what is aesthetics in philosophy

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, as well as the philosophy of art. It examines aesthetic values, often expressed through judgments of taste, and considers what happens in our minds when we engage with objects or environments such as viewing visual art, listening to music, reading poetry, experiencing a play, watching a fashion show, movie, sports or even exploring various aspects of nature. Aesthetics covers both natural and artificial sources of experiences and how we form a judgment about those sources. The traditional interest in beauty itself broadened, in the eighteenth century, to include the sublime, and since 1950 or so the number of pure aesthetic concepts discussed in the literature has expanded even more. Philosophical aesthetics is considered to center on these latter-day developments. The full field of what might be called “aesthetics” is a very large one, and there is even now a four-volume encyclopedia devoted to the full range of possible topics. However, the core issues in Philosophical Aesthetics are nowadays fairly settled. Aesthetics is a discipline worthy of study because it examines and seeks to explain the myriad of experiences that make up a large part of the human experience, in which we respond to something on a personal, subjective level, and yet seek to universalize it on an objective level.