How Do Philosophers Think About Beauty?

“Beauty itself is but the sensible image of the infinite,” said the U.S. historian George Bancroft (1800–1891). The nature of beauty is one of the most fascinating riddles of philosophy. Is beauty universal? How do we know it? How can we predispose ourselves to embrace it? Nearly every major philosopher has engaged with these questions and their cognates, including the great figures of ancient Greek philosophy such as Plato and Aristotle.

The Aesthetic Attitude

An aesthetic attitude is a state of contemplating a subject with no other purpose than appreciating it. For most authors, thus, the aesthetic attitude is purposeless: we have no reason to engage in it other than finding aesthetic enjoyment.

Aesthetic appreciation can be carried on by means of the senses: looking at a sculpture, trees in bloom, or Manhattan’s skyline; listening to Puccini’s “La bohème;” tasting a mushroom risotto; feeling cool water in a hot day; and so on. However, senses may not be necessary in order to obtain an aesthetic attitude. We can rejoice, for instance, in imagining a beautiful house that never existed or in discovering or grasping the details of a complex theorem in algebra.

In principle, thus, the aesthetic attitude can relate to any subject via any possible mode of experience—senses, imagination, intellect, or any combination of these.