The Sense of Beauty: Santayana’s Aesthetics Philosophy Explained

The Sense of Beauty is a concept delivered by an American philosopher, George Santayana, through his book titled The Sense of Beauty (1896). The lecture he gave about aesthetics when he worked at Harvard University has inspired him the concept. The book has four elements: The Nature of Beauty, The Materials of Beauty, Form, and Expression. In outline, Santayana described beauty as personal and objective satisfaction. Through the artwork, the satisfaction is on what has been perceived by the five senses. The satisfaction does not come from divine inspiration described by classical Greek philosophers, such as Socrates and Plato, but it comes from our conscious mind that works naturally.

Santayana stated that beauty has relations to personal satisfaction. Beauty does not come only from pleasant experiences or things that bring its pleasures as separated sections. However, it comes from experiences of beauty that are connected and exist by the quality of the object itself that creates beauty. Santayana also explained beauty as a form of perfection.

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy that deals with the nature of beauty and taste, whether it comes as humor, desolation, or grandeur; it also deals with the state and expression of beauty. A person who has or affects to have a special appreciation of art and beauty is known as an aesthete. The word aesthetics comes from Greek, αισθητικός (aisthetikos), which means the comprehension or the perception of sensory.

A German philosopher, Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten, has changed the definition of the aesthetics word to become a sensory satisfaction (Goldman:2001). Commonly, artworks are for sensory satisfaction reasons. Therefore, sensory satisfaction applies in every aspect of sensing the artwork. It influences how people value, behave, and comprehend aesthetics; those five senses are considered the inputs of aesthetic experiences.Although we can sense anything aesthetically, the term “aesthetics experiences” is for everything relating to artistic things, particularly visual arts. Aesthetics is about how we give the perception we have to the artworks we see. Aesthetics experiences are encountered by everyone, according to their sense of beauty. For instance, it might have happened to the fine or applied artworks. Several small examples have happened when choosing the outfit we will wear for a particular activity, selecting and placing the furniture at our house, or picking out a smartphone with the best design.