Philosophy, Aesthetics and Beauty
In the discipline of philosophy, her beauty is one of the key themes of understanding her and her nature. is aesthetic . It comes from the Greek word “aesthesia” which comes from emotion, sensation and perception. It is different from the word “cosmetics”, which derives from the Greek word “kosmos” meaning ornament, but is often used in the same sense. In philosophy, besides logic based on truth and morality based on goodness, the third area of study is aesthetics based on beauty.
It deals with art with its sensory values and is defined in the form of the philosophy of the senses. Those who define aesthetics as the philosophy of beauty are in the majority. Therefore, the most important subject of aesthetics today is beauty.
The term aesthetic was coined by a German philosopher in 1750. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten has defined. By definition, aesthetics is the science of sensory knowledge; The subject is sensory competence. What he wants to realize is the art of contemplation of the beautiful. The concept of aesthetics is explained as seeking and feeling the beautiful.
A person does something good and beautiful with the values that are determined and accepted by himself. Such as truth values regulating his knowledge, goodness regulating his morals, usefulness regulating his practical life, beauty values regulating his aesthetic values. Beauty is that an entity or an object gives pleasant experiences to the person who sees it. It can be a sculpture, a painting, a popular song as a work of art, or it can be a human being. To these, the aesthetic object is the person who experiences this pleasure, likes the beautiful, or evaluates the object in front of him as beautiful. It is the harmony, order, unity, sublimity, simplicity and moderation in the object that creates the feeling of liking, admiration and admiration of the aesthetic subject, that is, the aesthetic subject. All this is called beauty. So, beauty is related to a subjective or objective power of taste, which can sometimes be abstract and sometimes concrete.
Beauty is praised by poets, tried to be brought into being by artists; attractive, and the desire to possess the beautiful is universal. However, there is no consensus on what beauty is. Is beauty in the beautiful object or in the eye that sees? In other words, can we talk about an objective beauty, a beauty that everyone agrees on, or does beauty belong to the person?
It is generally defined as the property of objects that leave liking and liking effects on the viewer and stimulate the senses of pleasure. phenomenological aesthetics (aesthetic realism). On the other hand, there is an assumption that the sense of beauty is related to the structure of the perception of the beholder, namely the subject, rather than being a property of the object. According to this, beauty is not about the person being looked at. view is about. If this is the trend psychological aesthetics (aesthetic subjectivism) is called. Whether the concept of beauty is objective or subjective is an ongoing debate. Those who argue that aesthetic realism determines beauty and is objective, defend the existence of symmetry in the object, compliance with the golden ratio and the arrangement according to the Fibonacci series in nature. Those who emphasize that aesthetic subjectivism predominates reveal how the qualities of people who were introduced as beautiful throughout history have changed over time. They examine how the so-called beautiful changes according to external factors. Accordingly, there is a huge difference between the chubby-looking beautiful woman in a Goya painting made in the 1800s and today’s supermodels. The tastes of societies have differentiated over time according to aesthetic subjectivism.
Female sizes depicted in Francisco Goya’s painting Maja Urbana
Supermodel Liya Kebede today’s female face and body beauty understanding
These questions have occupied philosophers since ancient times.
beauty in philosophy Plato (427 BC – 347 BC) started with. According to him, beauty is absolute beauty that is valid at all times and everywhere, and it is outside of time and space. These unchanging beauties give shape to matter in this world; but since matter is weak and unstable, when material beauty deteriorates, that beauty does not exist. In other words, the real beauty is not in beings and events, but in the realm of ideas reflected in them.
to Aristotle (384 BC – 322 BC) According to him, beauty is harmony, harmony. If the elements that make up a whole are compatible with each other, that thing is beautiful. Of course, factors such as symmetry, proportion, perfect harmony, and limitation are valid here, and Aristotle considers beauty as mathematics.
Beauty has to do with harmony, especially Pythagoras (570 BC–495 BC) plays an important role in his work. Pythagoras and the Pythagorean school determined that there is a strong connection between mathematics and beauty, especially that objects look more attractive when proportioned according to the golden ratio. Modern researchers also state that symmetrical human faces measured according to the golden ratio are more attractive than non-symmetrical ones. Because symmetry indicates the absence of a hereditary or acquired defect.
On the other hand, the representatives of modern philosophy Descartes (1596-1650), Locke (1632-1704), and Hume (1711-1776)Beauty has been placed on a subjective basis in the process that started with
However, from modern philosophers Kant (1724-1804), distinguishing beauty as an aesthetic value from pleasant, good, correct and useful, reveals the difference between artistic beauty and natural beauty. The beauty of nature is that nature achieves its purpose in a substance; It has certain rules. In the beauty of art, there is often no purpose or rule; pleasing and aesthetic feeling in the soul is essential.
fr. to Shiller According to him, beauty has a sensual side and a mental side. Beauty is the embodiment of the mind, the senses.
from the German idealists shellingAccording to , what is reflected in a work in which the subjective and objective contrasts disappear is beauty.
Hegel’and elevates beauty to an inner level different from the perceived one.
th. Vischer takes aesthetics as the “science of the beautiful” and the beautiful is defined as “the inner perfections of beings appearing” and becoming perceptible by the senses. The harmony between the inner perfection of a being and its appearance reveals the beauty, and the disharmony reveals the ugliness. Vischer accepts the beauty of nature as a beauty and even art; defines it as the combination of the objective beauty of nature and the subjective beauty of human imagination.
From the existentialist philosophers to Martin Heidegger According to him, beauty is “the enlightenment of being, it is truth.” But this truth is true truth, not logical truth; is the truth in things. Revealing the hidden structure of beings in a way that everyone can see is to reveal the beautiful.
A strong indicator of physical beauty is prevalence and mate-seeking behavior. When images of human faces are averaged to create a composite image, it becomes progressively closer to the “ideal” image and is perceived as more attractive. This situation was first Francis Galton, cousin of Charles Darwin It was discovered during his investigation of whether the faces of vegetarians and those of meat eaters, when photographically superimposed and combined, each had a typical facial image. When he did this, he realized that the combined face images were much more attractive than the face in any single photograph. When the researchers replicated the results under more controlled experimental conditions, they found that a set of mathematically averaged face images obtained in a computer environment was more beautiful than a single image. It makes sense, evolutionarily, that sexual creatures must draw themselves out by putting themselves in the dominant common and average shape. The results of natural selection are replaced by the downsides of beneficial traits in the change of generations. This is the fundamental force that explains evolution, and it is the main concept that makes Darwin unforgettable in biology. Thus, natural selection, beneficial traits become more and more widespread in the next generation, while undesirable traits become less and less. Therefore, while a sexual creature would like to mate with a suitable partner, it should avoid individuals with strange and unusual-looking features, and should particularly prefer individuals close to the average and with a dominant prevalence. This is known as mate selection.
There are also those who take and evaluate beauty psychologically. th. Lipps perceives beauty as the form in which a person enjoys and feels free. However, phenomenologists do not accept this. According to them, beauty is a feature that does not depend on the beholder and is based on the structure of the beautiful being. A beautiful thing is beautiful even if one does not see it as beautiful. Beauty is not in being, neither is reality; beauty is based on truth but transcends it. N.Hartman says that beauty should be extracted from beautiful entities, from ontology, rather than from a general and universal metaphysical assumption.
Another external feature of a generally admired woman, determined as a result of research, is that the waist/hip measurement ratio is around 0.7. The concept of waist/hip ratio, from University of Texas at Austin physiologists Devendra Singh Developed by The physiologist has shown that this ratio indicates exactly the fertility of the woman. Traditionally, before the modern era, when food was more scarce, overweight people were more attractive than thin people.
Beauty is a variable value. It is a value that changes according to the time it is defined, society, person to person, even the age of the person, his profession, and the social and psychological situation he is in. However, studies in which art and fashion differ widely in different cultures have revealed that there are various common points in people’s perceptions of beauty. For example, big eyes and fair skin are considered beautiful in all cultures. Again, a baby is an inherent attraction in all cultures and is associated with youth and beauty. Many studies have revealed that the preference for a beautiful face is acquired from infancy and has similar attractiveness in different genders and cultures.
Generally, the judgment that a person is beautiful is based on a combination of inner beauty, such as personality, intelligence, grace, charm, and external beauty, such as health, youth, proximity and prevalence, skin. In this context, competitions such as beauty contests have an important place in various societies as a common way of measuring external beauty.
On the other hand, the ideal of beauty strengthens racial unity. Mixed-race children often look more attractive than their parents because hereditary variation protects them from errors in their parents’ genetic inheritance.
It represents the standard of Beauty Comparison theory and can cause resentment and dissatisfaction when not overcome. People who are not close to ideal beauty can be excluded from their society. In Victor Hugo’s The Hunchback of Notre Dame, the ugly-looking Quasimodo is different from the average and is therefore ostracized from society.
The negative effects of beauty ideals on the appearance of racial oppression are revealed. For example, according to the prevailing idea in American culture, black people are less attractive or less desirable than white people. The idea that blackness is ugliness, which presents itself as behavioral racism, hurts the sentiment of African Americans.
Evaluation criteria of beauty in aesthetics; attributes of beauty
There are objective and subjective qualities in the evaluation of beauty in aesthetics. These;
subjective qualities;
It is a value that changes according to the time it is defined, society, person to person, even the age of the person, his profession, and the social and psychological situation he is in. Throughout the ages, the understanding of female beauty has varied. The understanding of the beautiful face according to the ages;
– ancientğ beauty . Oval face, full lips and cheeks, straight nose, rounded chin, soft forehead, proportional facial features. The best example is the Venus of Milo statue, which symbolizes Aphrodite and beauty.
Venus Milo statue made for Aphrodite. It’s perfect, but how compatible is it with today’s facial aesthetic values?
– Roman beauty.Big black eyes, dark hair, dark skin, round face shape, deep gaze provided by effective eye make-up
Roman young female figure
– Middle Ageğ beautiful.Broad forehead, blond hair, straight nose, thin eyebrows and lean body
Medieval women’s understanding of beauty
– Baroque beauty . Golden hair, fair or “transparent” skin, round, full face and body.
Baroque woman’s concept of beauty
– Romantic Period beauty.Dark hair, fair and pale skin, thin faces, sunken cheeks
romantic period woman
– 20th century At the beginning, ancient Greek and Roman beauty was again taken as etalon. Towards the middle of this century, more severe facial features were thought to be beautiful. Today, the measurement and definitions of facial and body beauty are evaluated differently.
Objective qualities; In the evaluation of aesthetic beauty, these qualities will be emphasized. Objective qualities can also be divided into internal and external.
Intrinsic qualities;
The perception of a face as beautiful increases in proportion to the fact that the face reflects the actual existence reality, which can be perceived only spiritually, not with the senses, together with what it represents. This is called the idea of the face in a philosophical sense, and a beautiful thing is what conforms to its idea, its essence, its concept.
Beautiful face; It should fit the facial structure of the human race it represents as a whole. Imperfect, imperfect things are not beautiful.
For a face to be beautiful, it must be lively and expressive.
Monica_Belluci is an indescribable perfect charm other than beauty.
The external formal qualities of Facial Beauty are as follows:
• Proportion and symmetry: It is the first ratio that we come across especially during the mathematical determination of beauty. Beautiful is the combination of elements in proportion. A disproportionate thing cannot be beautiful. Since ancient times, artists and philosophers have sought a magical mathematical formula to explain all beauty and have found it in the “golden section” proportion.
Leonardo da Vinci’s portrait of the Mona Lisa was made according to the golden ratio.
Another quality of facial beauty that depends on proportion is symmetry. There is a measure-based order between the parts of a beautiful whole. Beauty in nature largely depends on symmetry. The body of living things is symmetrical to the right and left. Symmetry is very important in perceiving works of art as beautiful because it indicates the absence of a hereditary or acquired defect.
• Harmony: For all beauties, it is important that the parts come together harmoniously. Harmony is important in both mobile and inactive wholes. If there is no harmony, there will be no beauty, not the whole. The real beauty of the face is a harmony based on the tension of opposites on a face. The basis of a harmonic face is the unity of the moving and fixed antomic fields that make up the multiplicity of the face. Everything in the universe seems so many and complex. But when unity is achieved in multiplicity, a harmony, a power, a beauty emerges. So are the anatomical areas of the face. In a sphere such as the head, a prismatic structure such as the nose, spheres such as the eyes, lines such as the mouth and eyebrows, and facial bones appear as a complex structure. But beauty emerges with the harmony between all of them.
Angelina Jolie is an example of facial beauty in perfect symmetry and harmony
Concepts mixed with beauty in the evaluation of facial beauty;
mathematical accuracy and beauty; In the evaluation of facial aesthetics, the mathematical accuracy of the face and the beauty of the face are often confused. However, right and beautiful do not mean the same thing. True, it serves the mind, the general is concrete. Whereas, beautiful appeals to our emotions and imagination and is abstract. Some truths are beautiful, but some are not, because they do not inspire admiration, excitement, or enthusiasm. Truth is a judgment of logic, beauty is a judgment of value. Mathematical accuracy is used to evaluate the beauty of the face. Sometimes a face that has nothing to do with this accuracy can be beautiful.
The concepts of beautiful and good; Moral thinkers argue that the beautiful and the good are identical. However, upon closer examination, it is seen that the beautiful and the good do not go together like this. Beauty and goodness are values that vary from person to person, from society to society, but goodness is more variable. It has good purpose, it is useful; It cannot be said that beauty is always purposeful and useful. Kindness is understood by the mind, and beauty is generally understood by intuition. Goodness has certain laws, dependencies; beauty is freedom. The moral good is not always sympathetic and attractive; beautiful attracts and excites people. It can be morally bad for a person to display a beautiful body part. Beautiful, everyone-did; Everyone can agree on the good things, but the good often varies according to interests and situations.
The concepts of beautiful and pleasant; We think that beautiful is beautiful because we like it. Pleasure is not about our mind, but, like beauty, is about our emotions and is about enjoying. What we like is what we enjoy. Pleasure and pleasantness seem to be concentrated on the beautiful. Beautiful works are pleasant, they give pleasure and pleasure to the person. But this is not always the case. A work, a situation that always gives us pleasure and pleasure cannot be beautiful. What we like in a particular situation loses its appeal when the situation changes. The one who seeks pleasure and pleasure can sometimes fall into humiliating situations. However, beautiful passion-water enlarges, elevates and ennobles a person. Beauty is a force that constantly draws us to itself. The shooting time of pleasure and pleasure is not long.
Beautiful and useful concepts; When Kant’s thoughts and the beautiful and the good were separated from each other, the ties between the beautiful and the useful were broken. A pretty face is of no use to us. Some thinkers have claimed that there is no connection between the beautiful and the useful, that they should not be confused with each other, or rather that benefit and interest will spoil art. However, people are increasingly forced to live in a technical environment. Since people will live away from natural beauties, with the tools made by technical people and in environments created by them, then this environment must be both beneficial and beautiful. Already in contemporary life, knowledge areas such as design, landscaping and ergonomics on the one hand try to make technical tools and environments both useful and beautiful.
Beautiful and sublime concepts; Sublime and sublime are studied by aestheticians as an aesthetic value like beauty. Can beautiful and sublime ideas always coexist in works of art? Not always. There are some works of art that are both beautiful and sublime; but what is beautiful is not always sublime, and what is sublime is not beautiful. The Supreme is generally large and unlimited events and entities that oppress and control people. When a person is left alone in a desert, when he is caught in a storm, when he watches the night starry sky, when he encounters a magnificent architectural work, he feels “sublime”. Some great people are considered exalted. We call the greatness and powers that surpass and fascinate us sublime, and they surpass the beautiful. The sublime can be more powerful than beautiful, scary, frightening. Some things that are sublime carry beauty, but some do not.
Apart from these similarities, it is seen that couples such as beautiful and harmony, beautiful and luxurious, beautiful and graceful sometimes stand side by side with each other and are evaluated together. However, these are not always the elements that go together with the beautiful.
Judgments on the evaluation of facial aesthetics;
In the evaluation of facial beauty, we make judgments as patients and doctors. Judgment is statements made on things that are true or false that exist or that do not exist. It is possible to classify judgments in many ways.
We can divide our judgments into two as informational and aesthetic judgments.
informational judgments are objective judgments that can be examined according to the logic of true-false. However, aesthetic judgments are subjective and cannot be evaluated with the logic of right-wrong. Aesthetic judgment is not a moral or knowledge judgment. Not objective like them; It is subjective because it is based on pleasure and not hearing.
aesthetic judgment, It is not about gaining profit or not using it, but just watching and liking. Aesthetic judgments do not depend on concepts such as information, but on people’s feelings and cannot be tied to logical rules. It emerges in the free and harmonious play of people’s sensibility, mind and imagination.
In order to better understand aesthetic judgments, it is necessary to look briefly at its features.
Aesthetic judgments are individual . Everyone evaluates and expresses their taste freely. This taste depends on the feelings of the person and is completely private.
Aesthetic judgments are subjective. Colors, shapes, sounds were evaluated differently by people. The events of pleasing and finding beautiful cannot be evaluated as logical judgments. No one can expect others to find beautiful what he or she finds beautiful. Because it is accepted from the beginning that these judgments are subjective. However, one should not fall into a judicial anarchy here either.
Aesthetic judgments are common. There is no unconditional obligation to aesthetic judgments. However, these judgments should also be distinguished from judgments that are purely arbitrary, based only on sense-pleasure, not based on any principle. There is also a practical necessity in evaluating works of art. People who judge freely; they act in accordance with the common aesthetic feeling (sensus com-munis aestheticus) prevailing in that society at that time. Although this feeling is subjective, it is common to all people.
Aesthetic judgments are mandatory . This imperative comes from a shared aesthetic sense. The world of the beautiful is in the area we call pleasant. While the pleasure due to pleasantness is purely arbitrary and for oneself, the pleasure felt for beauty is also found in others and is a necessary enjoyment. This pleasure is a supra-individual pleasure that all people should have.
Aesthetic judgments are general. While we were counting the characteristics of aesthetic judgments, we focused on its individuality. But when we evaluated it in general, it turned out that aesthetic judgments are compulsory and general judgments based on the principle of supra-individual common aesthetic feeling. This is an ideal situation. What a person finds beautiful, wants everyone to find it beautiful and like it. But when we evaluate people from different cultures, different ages, and different educational levels, we see that their aesthetic judgments are more individual.
The generality of aesthetic judgments, It is a subjective generality. Paintings, sculptures, buildings that have become classics in the history of art; If there are works that are found valuable all over the world in fields such as literature and music, this shows that there are general aesthetic judgments.
Aesthetic judgments are relative. On the one hand, we accepted aesthetic judgments as individual and arbitrary, and on the other hand, we described them as supra-individual, compulsory and generally accepted judgments. Two seemingly irreconcilable ideas seem to have been expressed here (antonimia). However, if we pay attention to the relative validity in the world of aesthetic judgments, the contrasting ideas above take their place with their own dimensions. Since today’s human culture is based on a historical culture developed around different centers, different cultures live in different parts of the world. Aesthetic tastes evaluating human beauty also vary from culture to culture, that is, they are relative. In addition, since education within a culture also changes people’s tastes, aesthetic judgments of people at different education levels will be different from each other. And lastly, since there are differences in psychological structure among people with the same education level within the same culture, this will strengthen the relativity of aesthetic judgments. A common way of measuring external beauty is put forward in ceremonies such as the common decision or general opinion of the society. However, measuring inner beauty is a more difficult subject, although beauty contests often claim to take this into account.
1932 Miss Turkey and the World Keriman Halis Ece
2002 Miss Turkey and the World Azra Akin
Aesthetic judgments are intellectual . Contrary to the previously mentioned features of aesthetic judgment, this idea belongs to L. Wittgenstein. According to him, the basis of aesthetic judgment is not emotional, but knowledge and intellectuality. Experts in the subject give the aesthetic judgment and adapt it to other people.
A work of art is the work of the artists who made them and those who find them valuable, receive, protect, watch, It emerges with the joint efforts of those who listen and read. One of the most discussed issues in aesthetics is whether there are common aesthetic judgments among people. Ideas in this area also fall into two opposing groups:
a) Those who claim that there are no common aesthetic judgments:
The common expression “colors and tastes are indisputable” in Turkish has long been the mainstay of those who argue that there can be no common aesthetic judgments. According to them, everyone has a taste and a taste. Some like violet, some like orchid; some like to have a holiday by the sea, some in the highlands; some like folk music, some like classical western music; some like Picasso, some like Raphael … that is, everyone has a taste and a taste, and its correctness and falsity cannot be disputed. Everyone’s taste and taste is right and right in their own way. you can say “what does he find in it” but you can’t ask the reason for his pleasure
Philosophically, we can say that aesthetic judgments and even moral and logical judgments are not common and can be discussed. Our knowledge depends on our sensations; then, the information that everyone creates with their own senses and the judgments they give are correct. No one can argue that their own sensations will give more accurate information. Some personal likings depend on their inclinations and personal characteristics and cannot be discussed. But beauty, which is the basis of aesthetic judgments, is not so personal. These aesthetic provisions, which are given according to the common aesthetic pleasures of everyone, can be discussed. However, it is observed that there are contradictory aesthetic judgments in various periods of history, in various societies and even between different groups in the same society. The reason for this is that aesthetic judgment is cultural and personal. All factors affecting the culture and the person also affect the aesthetic judgment. There may be different aesthetic judgments in different historical periods of a society. In the same time period, different religious, national, local and class communities may have different aesthetic values. In a community, young and old, educated and uneducated, may have different tastes. Moreover, the main psychological characteristics of people such as character and temperament, and any factors that affect their psychological state at any time can also be effective on aesthetic judgments.
b) Those who accept the existence of common aesthetic judgments:
While the characteristics of aesthetic judgment were described earlier, it was mentioned that these judgments show a generality and necessity, albeit subjectively. If some faces are liked by everyone, it means that they have high aesthetic values that everyone accepts. I. Kant can say that some judgments based on sensual taste are completely limited and short-lived personal judgments, but real aesthetic judgments cease to be sensual and go to the intellectual level, become necessary and generally valid from being personal.
In some views, it is emphasized that aesthetic judgments are common and unchangeable, by putting people’s tastes away from what they like and completely connecting them to expertise. In other words, emotionality is removed from the basis of aesthetic judgments, intellectuality and knowledge are placed.
In terms of aesthetic judgment, we can put the Italian esthetician Benedetto Croce in the group of those who accept that there are common aesthetic judgments. He divides his ideas on this into three.
