The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is a basic idea of philosophy , particularly epistemology and metaphysics . Various understandings of this distinction have evolved through the work of countless philosophers over centuries. One basic distinction is:
91-413: Beautiful , an adjective used to describe things as possessing beauty , may refer to: Beauty Beauty is commonly described as a feature of objects that makes them pleasurable to perceive. Such objects include landscapes, sunsets, humans and works of art. Beauty, art and taste are the main subjects of aesthetics , one of the fields of study within philosophy . As a positive aesthetic value, it
182-566: A "classical beauty" or said to possess a "classical beauty", whilst the foundations laid by Greek and Roman artists have also supplied the standard for male beauty and female beauty in western civilization as seen, for example, in the Winged Victory of Samothrace . During the Gothic era, the classical aesthetical canon of beauty was rejected as sinful. Later, Renaissance and Humanist thinkers rejected this view, and considered beauty to be
273-453: A condition of his idealist philosophy concerned with universal truth. In Plato's Republic , Socrates opposes the sophist Thrasymachus's relativistic account of justice, and argues that justice is mathematical in its conceptual structure, and that ethics was therefore a precise and objective enterprise with impartial standards for truth and correctness, like geometry. The rigorous mathematical treatment Plato gave to moral concepts set
364-482: A criticism of subjectivism is that it is difficult to distinguish between knowledge, opinions, and subjective knowledge. Platonic idealism is a form of metaphysical objectivism, holding that the ideas exist independently from the individual. Berkeley's empirical idealism, on the other hand, holds that things only exist as they are perceived . Both approaches boast an attempt at objectivity. Plato's definition of objectivity can be found in his epistemology , which
455-446: A fact that may subconsciously condition males choosing mates. In 2008, other commentators have suggested that this preference may not be universal. For instance, in some non-Western cultures in which women have to do work such as finding food, men tend to have preferences for higher waist-hip ratios. Exposure to the thin ideal in mass media, such as fashion magazines, directly correlates with body dissatisfaction, low self-esteem, and
546-417: A general definition of beauty and several authors take the opposite claim that such laws cannot be formulated, as part of their definition of beauty. A very common element in many conceptions of beauty is its relation to pleasure . Hedonism makes this relation part of the definition of beauty by holding that there is a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful
637-519: A great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked." Classical philosophy and sculptures of men and women produced according to the Greek philosophers ' tenets of ideal human beauty were rediscovered in Renaissance Europe, leading to a re-adoption of what became known as a "classical ideal". In terms of female human beauty, a woman whose appearance conforms to these tenets is still called
728-494: A harmonious interplay between the faculties of understanding and imagination. A further question for hedonists is how to explain the relation between beauty and pleasure. This problem is akin to the Euthyphro dilemma : is something beautiful because we enjoy it or do we enjoy it because it is beautiful? Identity theorists solve this problem by denying that there is a difference between beauty and pleasure: they identify beauty, or
819-423: A loving attitude toward them or of their function. Beauty, together with art and taste, is the main subject of aesthetics , one of the major branches of philosophy. Beauty is usually categorized as an aesthetic property besides other properties, like grace, elegance or the sublime . As a positive aesthetic value, beauty is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. Beauty is often listed as one of
910-614: A plurality of indescribable forms. Objectivity requires a definition of truth formed by propositions with truth value . An attempt of forming an objective construct incorporates ontological commitments to the reality of objects. The importance of perception in evaluating and understanding objective reality is debated in the observer effect of quantum mechanics. Direct or naïve realists rely on perception as key in observing objective reality, while instrumentalists hold that observations are useful in predicting objective reality. The concepts that encompass these ideas are important in
1001-552: A process akin to a category mistake , one treats one's subjective pleasure as an objective property of the beautiful thing. Other conceptions include defining beauty in terms of a loving or longing attitude toward the beautiful object or in terms of its usefulness or function. In 1871, functionalist Charles Darwin explained beauty as result of accumulative sexual selection in "The Descent of Man and Selection in Relation to Sex". The classical Greek noun that best translates to
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#17327661430811092-528: A rise in an interest in beauty as a philosophical subject. For example, Scottish philosopher Francis Hutcheson argued that beauty is " unity in variety and variety in unity". He wrote that beauty was neither purely subjective nor purely objective—it could be understood not as "any Quality suppos'd to be in the Object, which should of itself be beautiful, without relation to any Mind which perceives it: For Beauty, like other Names of sensible Ideas, properly denotes
1183-424: A thing designed according to some principle and fitted for a purpose. He distinguished "free beauty" from "merely adherent beauty", explaining that "the first presupposes no concept of what the object ought to be; the second does presuppose such a concept and the perfection of the object in accordance therewith." By this definition, free beauty is found in seashells and wordless music; adherent beauty in buildings and
1274-431: A thing in itself. The ascent of love begins with one's own body, then secondarily, in appreciating beauty in another's body, thirdly beauty in the soul, which cognates to beauty in the mind in the modern sense, fourthly beauty in institutions, laws and activities, fifthly beauty in knowledge, the sciences, and finally to lastly love beauty itself, which translates to the original Greek language term as auto to kalon . In
1365-453: A virtuous personality to be the greatest of beauties: In his philosophy, "a neighborhood with a ren man in it is a beautiful neighborhood." Confucius's student Zeng Shen expressed a similar idea: "few men could see the beauty in some one whom they dislike." Mencius considered "complete truthfulness" to be beauty. Zhu Xi said: "When one has strenuously implemented goodness until it is filled to completion and has accumulated truth, then
1456-430: A wide range of different standards for beauty. A strong indicator of physical beauty is " averageness ". When images of human faces are averaged together to form a composite image, they become progressively closer to the "ideal" image and are perceived as more attractive. This was first noticed in 1883, when Francis Galton overlaid photographic composite images of the faces of vegetarians and criminals to see if there
1547-407: Is a mind-independent feature of things. On this account, the beauty of a landscape is independent of who perceives it or whether it is perceived at all. Disagreements may be explained by an inability to perceive this feature, sometimes referred to as a "lack of taste". Subjectivism, on the other hand, denies the mind-independent existence of beauty. Influential for the development of this position
1638-527: Is a reference to the deep embeddedness of subjectivity in the socially intertwined systems of power and meaning. "Politicality", writes Sadeq Rahimi in Meaning, Madness and Political Subjectivity , "is not an added aspect of the subject, but indeed the mode of being of the subject, that is, precisely what the subject is ." Scientific objectivity is practicing science while intentionally reducing partiality , biases, or external influences. Moral objectivity
1729-450: Is an inherently social mode that comes about through innumerable interactions within society. As much as subjectivity is a process of individuation , it is equally a process of socialization, the individual never being isolated in a self-contained environment, but endlessly engaging in interaction with the surrounding world. Culture is a living totality of the subjectivity of any given society constantly undergoing transformation. Subjectivity
1820-689: Is associated with activity in the medial orbitofrontal cortex . This approach of localizing the processing of beauty in one brain region has received criticism within the field. Philosopher and novelist Umberto Eco wrote On Beauty: A History of a Western Idea (2004) and On Ugliness (2007). The narrator of his novel The Name of the Rose follows Aquinas in declaring: "three things concur in creating beauty: first of all integrity or perfection, and for this reason, we consider ugly all incomplete things; then proper proportion or consonance; and finally clarity and light", before going on to say "the sight of
1911-570: Is based on mathematics , and his metaphysics , where knowledge of the ontological status of objects and ideas is resistant to change. In Western philosophy, the idea of subjectivity is thought to have its roots in the works of the European Enlightenment thinkers Descartes and Kant though it could also stem as far back as the Ancient Greek philosopher Aristotle 's work relating to the soul. The idea of subjectivity
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#17327661430812002-513: Is both shaped by it and shapes it in turn, but also by other things like the economy, political institutions, communities, as well as the natural world. Though the boundaries of societies and their cultures are indefinable and arbitrary, the subjectivity inherent in each one is palatable and can be recognized as distinct from others. Subjectivity is in part a particular experience or organization of reality , which includes how one views and interacts with humanity, objects, consciousness, and nature, so
2093-459: Is contrasted with ugliness as its negative counterpart. One difficulty in understanding beauty is that it has both objective and subjective aspects: it is seen as a property of things but also as depending on the emotional response of observers. Because of its subjective side, beauty is said to be "in the eye of the beholder". It has been argued that the ability on the side of the subject needed to perceive and judge beauty, sometimes referred to as
2184-569: Is difficult to give a general and detailed description of what is meant by "harmony between parts" and raises the suspicion that defining beauty through harmony results in exchanging one unclear term for another one. Some attempts have been made to dissolve this suspicion by searching for laws of beauty , like the golden ratio . 18th century philosopher Alexander Baumgarten , for example, saw laws of beauty in analogy with laws of nature and believed that they could be discovered through empirical research. As of 2003, these attempts have failed to find
2275-428: Is exemplified by Descartes deductions that move from reliance on subjectivity to somewhat of a reliance on God for objectivity. Foucault and Derrida denied the idea of subjectivity in favor of their ideas of constructs in order to account for differences in human thought. Instead of focusing on the idea of consciousness and self-consciousness shaping the way humans perceive the world, these thinkers would argue that it
2366-411: Is for it to cause pleasure or that the experience of beauty is always accompanied by pleasure. This account is sometimes labeled as "aesthetic hedonism" in order to distinguish it from other forms of hedonism . An influential articulation of this position comes from Thomas Aquinas , who treats beauty as "that which pleases in the very apprehension of it". Immanuel Kant explains this pleasure through
2457-480: Is in the context of religion . Religious beliefs can vary quite extremely from person to person, but people often think that whatever they believe is the truth. Subjectivity as seen by Descartes and Sartre was a matter of what was dependent on consciousness, so, because religious beliefs require the presence of a consciousness that can believe, they must be subjective. This is in contrast to what has been proven by pure logic or hard sciences , which does not depend on
2548-539: Is instead the world that shapes humans, so they would see religion less as a belief and more as a cultural construction. Others like Husserl and Sartre followed the phenomenological approach. This approach focused on the distinct separation of the human mind and the physical world, where the mind is subjective because it can take liberties like imagination and self-awareness where religion might be examined regardless of any kind of subjectivity. The philosophical conversation around subjectivity remains one that struggles with
2639-456: Is more or less truth-bearing and how historians can stitch together versions of it to best explain what " actually happened. " The anthropologist Michel-Rolph Trouillot developed the concepts of historicity 1 and 2 to explain the difference between the materiality of socio - historical processes (H1) and the narratives that are told about the materiality of socio-historical processes (H2). This distinction hints that H1 would be understood as
2730-458: Is no general agreement on how "ideal observers" are to be defined, but it is usually assumed that they are experienced judges of beauty with a fully developed sense of taste. This suggests an indirect way of solving the antinomy of taste : instead of looking for necessary and sufficient conditions of beauty itself, one can learn to identify the qualities of good critics and rely on their judgments. This approach only works if unanimity among experts
2821-520: Is often seen as a peripheral to other philosophical concepts, namely skepticism , individuals and individuality, and existentialism . The questions surrounding subjectivity have to do with whether or not people can escape the subjectivity of their own human existence and whether or not there is an obligation to try to do so. Important thinkers who focused on this area of study include Descartes, Locke , Kant, Hegel , Kierkegaard , Husserl , Foucault , Derrida , Nagel , and Sartre . Subjectivity
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2912-528: Is possible despite the fact that beauty is a mind-dependent property, dependent not on an individual but a group. A closely related theory sees beauty as a secondary or response-dependent property . On one such account, an object is beautiful "if it causes pleasure by virtue of its aesthetic properties". The problem that different people respond differently can be addressed by combining response-dependence theories with so-called ideal-observer theories : it only matters how an ideal observer would respond. There
3003-484: Is sometimes discussed under the label " antinomy of taste". It has prompted various philosophers to seek a unified theory that can take all these intuitions into account. One promising route to solve this problem is to move from subjective to intersubjective theories , which hold that the standards of validity of judgments of taste are intersubjective or dependent on a group of judges rather than objective. This approach tries to explain how genuine disagreement about beauty
3094-465: Is sometimes referred to as the "antinomy of taste". Adherents of both sides have suggested that a certain faculty, commonly called a sense of taste , is necessary for making reliable judgments about beauty. David Hume , for example, suggests that this faculty can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run. Beauty is mainly discussed in relation to concrete objects accessible to sensory perception. It has been suggested that
3185-480: Is true for all cases. For example, a cold jaded critic may still be a good judge of beauty because of her years of experience but lack the joy that initially accompanied her work. One way to avoid this objection is to allow responses to beautiful things to lack pleasure while insisting that all beautiful things merit pleasure, that aesthetic pleasure is the only appropriate response to them. G. E. Moore explained beauty in regard to intrinsic value as "that of which
3276-473: The Perception of some mind; ... however we generally imagine that there is something in the Object just like our Perception." Immanuel Kant believed that there could be no "universal criterion of the beautiful" and that the experience of beauty is subjective, but that an object is judged to be beautiful when it seems to display "purposiveness"; that is, when its form is perceived to have the character of
3367-579: The absence of genetic or acquired defects . Since the 1970s there has been increasing evidence that a preference for beautiful faces emerges early in infancy, and is probably innate, and that the rules by which attractiveness is established are similar across different genders and cultures. A feature of beautiful women which has been explored by researchers is a waist–hip ratio of approximately 0.70. As of 2004, physiologists had shown that women with hourglass figures were more fertile than other women because of higher levels of certain female hormones,
3458-408: The factual reality that elapses and is captured with the concept of " objective truth ", and that H2 is the collection of subjectivities that humanity has stitched together to grasp the past. Debates about positivism , relativism , and postmodernism are relevant to evaluating these concepts' importance and the distinction between them. In his book "Silencing the past", Trouillot wrote about
3549-555: The philosophy of science . Philosophies of mind explore whether objectivity relies on perceptual constancy . History as a discipline has wrestled with notions of objectivity from its very beginning. While its object of study is commonly thought to be the past , the only thing historians have to work with are different versions of stories based on individual perceptions of reality and memory . Several history streams developed to devise ways to solve this dilemma: Historians like Leopold von Ranke (19th century) have advocated for
3640-412: The "sense of taste", can be trained and that the verdicts of experts coincide in the long run. This suggests the standards of validity of judgments of beauty are intersubjective, i.e. dependent on a group of judges, rather than fully subjective or objective. Conceptions of beauty aim to capture what is essential to all beautiful things. Classical conceptions define beauty in terms of the relation between
3731-405: The 'for-itself' (i.e., an objective and subjective human being). The innermost core of subjectivity resides in a unique act of what Fichte called " self-positing ", where each subject is a point of absolute autonomy , which means that it cannot be reduced to a moment in the network of causes and effects. One way that subjectivity has been conceptualized by philosophers such as Kierkegaard
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3822-548: The English-language words "beauty" or "beautiful" was κάλλος , kallos , and the adjective was καλός, kalos . This is also translated as "good" or "of fine quality" and thus has a broader meaning than mere physical or material beauty. Similarly, kallos was used differently from the English word beauty in that it first and foremost applied to humans and bears an erotic connotation. The Koine Greek word for beautiful
3913-470: The Idea ( Form ) above all other Ideas. Platonic thought synthesized beauty with the divine . Scruton (cited: Konstan) states Plato states of the idea of beauty, of it (the idea), being something inviting desirousness (c.f seducing ), and, promotes an intellectual renunciation (c.f. denouncing ) of desire. For Alexander Nehamas , it is only the locating of desire to which the sense of beauty exists, in
4004-500: The PQD is strongly present in the object. Elaine Scarry argues that beauty is related to justice. Beauty is also studied by psychologists and neuroscientists in the field of experimental aesthetics and neuroesthetics respectively. Psychological theories see beauty as a form of pleasure . Correlational findings support the view that more beautiful objects are also more pleasing. Some studies suggest that higher experienced beauty
4095-421: The admiring contemplation is good in itself". This definition connects beauty to experience while managing to avoid some of the problems usually associated with subjectivist positions since it allows that things may be beautiful even if they are never experienced. Another subjectivist theory of beauty comes from George Santayana , who suggested that we project pleasure onto the things we call "beautiful". So in
4186-476: The appearance of it, with the experience of aesthetic pleasure. Hedonists usually restrict and specify the notion of pleasure in various ways in order to avoid obvious counterexamples. One important distinction in this context is the difference between pure and mixed pleasure . Pure pleasure excludes any form of pain or unpleasant feeling while the experience of mixed pleasure can include unpleasant elements. But beauty can involve mixed pleasure, for example, in
4277-467: The beautiful implies peace". Mike Phillips has described Umberto Eco's On Beauty as "incoherent" and criticized him for focusing only on Western European history and devoting none of his book to Eastern European, Asian, or African history. Amy Finnerty described Eco's work On Ugliness favorably. Chinese philosophy has traditionally not made a separate discipline of the philosophy of beauty. Confucius identified beauty with goodness, and considered
4368-399: The beautiful object as a whole and its parts: the parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. Hedonist conceptions see a necessary connection between pleasure and beauty, e.g. that for an object to be beautiful is for it to cause disinterested pleasure. Other conceptions include defining beautiful objects in terms of their value, of
4459-476: The beauty of a thing supervenes on the sensory features of this thing. It has also been proposed that abstract objects like stories or mathematical proofs can be beautiful. Beauty plays a central role in works of art and nature. An influential distinction among beautiful things, according to Immanuel Kant , is that between adherent beauty ( pulchritudo adhaerens ) and free beauty ( pulchritudo vaga ). A thing has adherent beauty if its beauty depends on
4550-712: The beauty will reside within it and will not depend on externals." The word "beauty" is often used as a countable noun to describe a beautiful woman. The characterization of a person as "beautiful", whether on an individual basis or by community consensus, is often based on some combination of inner beauty , which includes psychological factors such as personality , intelligence , grace , politeness , charisma , integrity , congruence and elegance , and outer beauty (i.e. physical attractiveness ) which includes physical attributes which are valued on an aesthetic basis. Standards of beauty have changed over time, based on changing cultural values. Historically, paintings show
4641-415: The case of a beautifully tragic story, which is why mixed pleasure is usually allowed in hedonist conceptions of beauty. Another problem faced by hedonist theories is that we take pleasure from many things that are not beautiful. One way to address this issue is to associate beauty with a special type of pleasure: aesthetic or disinterested pleasure . A pleasure is disinterested if it is indifferent to
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#17327661430814732-631: The classical standard of beauty, as sublime. The 20th century saw an increasing rejection of beauty by artists and philosophers alike, culminating in postmodernism 's anti-aesthetics. This is despite beauty being a central concern of one of postmodernism's main influences, Friedrich Nietzsche , who argued that the Will to Power was the Will to Beauty. In the aftermath of postmodernism's rejection of beauty, thinkers have returned to beauty as an important value. American analytic philosopher Guy Sircello proposed his New Theory of Beauty as an effort to reaffirm
4823-443: The concept belonged often within the discipline of mathematics. An idea of spiritual beauty emerged during the classical period , beauty was something embodying divine goodness, while the demonstration of behaviour which might be classified as beautiful, from an inner state of morality which is aligned to the good . The writing of Xenophon shows a conversation between Socrates and Aristippus . Socrates discerned differences in
4914-404: The conception of the beautiful, for example, in inanimate objects, the effectiveness of execution of design was a deciding factor on the perception of beauty in something. By the account of Xenophon, Socrates found beauty congruent with that to which was defined as the morally good, in short, he thought beauty coincident with the good . Beauty is a subject of Plato in his work Symposium . In
5005-427: The conception or function of this thing, unlike free or absolute beauty. Examples of adherent beauty include an ox which is beautiful as an ox but not beautiful as a horse or a photograph which is beautiful, because it depicts a beautiful building but that lacks beauty generally speaking because of its low quality. Judgments of beauty seem to occupy an intermediary position between objective judgments, e.g. concerning
5096-467: The considerations of Plato. Aristotle defines beauty in Metaphysics as having order, symmetry and definiteness which the mathematical sciences exhibit to a special degree . He saw a relationship between the beautiful ( to kalon ) and virtue, arguing that "Virtue aims at the beautiful." In De Natura Deorum , Cicero wrote: "the splendour and beauty of creation", in respect to this, and all
5187-446: The development of eating disorders among female viewers. Further, the widening gap between individual body sizes and societal ideals continues to breed anxiety among young girls as they grow, highlighting the dangerous nature of beauty standards in society. A study using Chinese immigrants and Hispanic , Black and White American citizens found that their ideals of female beauty were not significantly different. Participants in
5278-446: The difference between different cultures brings about an alternate experience of existence that forms life in a different manner. A common effect on an individual of this disjunction between subjectivities is culture shock , where the subjectivity of the other culture is considered alien and possibly incomprehensible or even hostile. Political subjectivity is an emerging concept in social sciences and humanities. Political subjectivity
5369-413: The distinction is often a given but not the specific focal point of philosophical discourse. The two words are usually regarded as opposites , though complications regarding the two have been explored in philosophy: for example, the view of particular thinkers that objectivity is an illusion and does not exist at all, or that a spectrum joins subjectivity and objectivity with a gray area in-between, or that
5460-587: The epistemological question of what is real, what is made up, and what it would mean to be separated completely from subjectivity. In opposition to philosopher René Descartes ' method of personal deduction , natural philosopher Isaac Newton applied the relatively objective scientific method to look for evidence before forming a hypothesis. Partially in response to Kant 's rationalism , logician Gottlob Frege applied objectivity to his epistemological and metaphysical philosophies. If reality exists independently of consciousness , then it would logically include
5551-470: The existence of the beautiful object or if it did not arise owing to an antecedent desire through means-end reasoning. For example, the joy of looking at a beautiful landscape would still be valuable if it turned out that this experience was an illusion, which would not be true if this joy was due to seeing the landscape as a valuable real estate opportunity. Opponents of hedonism usually concede that many experiences of beauty are pleasurable but deny that this
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#17327661430815642-513: The facets of reality resulting from creation, he postulated these to be a reason to see the existence of a God as creator . In the Middle Ages , Catholic philosophers like Thomas Aquinas included beauty among the transcendental attributes of being . In his Summa Theologica , Aquinas described the three conditions of beauty as: integritas (wholeness), consonantia (harmony and proportion), and claritas (a radiance and clarity that makes
5733-541: The final state, auto to kalon and truth are united as one. There is the sense in the text, concerning love and beauty they both co-exist but are still independent or, in other words, mutually exclusive, since love does not have beauty since it seeks beauty. The work toward the end provides a description of beauty in a negative sense. Plato also discusses beauty in his work Phaedrus , and identifies Alcibiades as beautiful in Parmenides . He considered beauty to be
5824-545: The form of a thing apparent to the mind). In the Gothic Architecture of the High and Late Middle Ages , light was considered the most beautiful revelation of God , which was heralded in design. Examples are the stained glass of Gothic Cathedrals including Notre-Dame de Paris and Chartres Cathedral . St. Augustine said of beauty "Beauty is indeed a good gift of God; but that the good may not think it
5915-523: The human body. The Romantic poets, too, became highly concerned with the nature of beauty, with John Keats arguing in Ode on a Grecian Urn that: In the Romantic period, Edmund Burke postulated a difference between beauty in its classical meaning and the sublime . The concept of the sublime, as explicated by Burke and Kant , suggested viewing Gothic art and architecture, though not in accordance with
6006-427: The making of history (the retrospective construction of what The Past is). Because history ( official , public , familial , personal) informs current perceptions and how we make sense of the present , whose voice gets to be included in it –and how– has direct consequences in material socio-historical processes. Thinking of current historical narratives as impartial depictions of the totality of events unfolded in
6097-438: The mass and shape of a grapefruit, and subjective likes, e.g. concerning whether the grapefruit tastes good. Judgments of beauty differ from the former because they are based on subjective feelings rather than objective perception. But they also differ from the latter because they lay claim on universal correctness. This tension is also reflected in common language. On the one hand, we talk about beauty as an objective feature of
6188-475: The parts should stand in the right proportion to each other and thus compose an integrated harmonious whole. On this account, which found its most explicit articulation in the Italian Renaissance , the beauty of a human body, for example, depends, among other things, on the right proportion of the different parts of the body and on the overall symmetry. One problem with this conception is that it
6279-434: The past were shaped–, and putting it on the voices of ordinary people. Postcolonial streams of history challenge the colonial-postcolonial dichotomy and critique Eurocentric academia practices, such as the demand for historians from colonized regions to anchor their local narratives to events happening in the territories of their colonizers to earn credibility . All the streams explained above try to uncover whose voice
6370-441: The past by labeling them as "objective" risks sealing historical understanding. Acknowledging that history is never objective and always incomplete has a meaningful opportunity to support social justice efforts. Under said notion, voices that have been silenced are placed on an equal footing to the grand and popular narratives of the world, appreciated for their unique insight of reality through their subjective lens. Subjectivity
6461-404: The perception of people, and is therefore considered objective. Subjectivity is what relies on personal perception regardless of what is proven or objective. Many philosophical arguments within this area of study have to do with moving from subjective thoughts to objective thoughts with many different methods employed to get from one to the other along with a variety of conclusions reached. This
6552-550: The power dynamics at play in history-making, outlining four possible moments in which historical silences can be created: (1) making of sources (who gets to know how to write, or to have possessions that are later examined as historical evidence ), (2) making of archives (what documents are deemed important to save and which are not, how to classify materials, and how to order them within physical or digital archives), (3) making of narratives (which accounts of history are consulted, which voices are given credibility ), and (4)
6643-407: The presence of beauty in universal terms, which is, as existing in a cosmological state, they observed beauty in the heavens . They saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive. The classical concept of beauty is one that exhibits perfect proportion (Wolfflin). In this context,
6734-416: The problem of other minds is best viewed through the concept of intersubjectivity , developing since the 20th century. The distinction between subjectivity and objectivity is often related to discussions of consciousness , agency , personhood , philosophy of mind , philosophy of language , reality , truth , and communication (for example in narrative communication and journalism ). The root of
6825-432: The product of rational order and harmonious proportions. Renaissance artists and architects (such as Giorgio Vasari in his "Lives of Artists") criticised the Gothic period as irrational and barbarian. This point of view of Gothic art lasted until Romanticism, in the 19th century. Vasari aligned himself to the classical notion and thought of beauty as defined as arising from proportion and order. The Age of Reason saw
6916-419: The same object may produce very different ideas in distinct observers. The notion of "taste" can still be used to explain why different people disagree about what is beautiful, but there is no objectively right or wrong taste, there are just different tastes. The problem with both the objectivist and the subjectivist position in their extreme form is that each has to deny some intuitions about beauty. This issue
7007-437: The status of beauty as an important philosophical concept. He rejected the subjectivism of Kant and sought to identify the properties inherent in an object that make it beautiful. He called qualities such as vividness, boldness, and subtlety "properties of qualitative degree" (PQDs) and stated that a PQD makes an object beautiful if it is not—and does not create the appearance of—"a property of deficiency, lack, or defect"; and if
7098-480: The study rated Asian and Latina women as more attractive than White and Black women , and it was found that Asian and Latina women had more of the attributes that were considered attractive for women. Exposure to Western media did not influence or improve the Asian men's ratings of White women. Objectivity (philosophy) Both ideas have been given various and ambiguous definitions by differing sources as
7189-417: The three fundamental concepts of human understanding besides truth and goodness . Objectivists or realists see beauty as an objective or mind-independent feature of beautiful things, which is denied by subjectivists . The source of this debate is that judgments of beauty seem to be based on subjective grounds, namely our feelings, while claiming universal correctness at the same time. This tension
7280-546: The tone for the western tradition of moral objectivism that came after him. His contrasting between objectivity and opinion became the basis for philosophies intent on resolving the questions of reality , truth , and existence . He saw opinions as belonging to the shifting sphere of sensibilities , as opposed to a fixed, eternal and knowable incorporeality . Where Plato distinguished between how we know things and their ontological status, subjectivism such as George Berkeley 's depends on perception . In Platonic terms,
7371-548: The use of extensive evidence –especially archived physical paper documents– to recover the bygone past, claiming that, as opposed to people's memories, objects remain stable in what they say about the era they witnessed, and therefore represent a better insight into objective reality . In the 20th century, the Annales School emphasized the importance of shifting focus away from the perspectives of influential men –usually politicians around whose actions narratives of
7462-499: The words subjectivity and objectivity are subject and object , philosophical terms that mean, respectively, an observer and a thing being observed. The word subjectivity comes from subject in a philosophical sense, meaning an individual who possesses unique conscious experiences, such as perspectives, feelings, beliefs, and desires, or who (consciously) acts upon or wields power over some other entity (an object ). Aristotle's teacher Plato considered geometry to be
7553-400: The work, the high priestess Diotima describes how beauty moves out from a core singular appreciation of the body to outer appreciations via loved ones, to the world in its state of culture and society (Wright). In other words, Diotoma gives to Socrates an explanation of how love should begin with erotic attachment , and end with the transcending of the physical to an appreciation of beauty as
7644-430: The works of early Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras , who conceived of beauty as useful for a moral education of the soul. He wrote of how people experience pleasure when aware of a certain type of formal situation present in reality, perceivable by sight or through the ear and discovered the underlying mathematical ratios in the harmonic scales in music. The Pythagoreans conceived of
7735-423: The world that is ascribed, for example, to landscapes, paintings or humans. The subjective side, on the other hand, is expressed in sayings like "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". These two positions are often referred to as objectivism (or realism ) and subjectivism . Objectivism is the traditional view, while subjectivism developed more recently in western philosophy . Objectivists hold that beauty
7826-550: Was pulchrum ( Latin ). Beauty for ancient thinkers existed both in form , which is the material world as it is, and as embodied in the spirit, which is the world of mental formations. Greek mythology mentions Helen of Troy as the most beautiful woman. Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and proportion . In one fragment of Heraclitus's writings ( Fragment 106 ) he mentions beauty, this reads: "To God all things are beautiful, good, right..." The earliest Western theory of beauty can be found in
7917-423: Was John Locke 's distinction between primary qualities , which the object has independent of the observer, and secondary qualities , which constitute powers in the object to produce certain ideas in the observer. When applied to beauty, there is still a sense in which it depends on the object and its powers. But this account makes the possibility of genuine disagreements about claims of beauty implausible, since
8008-534: Was a typical facial appearance for each. When doing this, he noticed that the composite images were more attractive as compared to any of the individual images. Researchers have replicated the result under more controlled conditions and found that the computer-generated, mathematical average of a series of faces is rated more favorably than individual faces. It is argued that it is evolutionarily advantageous that sexual creatures are attracted to mates who possess predominantly common or average features, because it suggests
8099-419: Was ensured. But even experienced judges may disagree in their judgments, which threatens to undermine ideal-observer theories. Various conceptions of the essential features of beautiful things have been proposed but there is no consensus as to which is the right one. The "classical conception" (see Classicism ) defines beauty in terms of the relation between the beautiful object as a whole and its parts :
8190-416: Was rejected by Foucault and Derrida in favor of constructionism , but Sartre embraced and continued Descartes' work in the subject by emphasizing subjectivity in phenomenology . Sartre believed that, even within the material force of human society, the ego was an essentially transcendent being—posited, for instance, in his opus Being and Nothingness through his arguments about the 'being-for-others' and
8281-493: Was ὡραῖος, hōraios , an adjective etymologically coming from the word ὥρα, hōra , meaning "hour". In Koine Greek, beauty was thus associated with "being of one's hour". Thus, a ripe fruit (of its time) was considered beautiful, whereas a young woman trying to appear older or an older woman trying to appear younger would not be considered beautiful. In Attic Greek, hōraios had many meanings, including "youthful" and "ripe old age". Another classical term in use to describe beauty
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