This afternoon, Okgoo of Zurich,Switzerland, wrote me to ask:
How does beauty relate to love? Does love derive from beauty or vice versa?
I responded that
A significant variety of aesthetic theories about beauty are found, and Googling these three words in the same line might help you BEGIN to 'get a handle' on the question you ask:
aesthetic beauty love
However, WHAT one loves and HOW one loves may be functions of the socially constructed person; further, merely attaching to a person or object may (1) be a risk OR a negative situation for the object of attachment, (2) unwelcome for the object of the attachment, (3) unwise for one or both 'parties' in the attachment, or (4) worse.
One's mentation and mental state may NOT allow one to be as philosophical about these questions as one needs or ought to be. However, there is a very significant and widely-installed set of profitable industries built upon exploiting the idea that beauty is sensible (ears, eyes, tastes, nose, etc.).
Victims of destructive ideas of beauty could include nature, other humans, and nonhumans (animals).
Ethics MAY be more important than aesthetics here because (a) attempting to act ethically may yield better short-term and long-term results than acting either impulsively or in any other way on what one believes to be beauty, and (b) aesthetics may need ethical analysis in order to clarify its own concepts.
Feel free to e-mail me directly for a further discussion. Here is a starting point: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aesthetics
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