Philosophy Now Forum

During a recent contemplative stroll I passed a small frontage advertising Juliette: Licensed Aesthetician. I entered, hoping to encounter a scholar of philosophy but was disappointed. 'Aesthetics' on the high street apparently is to do with 'beauty' on the high street. I did get a cup pf tea though.

I thought afterwards that the refining of aesthetics as a sort of philosophical study of 'Beauty' is only a few hundred years old. I considered taking some steps back to broaden the 'aesthetic' to include all sensuous - and sensual - pleasures. This would include looking at and listening to popular pleasures such as from music, fiction, ornaments, fashion, wallpaper, flavoured crisps and Juliette's beauty treatments.

It was just a passing thought.

This sounds like a man who just got a mighty fine pejazzling now wants to find a way to make it tax deductible.

I didn't need pejazzling but I now have lovely fingernails.

So why do people need to have an "anaesthetic" which presumably means a removal of beauty, before an operation?

Deeper yet. Could it be that those Greeks with their aisthetikos (in their unrefined way) were just interested in sense perception - before Kant pinched the word and put them right?

Maia wrote: ↑Mon Apr 21, 2025 3:59 pm So why do people need to have an "anaesthetic" which presumably means a removal of beauty, before an operation?

aesthetic originally meant 'sense perception', and its easy to see how it evolved from that into the more modern meaning of beautiful sense perception.

so anaesthetic is the removal of sense perception.

Which is what Wild I guess is saying above.

Flannel Jesus wrote: ↑Mon Apr 21, 2025 9:34 pm

Maia wrote: ↑Mon Apr 21, 2025 3:59 pm So why do people need to have an "anaesthetic" which presumably means a removal of beauty, before an operation?

aesthetic originally meant 'sense perception', and its easy to see how it evolved from that into the more modern meaning of beautiful sense perception.

so anaesthetic is the removal of sense perception.

Which is what Wild I guess is saying above.

It's interesting to see how words evolve: from 'aesthetic', which is sensory perception, to 'anaesthetic', which is their silencing – language sometimes reflects exactly how we experience and withdraw from the emotional world.