Beauty is a universal human emotion that can be felt, appreciated and expressed in many ways. It is found in fine art, a smile on the Mona Lisa, a sunset on a beach, or in any of a wide range of human activities.
It is not a feeling that comes easily; it requires intellectual and practical activity, and takes effort to evaluate. It is a process of integration, the marriage of what is sensuous and what is rational: a kind of ladder of experience that allows us to ascend to a higher level of reality than what is merely physical.
Aesthetics is the study of beauty and it has long been a subject of philosophical interest. Ancient philosophers such as Aristotle and Plato, for example, offered a number of formulations that dealt with beauty in terms of its requirements.
These requirements were based on what the philosophers believed to be the essence of beauty, or the characteristics that make something beautiful in the first place. They included integrity, proportion, and clarity.
The concept of beauty is also a topic of discussion in the philosophy of religion, where it was thought that the Divine idea of what something should be manifested in a way that would delight and give joy to those who were fortunate enough to encounter it. In Christianity, the idea of beauty is reflected in the idea of the Trinity and God’s intention to create a world in which all things would find their purpose.
According to Aquinas, beauty in art has three criteria: it must be beautiful in its form, beautiful in its content, and beautiful in its medium. The artist has to be able to express and communicate the beauty of the subject in such a way that others can appreciate it and understand it.
This is not a simple task, as it depends on how well the artist is able to communicate their thoughts and feelings. This is often difficult, especially when the subject being represented is a person of a different gender than the artist.
Some artists, for instance, attempt to communicate the beauty of their subject through facial expressions; these are sometimes seen as more attractive than those of the subject’s non-smiling face. For example, a smiling face tends to be rated as more beautiful than a neutral face when the face is shown to the rating person in direct eye contact or when the smile is perceived as being directed at the person rating it.
Another factor that is considered when determining what makes someone beautiful is their facial symmetry. Statistics show that a face with symmetrical features is more likely to be viewed as beautiful than one without. In order to achieve a beautiful facial symmetry, a person’s length and width must be within a certain range, called the Golden Ratio. This ratio should be about 1.6, which means that the length of a person’s face should be twice the width.