What Is Beauty

The concept of beauty which has for long been theorized by many philosophers. Since the Ancient Greek to the present world, the human perceptions on beauty has been different throughout. In fact, beauty has no specified definition. However, most human perceptions on beauty relates to collective qualities in a thing or person which provides a sense of pleasure in mind or spirit.

Historical Perceptions of beauty

The Ancient Greeks were the first to scrutinize the concept of beauty in writing. The Greeks had a very fascinating ideas of what beauty consisted of. The Greeks perceptions on beauty was related to youthfulness. Although this perception of beauty in correlation to youthfulness has facts, it has been challenged by the theory of over-simplicity. In fact, despite a person been in youthful stage, may lack the aesthetic look which provides the sense of pleasure in mind or spirit. Due to this reality, it is wrong say beauty solely depicts to the youthfulness though the fact that youthfulness is a beauty component cannot be ignored.

Other pre-historical Greeks specifically the Pythagoreans, perceived beauty as a implying balanced proportions and ratios. Pythagoreans proclaimed that persons or items which display the “golden ratio” looked more beautiful. Ancient architects of Greek, sculptors and the Pythagoreans sought to exhibit the golden ratio in their art. Having the knowledge of golden ratio in mind, it can be said that, balance proportions and ratios suggests beauty. However, golden ratio keeps fluctuating and thus cannot extensively be used to depict beauty.

Modern Perceptions of Beauty

In the recent history, specifically during the Enlightenment era, beauty has started to be much correlated with concepts of metaphysical. For instance, various Enlightenment artists and philosophers tried to link beauty to the concept of truth. Enlightenment Philosophers stated that something which is true is beautiful. As beautiful as this philosophy looks, there are still chances of error in formulating the philosophy. For example, there are some ugly facts and truths which have significant deal of legitimacy but are unpleasing to view or anticipate. As a result of this fact, the view of beauty as truth can be termed to be situational concept.

In modern theory, beauty is commonly related to justice. Under this theory, something is believed to be beautiful if it exhibits a sense of jurisdiction in academics, art, ethics and other various mediums. Closely correlated to the concept of the golden ratio, jurisdiction can be viewed as compressing balance, moderation and visually-pleasing proportions.