Beauty is widely defined as a subjective aspect of human qualities that creates these subjective qualities pleasurable to see. These objects include sunsets, landscapes, people and beautiful works of art. Beauty, along with beauty and art, is perhaps the most important area of aesthetics, among the major branches of aesthetics. It encompasses all of the various human psychological aspects in a variety of disciplines including art, architecture, psychology and sociology.
The word “examination” in aesthetics signifies the process of seeing through the aesthetic impressions to establish their value for further human appreciation. The process of aesthetic evaluation can be seen as the study of beauty throughout history and across cultures. Aesthetic evaluation can be performed on the basis of personal taste, aesthetic evaluation can be based on professional judgment or on the contribution of cultural information and the use of different scientific techniques. There is also a considerable amount of philosophical study behind beauty.
Philosophy of beauty in the modern era can be seen in such diverse disciplines as anthropology, history, literature and visual arts. Modern aesthetics has been determined upon many different dimensions. In some instances, philosophers have explored how beauty relates to power, an issue currently under discussion in socio-scientific research. Others have explored the aesthetic emotions, especially sadness and happiness.
One of the most significant contributions of philosophers of beauty to modern aesthetics is their attempt to make beauty a socially meaningful pursuit. They began to question the nature of beauty as something that solely derives from the physical, leaving out the emotional and mental components of beauty. In response, the other philosophers, the romanticists, went even further in attempting to define beauty, establishing a framework for understanding beauty that still leaves much vague and open to interpretation. However, all argue that beauty is something that we all share and that it can be found in all of our lives no matter what culture we belong to.
The three broad philosophical approaches to aesthetics all draw on different aspects of the subject. The most traditional and widely used approach to aesthetics is that of the aesthetics of form. This school of thought begins with the idea that beauty consists of the arrangement of parts into a whole, and that the aesthetic quality of a work of art depends not only on the presence or absence of these parts, but also on the way in which they are combined and arranged. It is this approach that one can find in such works as those of van Gogh, Rembrandt and Cezanne.
The second major philosophical approach to aesthetics is that of aesthetics of function. This school of thought maintains that beauty exists primarily in the mind of the viewer, and that we are affected by the aesthetic experiences we have when we look at certain materials or objects. It differs from the first approach in that its aesthetic concepts relate directly to the material and the human being and do not need to be in relation to these things in order to create an aesthetic experience. Among the many aesthetic concepts of modern aesthetics that fall under this school are the concept of unity, the concept of proportion and the idea of proportion.