ESTHETICS (from Greek akreaveceat, ato perceive°), is the science of beauty and art.' It can be treated from the scientific standpoint, in which the actual qualities of the different va rieties of beauty and art are investigated em pirically, or from the historical standpoint, by the exposition of the views which have been held as to the nature of art and beauty in their chronological sequence and under their author ship, or from the systematic standpoint, by the independent investigation of the philosophical question of the nature of art and beauty. The scientific standpoint is too technical and too in tricate to be susceptible of treatment within the narrow confines of an encyclopedia article, so that we shall approach the question entirely from the other two avenues.
/Esthetics receives its first scientific treat ment in the work of Plato (q.v., 428-348 ac). In accordance with the views of his master Socrates (q.v.), Plato identifies the good, the beautiful and the true. All these are regarded as being ultimately one ideal entity, the Idea of the Good. This is incarnated with increas ing perfection in corporeal beauty, in the beauty of noble souls, in the virtues, and in the sciences, until at last we meet it unalloyed and pure. The beautiful as we find it in concrete beautiful objects is for Plato an imperfect ex emplification, that is a copy, of the Idea of the Good. As it is the nature of art to copy and imitate, a work of art is still further re moved from the Idea of the Good than the ob ject of which it is a copy, and hence possesses less beauty. Accordingly the greatest care is necessary to prevent art from being a hindrance rather than a help in the search for beauty, and in the ideal state it will be under strict super vision in order that the deterioration conse quent on its remoteness from the Idea of the Good may not turn it into a source of positive evil.
In so far as he exhibits a certain parallelism between the beautiful and the good, Plato, and indeed all the other Greek philosophers with him, is unquestionably right. Beauty and Vir
tue are both normative concepts—that is, they both establish a chain of values running from the lowest to the highest. Furthermore, both the beautiful and the good seem to have a claim on our action: we refrain from at least as many deeds because they are in bad taste as because they are evil. Still, there are so many cases where the two standards appear to con flict that their absolute identity is doubtful. It is a familiar experience to find an artist a hope less reprobate, or a thoroughly good man an utter Philistine. This would be quite impos Bible if goodness and beauty were completely identical.
In Aristotle (q.v., 384-322 a.c.) we find the first germ of a distinction between ethics and esthetics, for he says that whereas beauty may be found in the unchanging, only actions are good. It will readily be seen that this is not a very sharp distinction, and Aristotle does not go on to develop its implications. In the spirit of his master Plato, he gives as the essential marks of beauty order, symmetry, and limita tion. He makes the important statement, which has served as a basis of the theories of many later estheticians, that the pleasure induced by beauty is disinterested.
Aristotle's theory of beauty, in so far as we possess it, is extremely undeveloped, and ac cordingly we find no use made of it in his book on art, the Here he follows Plato in considering the essence of art to be imita tion. The motive of this imitation is the uni versal desire for knowledge, so that the value of the knowledge imparted determines that of the work of art. Therefore a work of art per forms its function properly when it gives us the most valuable knowledge of things— the knowledge of their inner essence. This re quires idealization and generalization, so .that the true art portrays types, not individuals — laws, not facts. Thus while for Plato art is essentially inferior to nature, for Aristotle it may and should be superior to nature.