ASSIGNMENT 02THL1501UNIQUE NUMBER: 81320Student Name: Monique FischerStudent Number: 11369264
1I declare that this assignment is my own original work. Where secondary material has beenused (either from a printed source or from the Internet) this has been carefully acknowledgedand referenced in accordance with department requirements. I understand what plagiarism isand am aware of the department’s policy in this regard. I have not allowed anyone else toborrow or copy my work.Signed by: Monique FischerOn this day: 6 July 2021
2Table of ContentsQuestion 1………………………………….Pg. 3Question 2………………………………….Pg. 5Question 3 ………………………………….Pg. 7References…………………………………Pg. 8
3Question 1Aesthetics is the philosophical study of beauty and taste, as set out by EncyclopediaBritannica (2020), and the term is generally used to refer to the best and highest valuedexamples of different art forms (Carusi & Oliphant; 2007:42). In this essay, I will set outdiscuss the struggle of defining aestheticwith the help of a passage from Marcia Eaton’sBasic issues in aesthetics(1988).Defining aesthetic as a whole is problematic because the definition of the term is not as cut-and-dry as the definition of the word, and thus we have to attempt to define the words givenin the definition of the word“aesthetic”.Collins English Dictionary(2000) gives thefollowing definitions for the word aesthetic:“1:connected with aesthetics or its principles.2a:relating to pure beauty rather than to other considerations.2b:artistic or relating to goodtaste.” But how do we define beauty or good taste? What one person might see as beautiful,another might see as ugly. Where one person might think they have good taste, another mightthink it garish.The concept of beauty is very much subjective, which lends to the difficulty of definingaesthetic. How does one define aesthetic when the concept of beauty differs from person toperson? In her book,Basic issues of aesthetics(1988:3–5) Eaton touches on this subject bypointing out that while people will agree on whether a car is a car, the same cannot be said forwhether they will agree that said car is beautiful. While every person can justify theirreasoning for finding something beautiful or ugly, the lack of a universal definition for theseterms can lead to miscommunication. Simply put, the meaning of the terms “beauty” and“beautiful” are simply too vague to justifiably apply them to anything for descriptivepurposes.With this in mind, Eaton (1988:3–5) considers whether “art” can be defined. But defining theconcept of “art” is just as difficult as defining “beauty”.Consider, for example, an art projectfrom a pre-schooler. While the child’s parents might think a macaroni necklace or finger-painting might be beautiful, it is doubtful that they will consider it to be of aesthetic value,and thus it is not deemed as art. Eaton (1988:3–5) elucidates that what is deemed as art ismost often defined by its beauty or aesthetic. But if beauty has no universal agreed-upondefinition, then art definitely does not have a universal definition. For something to be
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Carusi Oliphant
