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Beauty

DOI
10.4324/9780415249126-M014-2
Versions
Published
2011
DOI: 10.4324/9780415249126-M014-2
Version: v2,  Published online: 2011
Retrieved March 29, 2024, from https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/beauty/v-2

1. Areas of general agreement about beauty

Almost all theorists concerned with the concept of beauty accept the following propositions. The reflective use of terms of beauty standardly expresses not a mere effusion but a favourable aesthetic judgement of a thing as a whole or in part. The commendation is normally associated with the capacity of the thing to yield pleasure, and presupposes a basis of beauty-making properties, on which beauty is said to supervene. The commendation is relative to (a) a threshold which varies widely with speakers, below which lie grades of lesser aesthetic value without a determinable minimum and above which rise grades of eminence also without a fixed limit, and (b) a comparison-class, which in different contexts ranges from the highly restricted (‘a beautiful daisy’) to the virtually universal (‘a beautiful thing’), or a grade of competition (‘a beautiful drawing for a beginner’). It seems we need go only a small step beyond these truisms to conclude that all normative disagreements about beauty reduce to differences of comparative rankings (more, less, or equally beautiful or unbeautiful) and that differences regarding threshold or terminology have no theoretical importance. Beyond these elements of the ‘logic’ of beauty, there is scant agreement.

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Citing this article:
Brown, John H.. Areas of general agreement about beauty. Beauty, 2011, doi:10.4324/9780415249126-M014-2. Routledge Encyclopedia of Philosophy, Taylor and Francis, https://www.rep.routledge.com/articles/thematic/beauty/v-2/sections/areas-of-general-agreement-about-beauty.
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