The Analysis of Beauty is a book written by the 18th-century artist and writer William Hogarth, published in 1753, which describes Hogarth's theories of visual beauty and grace in a manner accessible to the common man of his day.
The Analysis of Beauty is a book written by the 18th-century artist and writer William Hogarth, published in 1753, which describes Hogarth's theories of visual beauty and grace in a manner accessible to the common man of his day.
Prominent among Hogarth's ideas of beauty was the theory of the Line of Beauty; an S-shaped (serpentine) curved line that excited the attention of the viewer and evoked liveliness and movement. The Analysis of Beauty formed the intellectual centerpiece of what the historian Ernst Gombrich described as Hogarth's "grim campaign against the fashionable taste", [1] which Hogarth himself described as his "War with the Connoisseurs". [2]
In The Analysis of Beauty Hogarth implements six principles that independently affect beauty. Although he concurs that those principles have an effect, he is not determinate on their specific influence. The first principle of beauty Hogarth describes is fitness, which is not in itself a source of beauty, but can be described as a material cause of it. Though the account of fitness on the total beauty of an object is only moderate, it is a necessary cause. Fitness does not necessarily imply purpose. However, improperly implied forms cannot be the source of beauty. It is in this that the necessity of fitness must be seen: if not accounted for, a form cannot readily be assumed beautiful.
The second major principle of beauty is variety. It is the source of beauty, which Hogarth shows us by the contrary notion of "sameness": "sameness", a lack of variety, offends the senses. "The ear is as much offended with one even continued note, as the eye is with being fix'd to a point, or to the view of a dead wall." [3] In contrast, our senses find relief in discovering a certain amount of "sameness" within a varietal experience.
The third notion of regularity is understood as a form of "composed variety": it only pleases us when it is suggestive to fitness. Similar to this notion in effect is simplicity, which enhances the pleasure of variety in that it pleases the eye. The variety which causes a beautiful experience should, so to speak, be tempered by simplicity. On the other hand: simplicity without variety at best does only not displease.
Intricacy is a strange principle in that it does not directly follow from the formal behaviour of a beautiful object. Hogarth means by this the habit which causes us to end up in the whirling game of pursuit, when bit by bit discovering the beauty of an object. Intricacy arises from the love of this pursuit. Every difficulty in understanding or grasping the object enhances the pleasure of overcoming it, to continue the pursuit. There is a direct connection here to the Line of Beauty Hogarth dictates, along which every image is built up. Though the movement of our eye is discrete in itself, the movement of our "Mind's eye" follows a duplicate course of the line, a principal ray of light moving along with the line of sight. The continuous movement of our "Mind's eye" triggers the notion of intricacy.
Quantity, finally, is associated with the notion of the sublime, which, when Hogarth's book appeared, was not yet entirely distinguished from the apprehension of beauty. Hogarth thus does not speak of sublimity, but of greatness. He recognises a great quantity to have an aesthetic effect on the beholder without the necessity of a varietal or fitting form. This should not be exaggerated, as that might lead to absurdities.
Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art. It examines aesthetic values, often expressed through judgments of taste.
Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes these objects pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics, one of the major branches of philosophy. As a positive aesthetic value, it is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart.
Pratītyasamutpāda, commonly translated as dependent origination, or dependent arising, is a key doctrine in Buddhism shared by all schools of Buddhism. It states that all dharmas (phenomena) arise in dependence upon other dharmas: "if this exists, that exists; if this ceases to exist, that also ceases to exist". The basic principle is that all things arise in dependence upon other things.
"Form of the Good", or more literally "the idea of the good" is a concept in the philosophy of Plato. The definition of the Good is a perfect, eternal, and changeless Form, existing outside space and time. It is a Platonic ideal.
RichardPayne Knight of Downton Castle in Herefordshire, and of 5 Soho Square, London, England, was a classical scholar, connoisseur, archaeologist and numismatist best known for his theories of picturesque beauty and for his interest in ancient phallic imagery. He served as a Member of Parliament for Leominster (1780–84) and for Ludlow (1784–1806).
The Critique of Judgment, also translated as the Critique of the Power of Judgment, is a 1790 book by the German philosopher Immanuel Kant. Sometimes referred to as the "third critique," the Critique of Judgment follows the Critique of Pure Reason (1781) and the Critique of Practical Reason (1788).
In aesthetics, the sublime is the quality of greatness, whether physical, moral, intellectual, metaphysical, aesthetic, spiritual, or artistic. The term especially refers to a greatness beyond all possibility of calculation, measurement, or imitation.
Philosophical realism is usually not treated as a position of its own but as a stance towards other subject matters. Realism about a certain kind of thing is the thesis that this kind of thing has mind-independent existence, i.e. that it is not just a mere appearance in the eye of the beholder. This includes a number of positions within epistemology and metaphysics which express that a given thing instead exists independently of knowledge, thought, or understanding. This can apply to items such as the physical world, the past and future, other minds, and the self, though may also apply less directly to things such as universals, mathematical truths, moral truths, and thought itself. However, realism may also include various positions which instead reject metaphysical treatments of reality entirely.
Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and Sublime is a 1764 book by Immanuel Kant.
A Philosophical Enquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful is a 1757 treatise on aesthetics written by Edmund Burke. It was the first complete philosophical exposition for separating the beautiful and the sublime into their own respective rational categories. It attracted the attention of prominent thinkers such as Denis Diderot and Immanuel Kant.
Japanese aesthetics comprise a set of ancient ideals that include wabi, sabi, and yūgen. These ideals, and others, underpin much of Japanese cultural and aesthetic norms on what is considered tasteful or beautiful. Thus, while seen as a philosophy in Western societies, the concept of aesthetics in Japan is seen as an integral part of daily life. Japanese aesthetics now encompass a variety of ideals; some of these are traditional while others are modern and sometimes influenced by other cultures.
This is a history of aesthetics.
In visual perception, the kinetic depth effect refers to the phenomenon whereby the three-dimensional structural form of an object can be perceived when the object is moving. In the absence of other visual depth cues, this might be the only perception mechanism available to infer the object's shape. Being able to identify a structure from a motion stimulus through the human visual system was shown by Wallach and O'Connell in the 1950s through their experiments.
Line of beauty is a term and a theory in art or aesthetics used to describe an S-shaped curved line appearing within an object, as the boundary line of an object, or as a virtual boundary line formed by the composition of several objects. This theory originated with William Hogarth, and is an essential part of Hogarth's theory of aesthetics as described in his 1753 book Analysis of Beauty. According to this theory, S-shaped curved lines signify liveliness and activity and excite the attention of the viewer as contrasted with straight lines, parallel lines, or right-angled intersecting lines, which signify stasis, death, or inanimate objects.
The argument from beauty is an argument for the existence of a realm of immaterial ideas or, most commonly, for the existence of God, that roughly states that the elegance of the laws of physics or the elegant laws of mathematics is evidence of a creator deity who has arranged these things to be beautiful and not ugly.
Columbus Breaking the Egg is a 1752 engraving by English artist William Hogarth. Issued as the subscription ticket for his treatise on art, The Analysis of Beauty, it depicts an apocryphal tale concerning Christopher Columbus's response to detractors of his discovery of the New World. Hogarth uses the story as a parallel to what he considered his own discoveries in art.
Applied aesthetics is the application of the branch of philosophy of aesthetics to cultural constructs. In a variety of fields, artifacts are created that have both practical functionality and aesthetic affectation. In some cases, aesthetics is primary, and in others, functionality is primary. At best, the two needs are synergistic, in which "beauty" makes an artifact work better, or in which more functional artifacts are appreciated as aesthetically pleasing. This achievement of form and function, of art and science, of beauty and usefulness, is the primary goal of design, in all of its domains.
William James Desmond is an Irish philosopher who has written on ontology, metaphysics, ethics, and religion.
The Sense of Beauty is a book on aesthetics by the philosopher George Santayana. The book was published in 1896 by Charles Scribner's Sons, and is based on the lectures Santayana gave on aesthetics while teaching at Harvard University. Santayana published the book out of necessity, for tenure, rather than inspiration. In an anecdote retold by art critic Arthur Danto of a meeting with Santayana in 1950, Santayana was reported to have said that "they let me know through the ladies that I had better publish a book... on art, of course. So I wrote this wretched potboiler."
Aesthetics of nature is a sub-field of philosophical ethics, and refers to the study of natural objects from their aesthetical perspective.