What is the difference between the aesthetic and philosophy? (300 words)
Currently, the word aesthetic has been popularly used in different social media
platforms like in tiktok, facebook, instagram, and twitter. Teens discovered the word
“aesthetic”, took it out of context, and run away with it. As I have observed, many are
using this philosophical term without an understanding of its technical meaning. Most of
those I have seen online frequently use this term to refer to a style that they think is cool
or artistic. For example, gothic, cottagecore, grunge, etc., which are only styles in
clothing and idealized lifestyle of ‘cool’ kids on the internet. They think aesthetic is just
all that. However, aesthetic is a lot more complicated than those fashion styles that
most social media users make as their whole personality.
Aesthetic is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty and art.
But aesthetic is broader in scope than the philosophy of art which is the study of the
nature of the art. This includes concepts such as interpretation, representation and
expression, and form. Now, what is the difference between the two? Aesthetic focuses
more on topics such as aesthetic objects, aesthetic judgements, and aesthetic
experience. Aesthetic experiences are those that ground aesthetic judgement which is
our judgement of an object with a disinterested attitude and with no personal biases.
Aesthetic examines things such as what is beautiful? What makes aesthetics valuable
or beautiful? Who determines the meaning of an artwork, the artist or the audience?
And other questions like that. According to philosophybasics.com, aesthetic, in general
terms, studies what makes something beautiful, sublime, disgusting, fun, cute, silly,
entertaining, pretentious, discordant, harmonious, boring, humorous or tragic. On the
other hand, philosophy of art exists because art is too complex that aesthetic cannot
handle the concept of it. Although some, including me, are still confuse about the
difference between the two since most Aesthetics encompasses both questions around
beauty as well as questions around art. But as far as I can comprehend, we can say
that all arts can be considered as aesthetic but not all aesthetics can be considered as
art. For example, we always use aesthetic terms to describe God’s creation, like when
we refer to the sunset as “beautiful” no matter its color, no matter if the sky is covered of
shades of red and orange or with a tint of purple and pink. It is always beautiful in our
eyes eventhough we don’t actually consider it as a literal work of art. It is aesthetic
because it has an absolute beauty but it’s not an art because it doesn’t have artistic
properties that are relevant to artworks like facts about the context of creation, who the
artist was, when they made the work, what their intentions for the work were, etc.
In conclusion, according to Brock Rough, philosopher at the University of
Maryland, the study of aesthetics is the study of the felt quality of perceptions of the
senses, while the study of art is the study of the historical practice of making art objects.
So basically, aesthetic focuses on the value theory while philosophy of art focuses on a
wide array of philosophical topics.