Throughout history, philosophers have tried to pin down what makes an object or a person beautiful. The quest to understand beauty has been a highly dynamic one, with insights gained and refined over the centuries. Yet, it is also fair to say that despite all the philosophizing, no single theory of beauty has proven to be definitively true.
In general, people tend to agree that beauty is a feeling that invokes awe and a sense of wonder. This is a response that stems from our deepest emotions and sense of meaning in the world. A person’s beauty is often perceived as a gift from nature or from God. In addition, many people believe that something that is beautiful will inspire us to be better people.
When we speak about someone or something that is beautiful, our mind automatically conjures up images of a sunset, a sweeping mountain landscape or a glamorous fashion model. But the word beauty can be used to describe anything from a flower to a piece of architecture. It’s also common to use the words pretty and cute to describe people. But what’s the difference between these words? And when should you use each one?
Pretty is an adjective that describes a person or thing that is attractive in a gentle way. It is not as seductive as beautiful, but it’s still very appealing to the eye. Pretty people have great features like a perfect nose, nice eyes or hair and a good figure. They may have a sweet smile or be very endearing. Usually, the people we describe as pretty are younger and not very mature.
Cute is similar to pretty in that they are both attractive in a non-sexy way. However, cute is much more youthful. It’s a term that we sometimes use to describe children or animals. Cute can also be used to describe a girl or boy that is very naive or innocent.
Historically, there has been a close link between the notions of what is beautiful and what is morally right or wrong. In antiquity, for example, the notions of the beautiful (kalon) and the ethical ideal of a life that is just (agathon) became merged into an ideal of how to live well. Even today, the ethical stricture of proportionality and fit-ness resonates with the aesthetic notion of beauty.
In study 3, we found that a person’s rating of an experience as beautiful depends on their knowledge about the art category (i.e., whether they know it is a painting, sculpture or natural object). The effect of this knowledge was negative, so that people with more art knowledge gave lower ratings to experiences that were categorized as beautiful.
While ever fewer thinkers adduce the beautiful for proofs of the existence of God, the spiritual grist and gist of such traditional theorems—the ideas of both original creativity/spontaneity and eventual pacification/redemption of all of existence—still linger in modern notions of beauty as reinvigorating or soul-saving. Nowhere else in the philosophy of Western culture do such spiritual overtones linger as strongly as they do within the discourse about beauty.