To What Does the Word ‘Beauty’ Refer?
To What Does the Word ‘Beauty’ Refer?

Summary/Abstract: Beauty is a particular kind of aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experience can be divided into various categories according to the kind of aesthetic property (beautiful, sublime, elegant, cool, profound, etc.)that is attributed to the object. The phenomenal bases of these different properties are the objectivequalities shared by the objects to which the category is attributed. That is, objects that are, forexample, perceived as sublime can be shown to have certain objective qualities in common. This holdstrue of all nameable aesthetic properties except for beauty. Even within the same class of objects, thereare no discoverable common objective qualities that are necessarily present in every attribution ofbeauty. This lack of content to beauty has led to the word being used informally as a blanket term foraesthetic value. However, where this use has entered aesthetics (as the philosophy of art), obfuscationhas resulted. |Beauty is a particular kind of aesthetic experience. Aesthetic experience can be divided into various categories according to the kind of aesthetic property (beautiful, sublime, elegant, cool, profound, etc.) that is attributed to the object. The phenomenal bases of these different properties are the objective qualities shared by the objects to which the category is attributed. That is, objects that are, for example, perceived as sublime can be shown to have certain objective qualities in common. This holds true of all nameable aesthetic properties except for beauty. Even within the same class of objects, there are no discoverable common objective qualities that are necessarily present in every attribution of beauty. This lack of content to beauty has led to the word being used informally as a blanket term for aesthetic value. However, where this use has entered aesthetics (as the philosophy of art), obfuscation has resulted.

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