Aesthete


a person who has or professes to have refined sensitivity toward the beauties of art or nature.
a person who affects great love of art, music, poetry, etc., and indifference to practical matters.
Contemporary Examples

He makes people who I call the aesthete—who have a very specific aesthetic point of view.
Louboutin Looks Back Isabel Wilkinson November 2, 2011

The trouble was that the fight took on a life of its own, until the warrior in Hilton nearly crushed the aesthete.
In Memoriam: Hilton Kramer David Frum April 10, 2012

Historical Examples

We see that the man whose success is merely personal—the actor, the sophist, the millionaire, the aesthete—is incurably vulgar.
Soliloquies in England George Santayana

He is not really an aesthete at all; he is too Voltairian for that.
Suspended Judgments John Cowper Powys

But Becky Sharp’s eyes also were green, and the green of the aesthete does not suggest innocence.
Prose Fancies (Second Series) Richard Le Gallienne

Indeed, if he had agreed with the aesthete, he would possibly not have introduced him.
The Longest Journey E. M. Forster

And this is the condition of the decadent, of the aesthete, of the free-lover.
The Defendant G.K. Chesterton

But it wasn’t a scientist’s curiosity; it was an aesthete’s.
Breaking Point James E. Gunn

aesthete and libertine alike sink to the lower level of pleasure, and their emotions become obscene.
The Evolution of Love Emil Lucka

As a matter of fact, there was much more of the aesthete in him than of the Nonconformist.
Old and New Masters Robert Lynd

noun
a person who has or who affects a highly developed appreciation of beauty, esp in poetry and the visual arts
n.

1878, in vogue 1881, from Greek aisthetes “one who perceives,” from stem of aisthanesthai “to perceive, to feel” (see aesthetic).

I want to be an aesthete,
And with the aesthetes stand;
A sunflower on my forehead,
And a lily in my hand.

[“Puck,” Oct. 5, 1881]

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    a degree of detachment from or nonidentification with the characters or circumstances of a work of art, permitting the formation of judgments based on aesthetic rather than extra-aesthetic criteria. Historical Examples But Johnson of Cheshire lacked the aesthetic distance required of sustained irony and had a grander purpose in mind. The Merry-Thought: or the Glass-Window […]

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    of or relating to . Contemporary Examples As the gallery puts it, Mercier’s works “imply that function is part of an aesthetical proposition.” This Bench Recycles Bad Carpet as Good Art Blake Gopnik June 26, 2013 Historical Examples aesthetical judgements can be divided just like theoretical (logical) judgements into empirical and pure. Kant’s Critique of […]


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