AESTHETICS IS THE WHOLE SHEBANG:

The problem is that many people's notion of beauty is simply too narrow. Beauty is not charm or allurement or eroticism or a backrub or a bubble bath or frosting on a cake. It is something broader and deeper. There are of course a hundred and one ways one could go about defining something so mysterious and elusive as beauty. I will make an attempt here. Beauty is a signal and symbol of the encompassing order in the universe and nature and the essential goodness, the essentially pleasing character, of reality. This is what we might call transcendent beauty as opposed to surface beauty (which may of course be a small-scale reflection of transcendent beauty). Beauty thus has to do with the truth of things and as such it is essential to human life and flourishing--not a mere adornment, but essential to our inner life. The philosopher Dietrich von Hildebrand says in his magisterial Aesthetics that "beauty is a primordial phenomenon of the utmost importance and one of the greatest sources of profound joy." He stresses that beauty is an objective phenomenon, not merely a subjective feeling--not merely "in the eye of the beholder." It is an objective value just as ethical or moral values are.

It's too often implied that beauty is the antithesis of the intellectual, that it is merely sensual--one recalls in this connection the popular antithesis of brains versus beauty. I would insist on the contrary that beauty comes to us with particular content and meaning. It is not a generic mush, but something with determinate qualities which one can name and discuss and engage with on the level of intellect.

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