# Talk:Aesthetics

I was thinking about implementing changes to this article with the hope of moving it in the direction of GA status. The article has several unreferenced paragraphs and the maintenance tags 5x citation needed and 1x further explanation needed. As already pointed out by Patrick Welsh in an earlier discussion, the selection, relative weight, and organization of topics are odd, like a history section talking only about Aristotle.
I think it would be good to have a central section to give a concise presentation of the most important basic concepts of aesthetics, such as aesthetic property, aesthetic value (including but not limited to beauty), universals, aesthetic object, aesthetic experience, aesthetic attitude, aesthetic judgment, and taste. Some of these concepts are currently not discussed at all while the discussion of others is spread around various sections without a clear organizing principle. For example, aesthetic experience is discussed in the section "Aesthetics and the philosophy of art" even though this concept is not particularly relevant for distinguishing the two terms. Another helpful reorganization might be to have a section called "Definition" to address the nature of the field and cover the topics of the sections "Aesthetics and the philosophy of art" and "Etymology" (which is not important enough to merit a separate section per WP:BALANCE).
I think the article should have a separate section called "Art" since it is such a central topic. It could include a discussion of the definition and ontology of art and the problems of creation, representation, meaning, and interpretation of works of art. Some of these topics are currently only covered in a one-sided manner in the section "New Criticism and "The Intentional Fallacy"". It probably should also give a short explanation of the most important forms of "the arts", like visual arts, literature, and performance arts, maybe in a subsection. There are various schools of thought that should be discussed somewhere, like realism, relativism, essentialism, contextualism, constructivism, aestheticism, feminism, Marxism, and postmodernism.
The term "derivative" in the section title "Derivative forms of aesthetics" is odd and possibly WP:NPOV. Since several subsections discuss aesthetics in specific fields, like science and mathematics, it could be renamed to "In various fields". It should include additional information on psychology, sociology, religion, politics, education, and everyday life. The subsection "Aesthetic ethics" could be moved there as well.
Apologies for the lengthy explanation. There are more things to consider, but they can be addressed later since the ones mentioned so far will already involve a lot of work to implement. I was hoping to get some feedback on these ideas and possibly other suggestions. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:21, 19 June 2025 (UTC)

I strongly support this. In current form, it's difficult to make even incremental improvements to the article, which needs structural attention. Revisions along the lines suggested here would be a huge improvement.
Cheers, Patrick 🐈‍⬛ (talk) 18:31, 19 June 2025 (UTC)


### Aesthetics
I've listed this article for peer review to prepare it for a featured article candidacy. I would be interested to learn what changes are required to fulfill the featured article criteria, but I'm also open to more casual improvement ideas.
Thanks, Phlsph7 (talk) 10:11, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

I'm not going to do a detailed review, & may not add more comments, but while I think the article is a strong GA, the references lean far too heavily on a few sources for FAC. Now it is GA it may get more attention & improvements follow, so I wouldn't push to FAC very soon. Johnbod (talk) 12:53, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Hello Johnbod and thanks for looking at the article. Reviewers are more likely to point out that I'm overdoing it with the sources, so it's refreshing to have a different perspective. The article currently has 143 sources and 211 bundled references with 448 individual citations. I could add more but my impression is that this is not at the lower end of FA articles. If you could be more specific about where exactly the problem lies in the article, or if you know of specific overview sources that the article should cite, then I would be happy to look into it. Phlsph7 (talk) 16:11, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
I was pretty specific!  Most come from The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics or the Oxford Handbook. I won't be doing any of that. Johnbod (talk) 17:57, 7 October 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for clarifying your point. It's possible that we have different interpretations of what "few sources" means. My understanding is that if two articles on different topics are written independently by separate authors, they are considered two sources and not a single source, even if they are bundled in a collected volume like The Routledge Companion to Aesthetics. Nonetheless, I tried to follow your suggestion and replaced many of them with alternative sources. However, they are among the highest-quality sources, so there is a strong case for retaining several of them, like the articles that focus on one specific art form cited in the section "The individual arts". I hope this serves as a workable compromise and I would like to hear your thoughts. Phlsph7 (talk) 09:51, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
Not everyone may see it like that. I'm now away for a week & won't be following this. Thanks for the changes. Johnbod (talk) 02:00, 10 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi @Phlsph7: I'm fine with some of your edits after my recent ones, but I have to insist on us using words other than "aesthetic" in the lead section when the very thing we're trying to define is "aesthetics." Most notably, that Aesthetics is the branch of philosophy that studies... aesthetic phenomena is not really helpful to any newcomers. This is why I tried to replace some of the uses of the word aesthetic with words like art or artistic. Is there some compromise we can try to work towards please? Wolfdog (talk) 18:51, 7 October 2025 (UTC)

Hi Wolfdog, I get your point. I replaced the expression with "related phenomena" to avoid the circularity. We could also use "aesthetic experience", which is a technical term that can itself be defined without reference to aesthetics, thereby minimizing circularity. Just considering the first sentence, "art" would also be a strong candidate. However, the next sentence already talks about art, making it sound repetitive. Phlsph7 (talk) 10:20, 8 October 2025 (UTC)
Yeah, I think we should avoid aesthetic altogether and would much prefer "art" generally. Wolfdog (talk) 00:20, 9 October 2025 (UTC)
Thanks for the suggestion, but we have to be careful about not confusing the concepts of aesthetic and art, see the first paragraph of the section "Art". Unlike aesthetics, the philosophy of art does not study beauty in nature, so saying that they are equated is misleading. Similarly, aesthetic properties are not limited to artworks but include beauty in nature, like a sunset, so we should not introduce an art-centric bias into our definition of aesthetic properties. I followed your suggestion to mention artistic creativity before meaning, but I don't think we need to repeat "creativity" and "creative expression" in the same sentence. Phlsph7 (talk) 08:59, 9 October 2025 (UTC)