Greco-Roman tradition mentions
Helen of Troy (left) as the most beautiful woman.The classical Greek noun that best translates to 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 bore an erotic connotation. The
Koine Greek word for beautiful 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". 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.
Ancient Greek architecture is based on this view of symmetry and
proportion.
Pre-Socratic 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 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. They saw a strong connection between
mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the
golden ratio seemed more attractive.
Classical period The
classical concept of beauty is one that exhibits perfect proportion (Wolfflin). In this context, the concept belonged often within the discipline of mathematics. The writing of
Xenophon shows a conversation between
Socrates and
Aristippus. Socrates discerned differences in 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. Beauty is a subject of
Plato in his work
Symposium. In 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 the final state,
auto to kalon and truth are united as one. The work toward the end provides a description of beauty in a negative sense. and identifies Alcibiades as beautiful in
Parmenides. He considered beauty to be 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 (cf.
seducing), and, promotes an
intellectual
renunciation (cf.
denouncing) of desire. For
Alexander Nehamas, it is only the locating of desire to which the sense of beauty exists, in the considerations of Plato.
Aristotle defines beauty in
Metaphysics as having order, symmetry and definiteness
which the mathematical sciences exhibit to a special degree.
Roman In
De Natura Deorum,
Cicero wrote: "the splendour and beauty of creation", in respect to this, and all the facets of reality resulting from creation, he postulated these to be a reason to see
the existence of a God as creator.
Western Middle Ages 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 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 a great good, God dispenses it even to the wicked."
Renaissance 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 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 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 goddess
Venus (
Aphrodite) is the classical personification of beauty. The
Age of Reason saw 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 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 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 the human body. The concept of the sublime, as explicated by Burke and
Kant, suggested viewing Gothic art and architecture, though not in accordance with 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 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 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 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 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.
Chinese philosophy Chinese philosophy has traditionally not made a separate discipline of the philosophy of beauty.
Confucius identified beauty with goodness, and considered 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." ==Human attributes==