gives you.
In the twentieth century, there was a revival of interest in beauty in both art and philosophy based partly on an attempt to recover a sense of beauty that is independent of pleasure. However, many of these attempts have been problematic, and there is a continuing controversy over the nature and significance of beauty.
Despite this debate, it is widely accepted that most people have some kind of aesthetic experience at least occasionally. Three ESM studies suggest that everyday aesthetic experiences are frequent, natural stimuli are more likely to elicit these experiences than human-made ones, and the perception of beauty influences mood and behavior. Additionally, our research has shown that the way in which you describe a person’s attractiveness can affect your perception of their physical beauty. For instance, describing someone as ‘beautiful’ makes them seem more physically attractive than describing them as ‘handsome’. Our findings also show that your assessment of the attractiveness of someone else can be influenced by information you have about their personality. For example, if you know that someone is intelligent, funny or kind, you will see them as more attractive than if you only knew they were selfish or rude. This effect is stronger if you are judging the attractiveness of a stranger than when assessing your friends or family. This may indicate that the social aspects of attractiveness are more important than their actual physical features.