Beauty is widely defined as a subjective feature of things that makes these objects enjoyable to see. These objects include sunsets, beautiful people, landscapes and artistic works of art. Beauty, along with beauty, is the basis of aesthetics, among the most important branches of visual philosophy.
In beauty there is usually a distinction between the object’s appearance and its actual quality or nature. We can talk about beauty in terms of the “quality” of beauty, on the one hand, and “the beauty” of an object on the other. We can speak of beauty as pure aesthetic value, purely subjective, or the dependence of the beholder upon the object for his or her own idea of beauty. We can even speak of beauty in terms of personal preference, a matter of personal taste.
A definition of beauty as an aesthetic quality can be seen to presuppose the existence of a standard of beauty, an independent criteria by which beauty can be judged and appreciated. In this way beauty is seen to have no foundation apart from the personal ideas of the beholder. This is why the definition of beauty is usually coupled with the concept of value. We know that the beauty of a thing is what satisfies our needs or aspirations. It is the need for something that impels us to seek out and grab it; it is the desire that drives us to pursue beauty and pursue it to the ends of our choosing.
When we talk of beauty, it is not merely a matter of deciding whether a work of art is beautiful or not. Beauty is a very complex and relative concept, dependent on many different aspects of human experience. The definition of beauty therefore, encompasses a wide range of concepts that would otherwise be clearly related to personal taste, the definition of which is inherently subjective, dependent on the individual who embraces the concept of beauty, and therefore is subject to change with each and every changing cultural context.
Beauty, then, is not simply a matter of determining whether or not something satisfies the aesthetic experience. Beauty involves a number of different and unrelated factors in its creation and definition. The beholder will not necessarily view a work of art in the same way that another person does. He will likely give different weight to his personal preferences and aesthetic experiences and, therefore, will have quite a different opinion of beauty than another person might have. The objective of beauty, however, cannot be divorced from the subjective view of beauty and must therefore remain a factor while deciding what is not beauty.
Moles and other forms of skin imperfections are not beauty marks per se. The very idea of beauty marks diminishes their importance in the mind of any genuine aesthemer. Yet, for the sake of argument, it is important to note that the concept of beauty, as some aesthetician has put it, includes “a certain amount of desire that springs up from the heart when we meet with a defect in the picture of the object of our desire.”