It was an eventuality of the Socratic era that philosophers set out to define the concept of beauty – which became the cornerstone for the field of aesthetics. The seemingly straightforward question ‘What is beauty?’ opened a realm of endless definitions in order to seek an absolute answer. However, similar to how it’s easier to define standalone occurrences of virtue, it’s also easier to recognize individual occurrences of beauty rather than an explanation for the abstract notion itself.
In ancient Greece, certain qualities were widely accepted as characteristics of beauty and high aesthetic quality – symmetry, proportion, harmony, and balance. This can be seen represented in Pythagoras’ analysis of music and harmony, Aristotle’s ideation of the Golden Mean, and many other subjects of interest and mathematical relevance. Parallel to other philosophical fields, the field of aesthetics led to a series of other questions: Are the criteria for beauty universal? Is it mere perception? Is beauty the opinion of the onlooker or is there something inherent that makes things beautiful? Another key area of scrutiny was how different the beauty in nature and the beauty in man-made works of art is, and whether beauty is yet another one of the biases found in human reasoning.
