Aesthetics is broader in scope than the philosophy of art,
which comprises one of its branches, It deals not only with the nature and value
of the arts but also with those responses to natural objects that find
expression in the language of the beautiful and the ugly. 61)A problem is
encountered at the outset, however, for terms such as beautiful and ugly seem
too vague in their application and too subjective in their meaning to divide the
world successfully into those things that do, end those that do not, exemplify
them. Almost anything might be seen as beautiful by someone or from some
point of view; and different people apply the word to quite disparate objects
for reasons that often seem to have little or nothing in common. It may be that
there is some single underlying belief that motivates all of their judgments.
62)It may also be, however, that the term beautiful has no sense except as
the expression of an attitude, which is in turn attached by different people to
quite different states of affairs. 63)Moreover, in spite
of the emphasis laid by philosophers on the terms beautiful and ugly, it is far
from evident that they are the most important or most useful either in the
discussion and criticism of art or in the description of that which appeals to
us in nature To convey what is significant in a poem we might use such terms
as ironical, moving, expressive, balanced, and harmonious. Likewise, in
describing a favorite stretch of countryside, we may find more use for peaceful,
soft, atmospheric, harsh, and evocative, than for beautiful. 64)The least
that should be said is that beautiful belongs to a class of terms from which it
has been chosen as much for convenience’s sake as for any sense that it captures
what is distinctive of the class. At the same time, there
seems to Be no clear way of delimiting the class in question — not at least in
advance of theory. 65)Aesthetics must therefore cast its net more widely than
the study either of beauty or of other aesthetic concepts if it is to discover
the principles whereby it is to be defined. We are at once returned,
therefore, to the vexing question or subject matter: What should a philosopher
study in order to understand such ideas as beauty and taste