User:Slac/Aesthetics



Aesthetics (also esthetics) is the philosophy of beauty and art.

Naturally thinkers and sages have pondered beauty and art all over the world for millennia, but the subject was formally distinguished as an independent philosophial discipline in the 18th Century, particularly in Germany. The word in English comes from the German ästhetisch or French esthétique, (both from the Greek &#945;&#953;&#963;&#952;&#951;&#964;&#953;&#954;&#942; meaning a perceiver or sensitive) and mainly facilitated translations of the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. It meant "the science which treats of the conditions of sensuous perception." Elsewhere the philosopher Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten had taken it in German to mean "criticism of taste." Despite Kant's efforts to correct Baumgarten, this definition, which was not restricted to philosophy, survived and made aesthetics a part of critical theory. Some scholarly resistance to using the word outside of philosophy prevails to this day. 

The meaning of aesthetic as an adjective can be illuminated by comparing it to anaesthetic, which is by construction of an antonym. If something is anaesthetic, it tends to dull the senses or cause sleepiness. In contrast aesthetic may be thought of as anything that tends to stimulate or enliven the senses. It can also be used as a noun meaning "that which appeals to the senses."