ABSTRACT
Aestheticism appears in different but interrelated aspects: as a view of life– the idea of treating life 'in the spirit of art'; as a view of art– 'art for art's sake'; and as a characteristic of actual works of art and literature. Attempts to define or describe beauty abound. The great medieval Christian philosopher, Thomas Aquinas, defined beauty, common–sensically enough, as that which, being seen, pleases–pleases, that is, simply as an object of contemplation, whether via the senses or within the mind itself. Some may object to the very concept of aestheticism itself: aestheticism, it may be said, is a myth, an abstraction masquerading as a concrete entity. This objection does highlight the danger of over– simplification, of imposing too tidies a pattern on the complex facts. Aestheticism would then be a 'reified abstraction', a mental concept treated as an objectively existing thing.
