AESTHETICS

The moment when we utter the word aesthetic various things pop up in our mind and it also covers a vast spectrum of human activities. For example we think of beauty, expression of creativity, ability to offer pleasant, eternally enjoyable talents and new patterns in different mediums like painting, music, architecture, dance, sculpture, writing, dressing etc.  

The very reason why the word aesthetic conjures up so many things to the mind is because it is something that transcends mere bodily sensations, mental perceptions, social sanctions, cultural confines and manifests an overflowing expression with inherent creativity and beauty making an instant communication to our inner self with a great universal appeal.  That’s why great arts, music, dances, writings etc appeal instantaneously to human beings all over the world.

Aesthetics is a vast area covering from appreciation of absolute beauty to  admiration of abstract patterns beyond dry logic and utility value alone, apprehension of  mystery, adoration of  vibrations leading to enjoyment of the sensitivities, achievement of clarity of perception, adoption of  artistic expression through  different spheres of communication like music, painting, dance, writing etc , augmentation of  our faculties and mutual understanding based on heartfelt feelings of admiration, association of inner spirit to the beauties outside establishing the interrelations of  everything with life and so on.

In short aesthetics is nothing but the appreciation and apprehension by the senses and sensitivity that have become more sophisticated and sensible through constant churning by the several cultural influences, subtle artistic representations and polished by the improved intellectual understanding etc

In general whenever the term aesthetics is used beauty and pleasant patterns predominate at the core. But beauty itself is in the eye of the beholder making it a very relative term. So how are we to define aesthetics? Let us go to the root of the word ‘aesthetics’ and not the connotations that it has accumulated over the centuries. The word aesthetics comes from the Greek word  AISTHETIKOS meaning ‘sensitive’ which itself is from the word AISTHANESTHAI meaning ‘to apprehend by the senses’.

Now this leads us to know what are the senses? Due to lack of knowledge and for the sake of convenience we have classified them into 5 or 6 or seven at the maximum and have done a great damage by failing to appreciate the many senses that are there outside our classified and categorized ones and even those within these with subtle nuances and variations.

So greatest damage was done to aesthetics from the time it was made into a philosophical concept and trying to confine it within the parameters of logically definable and theoretically acceptable definitions of expressions of beauty, nature or confining it to the mere corporeal sensorium etc

AESTHETICS can be defined in the form of an acronym as

Appreciation of

Energies and 

Sensible evaluation

Through

Higher

Emotions and

Tastes

Inherently

Connected by

Senses