(art) the branch of philosophy dealing with beauty and taste (emphasizing the evaluative criteria that are applied to art); "traditional aesthetics assumed the existence of universal and timeless criteria of artistic value
A branch of philosophy concerned with the beautiful in art and how it is experienced by the viewer
Properties perceived by touch and sight, such as the hand, color, luster and texture of carpet
aes·thet·ics in AM, also use esthetics Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy concerned with the study of the idea of beauty. Philosophical study of the qualities that make something an object of aesthetic interest and of the nature of aesthetic value and judgment. It encompasses the philosophy of art, which is chiefly concerned with the nature and value of art and the principles by which it should be interpreted and evaluated. Three broad approaches to the subject have been taken, each distinguished by the types of questions it treats as foremost: (1) the study of aesthetic concepts, often specifically through the examination of uses of aesthetic language; (2) the study of the states of mind responses, attitudes, emotions held to be involved in aesthetic experience; and (3) the study of objects deemed aesthetically interesting, with a view to determining what about them makes them so. Seminal works in the field include the Symposium of Plato; the Rhetoric of Aristotle; Inquiry into the Original of Our Ideas of Beauty and Virtue (1725), by Francis Hutcheson (1694-1746); "Of the Standard of Taste" (in Four Dissertations [1757]), by David Hume; On the Sublime and Beautiful (1757), by Edmund Burke; Critique of Judgment (1790), by Immanuel Kant; The Sense of Beauty (1896), by George Santayana; The Psychology of Imagination (1948), by Jean-Paul Sartre; and two works by Ludwig Wittgenstein, Lectures and Conversations on Aesthetics, Psychology, and Religious Belief (1966) and Culture and Value (1977)
Aesthetics are given consideration in the complete evaluation of lakes as a natural resource The overall scenic attraction of the lake setting; natural beauty of shores and waters, or any unusual natural phenomena; the appeal of its wildlife and aquatic plants; desirable natural landscape for home sites on the shores are some of the matters considered under this heading
Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that aims to establish the general principles of art and beauty It can be divided into the philosophy of art and the philosophy of beauty
Aesthetics is "the branch of philosophy dealing with such notions as the beautiful, the ugly, the sublime, the comic, etc , as applicable to the fine arts, with a view to establishing the meaning and validity of critical judgments concerning works of art, and the principles underlying or justifying such judgments " (Random House Webster's Unabridged Electronic Dictionary, 1996)