On Beauty: A Cross-Cultural Exploration of Aesthetic Thought

The concept of Beauty has long been presented through a singular, Western lens, emphasising the ancient Greek ideal of perfect proportions, the Renaissance pursuit of realism, or Kant’s philosophy of disinterested judgment. Yet, for millennia, cultures across the globe have developed their own rich, complex, and often radically different conceptions of beauty, its value and its power in society. This year, the Aesthetics, Criticism and Theory programme at Jnanapravaha Mumbai seeks to decentralise the dominant Western notion of beauty by embarking on an exploration of this concept as a multifaceted, culturally constructed and nuanced human experience.

Our journey begins with an examination of the foundations of Western thought in the ancient Greek and later Roman world. How did Beauty come to be located in mathematical harmony and what did it mean for it to then be elevated to a transcendent, eternal Form by Plato, an ideal that the material world could only imitate imperfectly? How did this form correspond to the form of The Good, and ultimately to Truth? And how did later thinkers like Plotinus synthesise these ideas, framing beauty as an emanation from the divine, cementing the legacy of idealism and proportion that have formed the basis of Western thought?

Between these classical foundations and the Enlightenment, the Renaissance marks a crucial reorientation in the understanding of beauty. The human body, architecture, and painting became sites where harmony, symmetry, and perspective could be studied, codified, and perfected. Yet, this was not merely a technical exercise: the Renaissance vision of beauty was deeply tied to humanism, placing the human figure and human perception at the centre of aesthetic inquiry. Did this renewed emphasis on realism and the visible world bring beauty closer to lived experience, or did it simply reformulate classical ideals in a new visual language?

Ultimately, we examine how the Enlightenment project codified the concept of beauty to conform to its own standards. Edmund Burke’s empirical approach distinguished the beautiful, rooted in pleasure, smoothness, and delicacy, from the sublime’s terrifying awe. Immanuel Kant, however, elevated the discourse by defining aesthetic judgment as disinterested and universal—a subjective feeling yet demanding collective agreement—establishing taste as a crucial faculty. For G. W. F. Hegel, art became the sensuous manifestation of the Absolute, a crucial stage in Spirit’s journey toward self-knowledge, though one ultimately superseded by religion and philosophy. Did the Enlightenment’s rationalist framework ultimately demystify beauty, stripping it of its transcendent and emotional power to conform to more empirical standards, or can we understand modernity’s relationship to beauty to be more complex, allowing for varied cultural interpretations to continue to hold purchase?

In Islamic thought, beauty is not merely an aesthetic category but a fundamental divine attribute—one of the names of God, al-Jamīl (the Beautiful). The cosmos itself, in its order, harmony, and intricacy, is understood as a manifestation of divine beauty, a sign that points beyond itself toward the Creator. Philosophers and mystics such as Al-Ghazali and Ibn Arabi explored how the perception of beauty could lead the soul toward spiritual knowledge and remembrance. In a different yet complementary register, the work of Ibn al-Haytham offers a strikingly material and perceptual account of beauty, where it in this sense, emerges through the interaction between external form and internal processing – an insight that anticipates later theories of perception. Artistic creation, whether in calligraphy, architecture, or poetry, thus becomes an act of devotion—a striving toward perfection that reflects, however fleetingly, the divine source. Does this mean that true beauty is ultimately defined by its capacity to evoke transcendence, and that the human artist serves as a conduit through which the imperceptible becomes momentarily visible?

In the second half of the year, we turn to classical Indic thought, where we focus on the foundations of Rasa theory through Bharata Muni’s Natyashastra, where beauty is not conceived as a formal quality, but that resides within an experiential state of bliss (ananda). Here, emotion is the essential bridge between a performance and its perceiver, and the resultant ananda is a transcendent, participatory reception, rather than a passive observation or appreciation of aesthetic qualities. Could this framework compellingly reframe our very understanding of aesthetics? If ‘beauty’, in its purest form, lies in the profound emotional experience of an audience, can it really be inferred as a universal ideal, concept or value?

In classical Chinese thought, beauty is profoundly intertwined with ethics, harmony, and the rhythms of the natural world. Within the Confucian tradition, articulated by Confucius, beauty (mei) is inseparable from moral goodness (ren) and social order; the cultivation of beauty is thus essential to the cultivation of a just and harmonious society. In contrast, Daoist thinkers such as Laozi and Zhuangzi celebrated spontaneity, simplicity, and the unadorned. Beauty emerges not through refinement, but through alignment with the Dao—the effortless unfolding of the natural world. This perspective finds expression in the idea of qiyun shandong (spirit resonance), where the vitality of a subject, rather than its formal perfection, determines its aesthetic power. Why did Daoist thought privilege the raw and the natural over the cultivated, and what does it mean to locate beauty in the dynamic life-force of things rather than their outward form?

Interspersed within the year-long focus on beauty, the ACT programme will also host two short lecture series, with the first on the art and material culture of Palmyra. As a crossroads of the Roman, Persian, and wider Near Eastern worlds, Palmyra offers a compelling case study of beauty shaped by exchange and hybridity. Its visual culture, seen in funerary reliefs, monumental architecture, and multilingual inscriptions, defies singular classification, blending classical and local forms. These lectures will explore how aesthetic values were negotiated in a cosmopolitan trading centre, and how material culture reveals the layered identities of a society defined by movement.

A parallel three-lecture series on Norman Sicily turns to the medieval Mediterranean to examine another extraordinary moment of cultural convergence. Under Norman rule, Sicily became a site where Latin Christian, Byzantine, and Islamic artistic traditions coexisted and intertwined, producing works of striking visual and conceptual richness. Rather than viewing these forms as mere eclecticism, this series asks how beauty functioned within a consciously plural court culture: as a language of power, a marker of legitimacy, and a medium through which difference was negotiated. 

This year, the ACT programme ultimately asks us to reconsider what we mean when we speak of beauty. Is it a universal ideal grounded in proportion and harmony, an ethical force that shapes society, an emotional experience shared between artwork and audience, or a sign that points toward the divine? By placing these traditions in dialogue, the programme seeks not only to challenge the dominance of a singular aesthetic framework, but to open up a richer, more plural understanding of beauty—one that acknowledges its diverse meanings across cultures while recognising its enduring power in shaping how we see, feel, and inhabit the world.