Beauty Definition & Meaning

In the work, the high priestess Diotima describes how beauty moves out from a core singular appreciation of the body to outer appreciations via loved ones, to the world in its state of culture and society . In other words, Diotoma gives to Socrates an explanation of how love should begin with erotic attachment, and end with the transcending of the physical to an appreciation of beauty as a thing in itself. There is the sense in the text, concerning love and beauty they both co-exist but are still independent or, in other words, mutually exclusive, since love does not have beauty since it seeks beauty. The work toward the end provides a description of beauty in a negative sense. Hedonists usually restrict and specify the notion of pleasure in various ways in order to avoid obvious counterexamples.

Try Using Beauty

Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and proportion. Join our Sweeties in encouraging all genders to feel both empowered and beautiful through products that enhance the beauty in everyone, every day. TikTok Star Tefi Pessoa Is a Recovering Pimple PickerThe social media personality shares her skin journey and must-have products for Glamour's Acne Diaries. All products featured on Glamour are independently selected by our editors. However, when you buy something through our retail links, we may earn an affiliate commission.

However, other commentators have suggested that this preference may not be universal. For instance, in some non-Western cultures in which women have to do work such as finding food, men tend to have preferences for higher waist-hip ratios. The word "indian-guru" is often used as a countable noun to describe a beautiful woman. In the aftermath of postmodernism's rejection of beauty, thinkers have returned to beauty as an important value. American analytic philosopher Guy Sircello proposed his New Theory of Beauty as an effort to reaffirm the status of beauty as an important philosophical concept. He rejected the subjectivism of Kant and sought to identify the properties inherent in an object that make it beautiful.

Socrates discerned differences in the conception of the beautiful, for example, in inanimate objects, the effectiveness of execution of design was a deciding factor on the perception of beauty in something. By the account of Xenophon, Socrates found beauty congruent with that to which was defined as the morally good, in short, he thought beauty coincident with the good. Beauty is usually categorized as an aesthetic property besides other properties, like grace, elegance or the sublime. As a positive aesthetic value, beauty is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Beauty is often listed as one of the three fundamental concepts of human understanding besides truth and goodness.

The First Known Use Of Beauty Was

Find every essential you need for the most stylish hair, skin, makeup, and nails. In the Romantic period, Edmund Burke postulated a difference between beauty in its classical meaning and the sublime. The concept of the sublime, as explicated by Burke and Kant, suggested viewing Gothic art and architecture, though not in accordance with the classical standard of beauty, as sublime. In this context, the concept belonged often within the discipline of mathematics. An idea of spiritual beauty emerged during the classical period, beauty was something embodying divine goodness, while the demonstration of behaviour which might be classified as beautiful, from an inner state of morality which is aligned to the good.

Globally, it is argued that the predominance of white women featured in movies and advertising leads to a Eurocentric concept of beauty, breeding cultures that assign inferiority to women of color. Thus, societies and cultures across the globe struggle to diminish the longstanding internalized racism. The black is beautiful cultural movement sought to dispel this notion in the 1960s.

Beauty In Philosophy

A thing has dependent beauty if its beauty depends on the conception or function of this thing, unlike free or absolute beauty. Examples of dependent beauty include an ox that is beautiful as an ox but not as a horse or a photograph that is beautiful because it depicts a beautiful building but that lacks beauty generally speaking because of its low quality. Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive.