In this article we are going to be answering the question, what is aesthetics in the philosophy of art? Many people have their opinions about aesthetics but in this article, I will be explaining in details about aesthetics.
Overview
So, aesthetics is an area of philosophy concerned with art and beauty. some separate aesthetics and philosophy of art claiming is the form of study of beauty, or rather is the study of works of art. However, more commonly, aesthetics encompasses both questions, it’s kind of our more general title so that philosophy of art would be included as an element of aesthetics.
Talking about aesthetic objects, are the objects that are naturally beautiful or naturally sublime perhaps and those objects that are created by people in order to be beautiful or Sublime or maybe even something else.
Since aesthetics often incorporates some element of judgment, it’s generally considered to fall under the general heading in philosophy of value theory along with things like political philosophy, ethics, meta ethics and so on. Now some of the questions which aesthetics, often examines include asking what things count as art, or aesthetic objects? This is a common question as art progresses and pushes the boundaries of what can and should be art.
At what point do you draw the line, what are the necessary and sufficient conditions for something being art, and what is the nature of aesthetic judgment and aesthetic experience when I’m experiencing art or judging something to be aesthetic not aesthetic beautiful sublime, what is the nature of that experience and those judgments, and what makes something maybe even high art as opposed to popular art?
You might say that’s a really an amazing piece of high art that does something very technical, but if it’s not very popular, at what point is that still something that’s beautiful or good?
Beyond questions of what kinds of things can be classified as aesthetic there are questions as to what makes an aesthetic object valuable or beautiful or who determines the meaning of an object, the audience or the artist?
There are also questions regarding taste if two people disagree about the beauty or aesthetic value of a particular object, is there an objective truth of the matter? Is there something that’s objectively true about this thing being beautiful, even if maybe we only consider it beautiful in our cultural context and 100 years in the future, they’ll consider it ugly?