I.

Introduction

Aesthetics, branch of philosophy concerned with the essence and perception of beauty and ugliness. Aesthetics also deals with the question of whether such qualities are objectively present in the things they appear to qualify, or whether they exist only in the mind of the individual; hence, whether objects are perceived by a particular mode, the aesthetic mode, or, instead, whether the objects have, in themselves, special qualities—aesthetic qualities. Aesthetics also asks if there is a difference between the beautiful and the sublime.

Criticism and the psychology of art, although independent disciplines, are related to aesthetics. The psychology of art is concerned with such elements of the arts as human responses to colour, sound, line, form, and words, and with the ways in which the emotions condition such responses. Criticism confines itself to particular works of art, analysing their structures, meanings, and problems, comparing them with other works, and evaluating them. The distinction between aesthetics and critical theory is somewhat harder to specify. However, it may be said that where the former treats art as an autonomous domain of philosophical enquiry, the latter tends to draw upon various other disciplines (for example, sociology, linguistics, and psychoanalysis) in the search for illuminating methods and ideas.

The term “aesthetics” was introduced in 1753 by the German philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, but the study of the nature of beauty had been pursued for centuries. In the past it was chiefly a subject for philosophers. Since the 19th century, artists have also contributed their views.