Ocalić piękno – zagubioną rzeczywistość współczesnej estetyki

The perspective of understanding beauty has been interpreted in many different ways in philosophy. The classical definition of beauty which has originated from realism, says that something is beautiful when one likes it at the moment he or she perceives it, it refers to the object of beauty and it shows us the being in relation to the act of cognition and to the act of attraction. Beauty appears to be the expression of ultimate fulfilment of being by the act of truth and good.The contemporary times set in the tradition of realism have been gradually limiting the extent of beauty by its dethronization and reducing it to aesthetic values, or even suggesting to remove beauty from aesthetics. Finally, instead of beauty as a purpose of the art, the modern aesthetics is offering an “anti-art” oriented on ugliness. Consequently, beauty has been separated from the truth and good, and subsequently from the man. The dispute on the understanding of beauty is focused on one particular question which is: “Why must beauty, the lost reality of the modern aesthetics, be saved“? Will the salvaged beauty – the means to pursue one’s aim associated with philosophical anthropology and general metaphysics, save the humans?Or rather, along with the postaesthetics and freedom, its only purpose, by breaking up with the philosophies of being and human being, “have we too easily believed that beauty will not save us”?