FILSAFAT ESTETIKA adalah cabang ilmu yang membahas masalah keindahan. Bagaimana keindahan bisa tercipta dan bagaimana orang bisa merasakannya dan memberi penilaian terhadap keindahan tersebut. Maka filsafat estetika akan selalu berkaitan dengan antara baik dan buruk, antara indah dan jelek. Bukan berbicara tentang salah dan benar seperti dalam filsafat epistemologi.

Secara etimologi, estetika diambil dari bahasa Yunani, aisthetike yang berarti segala sesuatu yang diserap oleh indera. Filsafat estetika membahas tentang refleks kritis yang dirasakan oleh indera dan memberi penilaian terhadap sesuatu, indah atau tidak indah, beauty or ugly. Estetika disebut juga dengan filsafat keindahan.

Filsafat estetika pertama kali dicetuskan oleh Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1975) yang mengungkapkan bahwa estetika adalah cabang ilmu yang dimaknai oleh perasaan. Filasafat estetika adalah cabang ilmu dari filsafat Aksiologi, yaitu filsafat nilai. Istilah Aksiologi digunakan untuk menberikan batasan mengenai kebaikan, yang meliputi etika, moral, dan perilaku. Adapun Estetika yaitu memberikan batasan mengenai hakikat keindahan atau nilai keindahan.

Kaum materialis cenderung mengatakan nilai-nilai berhubungan dengan sifat-sifat subjektif, sedangkan kaum idealis berpendapat nilai-nilai bersifat objektif. Andaikan kita sepakat dengan kaum materialis bahwa yang namanya nilai keindahan itu merupakan reaksi-reaksi subjektif. Maka benarlah apa yang terkandung dalam sebuah ungkapan “Mengenai masalah selera tidaklah perlu ada pertentangan”.

Serupa orang yang menyukai lukisan abstrak, sesuatu yang semata-mata bersifat perorangan. Jika sebagian orang mengaggap lukisan abstrak itu aneh, sebagian lagi pasti menganggap lukisan abstrak itu indah. Karena reaksi itu muncul dari dalam diri manusia berdasarkan selera.

Berbicara mengenai penilaian terhadap keindahan maka setiap dekade, setiap zaman itu memberikan penilaian yang berbeda terhadap sesuatu yang dikatakan indah. Jika pada zaman romantisme di Prancis keindahan berarti kemampuan untuk menyampaikan sebuah keagungan, lain halnya pada zaman realisme keindahan mempunyai makna kemampuan untuk menyampaikan sesuatu apa adanya. Sedangkan di Belanda pada era de Stijl keindahan mempunyai arti kemampuan mengomposisikan warna dan ruang juga kemampuan mengabstraksi benda.

Pembahasan estetika akan berhubungan dengan nilai-nilai sensoris yang dikaitkan dengan sentimen dan rasa. Sehingga estetika akan mempersoalkan pula teori-teori mengenai seni. Dengan demikian, estetika merupakan sebuah teori yang meliputi:

• Penyelidikan mengenai sesuatu yang indah;
• Penyelidikan mengenai prinsip-prinsip yang mendasari seni;
• Pengalaman yang bertalian dengan seni, masalah yang berkaitan dengan penciptaan seni, penilaian terhadap seni dan perenungan atas seni.

Dari pernyataan di atas, estetika meliputi tiga hal, yaitu, fenomena estetis, fenomena persepsi, dan fenomena studi seni sebagai hasil pengalaman estetis. (Sumber)

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Aristoteles (English) dilahirkan di kota Stagira, Macedonia, 384 SM. Ayahnya seorang ahli fisika kenamaan. Pada umur tujuh belas tahun Aristoteles pergi ke Athena belajar di Akademi Plato. Dia menetap disana selama dua puluh tahun hingga tak lama Plato meninggal dunia. Dari ayahnya, Aristoteles mungkin memperoleh dorongan minat di bidang biologi dan “pengetahuan praktis”. Di bawah asuhan Plato dia menanamkan minat dalam hal spekulasi filosofis.

Pada tahun 342 SM Aristoteles pulang kembali keMacedonia, menjadi guru seorang anak raja umur tiga belas tahun yang kemudian dalam sejarah terkenal dengan Alexander Yang Agung. Aristoteles mendidik si Alexander muda dalam beberapa tahun. Di tahun 335 SM, sesudah Alexander naik tahta kerajaan, Aristoteles kembali ke Athena dan di situ dibukanya sekolahnya sendiri, Lyceum. Dia berada di Athena dua belas tahun, satu masa yang berbarengan dengan karier penaklukan militer Alexander. Alexander tidak minta nasehat kepada bekas gurunya, tetapi dia berbaik hati menyediakan dana buat Aristoteles untuk melakukan penyelidikan-penyelidikan. Mungkin ini merupakan contoh pertama dalam sejarah seorang ilmuwan menerima jumlah dana besar dari pemerintah untuk maksud-maksud penyelidikan dan sekaligus merupakan yang terakhir dalam abad-abad berikutnya.

Ayah Aristoteles adalah Nikomakhos, seorang tabib yang tinggal di dekat Makedonia, di Yunani utara. Jadi tak seperti Sokrates dan Plato, Aristoteles tidak berasal dari Athena. Dia juga tak berasal dari keluarga kaya seperti halnya Plato, meskipun ayahnya juga bukanlah orang miskin.

Semasa muda, sekitar tahun 350 SM, Aristoteles belajar di Akademi Plato. Plato sendiri saat itu sydah sangat tua. Aristoteles belajar dengan baik di Akademi, namun dia tidak pernah menjadi salah satu pemimpinnya, dan ketika Plato meninggal, para peimpinnya memilih orang lain alih-alih Aristoteles untuk memimpin Akademi. Kemungkinan Aristoteles merasa kesal akibat tak terpilih. sumber

René Descartes (1596–1650) was a creative mathematician of the first order, an important scientific thinker, and an original metaphysician. During the course of his life, he was a mathematician first, a natural scientist or “natural philosopher” second, and a metaphysician third. In mathematics, he developed the techniques that made possible algebraic (or “analytic”) geometry. In natural philosophy, he can be credited with several specific achievements: co-framer of the sine law of refraction, developer of an important empirical account of the rainbow, and proposer of a naturalistic account of the formation of the earth and planets (a precursor to the nebular hypothesis). More importantly, he offered a new vision of the natural world that continues to shape our thought today: a world of matter possessing a few fundamental properties and interacting according to a few universal laws. This natural world included an immaterial mind that, in human beings, was directly related to the brain; in this way, Descartes formulated the modern version of the mind–body problem. In metaphysics, he provided arguments for the existence of God, to show that the essence of matter is extension, and that the essence of mind is thought. Descartes claimed early on to possess a special method, which was variously exhibited in mathematics, natural philosophy, and metaphysics, and which, in the latter part of his life, included, or was supplemented by, a method of doubt.

Descartes presented his results in major works published during his lifetime: the Discourse on the Method (in French, 1637), with its essays, the Dioptrics, Meteorology, and Geometry; the Meditations on First Philosophy (i.e., on metaphysics), with its Objections and Replies (in Latin, 1641); the Principles of Philosophy, covering his metaphysics and much of his natural philosophy (in Latin, 1644); and the Passions of the Soul, on the emotions (in French, 1649). Important works published posthumously included his Letters (in Latin and French, 1657–67); World, or Treatise on Light, containing the core of his natural philosophy (in French, 1664); Treatise on Man (in French, 1664), containing his physiology and mechanistic psychology; and the Rules for the Direction of the Mind (in Latin, 1704), an early, unfinished work attempting to set out his method.

Descartes was known among the learned in his day as the best of the French mathematicians, as the developer of a new physics, and as the proposer of a new metaphysics. In the years following his death, his natural philosophy was widely taught and discussed. In the eighteenth century aspects of his science remained influential, especially his physiology, and he was remembered for his failed metaphysics and his method of doubt. In the nineteenth century he was revered for his mechanistic physiology and theory that animal bodies are machines (that is, are constituted by material mechanisms, governed by the laws of matter alone). The twentieth century variously celebrated his famous “cogito” starting point, reviled the sense data that some alleged to be the legacy of his skeptical starting point, and looked to him as a model of the culturally engaged philosopher. He has been seen, at various times, as a hero and as a villain; as a brilliant theorist who set new directions in thought, and as the harbinger of a cold, rationalistic, and calculative conception of human beings.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/descartes/

Aristotle (b. 384 – d. 322 BCE), was a Greek philosopher, logician, and scientist. Along with his teacher Plato, Aristotle is generally regarded as one of the most influential ancient thinkers in a number of philosophical fields, including political theory. Aristotle was born in Stagira in northern Greece, and his father was a court physician to the king of Macedon. As a young man he studied in Plato's Academy in Athens. After Plato's death he left Athens to conduct philosophical and biological research in Asia Minor and Lesbos, and he was then invited by King Philip II of Macedon to tutor his young son, Alexander the Great. Soon after Alexander succeeded his father, consolidated the conquest of the Greek city-states, and launched the invasion of the Persian Empire. Aristotle returned as a resident alien to Athens, and was a close friend of Antipater, the Macedonian viceroy. At this time (335–323 BCE) he wrote, or at least worked on, some of his major treatises, including the Politics. When Alexander died suddenly, Aristotle had to flee from Athens because of his Macedonian connections, and he died soon after. Aristotle's life seems to have influenced his political thought in various ways: his interest in biology seems to be expressed in the naturalism of his politics; his interest in comparative politics and his sympathies for democracy as well as monarchy may have been encouraged by his travels and experience of diverse political systems; he criticizes harshly, while borrowing extensively, from Plato's Republic, Statesman, and Laws; and his own Politics is intended to guide rulers and statesmen, reflecting the high political circles in which he moved.

http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/aristotle-politics/

The philosopher Socrates remains, as he was in his lifetime (469–399 B.C.E.),[1] an enigma, an inscrutable individual who, despite having written nothing, is considered one of the handful of philosophers who forever changed how philosophy itself was to be conceived. All our information about him is second-hand and most of it vigorously disputed, but his trial and death at the hands of the Athenian democracy is nevertheless the founding myth of the academic discipline of philosophy, and his influence has been felt far beyond philosophy itself, and in every age. Because his life is widely considered paradigmatic for the philosophic life and, more generally, for how anyone ought to live, Socrates has been encumbered with the admiration and emulation normally reserved for founders of religious sects—Jesus or Buddha—strange for someone who tried so hard to make others do their own thinking, and for someone convicted and executed on the charge of irreverence toward the gods. Certainly he was impressive, so impressive that many others were moved to write about him, all of whom found him strange by the conventions of fifth-century Athens: in his appearance, personality, and behavior, as well as in his views and methods.

Anaximander (/əˌnæksɨˈmændər/; Greek: Ἀναξίμανδρος Anaximandros; c. 610 – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher who lived in Miletus, a city of Ionia; Milet in modern Turkey. He belonged to the Milesian school and learned the teachings of his master Thales. He succeeded Thales and became the second master of that school where he counted Anaximenes and arguably, Pythagoras amongst his pupils.

Little of his life and work is known today. According to available historical documents, he is the first philosopher known to have written down his studies,[1] although only one fragment of his work remains. Fragmentary testimonies found in documents after his death provide a portrait of the man.

Anaximander was one of the earliest Greek thinkers at the start of the Axial Age, the period from approximately 700 BC to 200 BC, during which similarly revolutionary thinking appeared in China, India, Iran, the Near East, and Ancient Greece. He was an early proponent of science and tried to observe and explain different aspects of the universe, with a particular interest in its origins, claiming that nature is ruled by laws, just like human societies, and anything that disturbs the balance of nature does not last long.[2]Like many thinkers of his time, Anaximander's contributions to philosophy relate to many disciplines. In astronomy, he tried to describe the mechanics of celestial bodies in relation to the Earth. In physics, his postulation that the indefinite (or apeiron) was the source of all things led Greek philosophy to a new level of conceptual abstraction. His knowledge ofgeometry allowed him to introduce the gnomon in Greece. He created a map of the world that contributed greatly to the advancement of geography. He was also involved in thepolitics of Miletus and was sent as a leader to one of its colonies.

Anaximander claimed that an "indefinite" (apeiron) principle gives rise to all natural phenomena. Carl Sagan claims that he conducted the earliest recorded scientific experiment.[3]

Thales of Miletus (/ˈθeɪliːz/; Greek: Θαλῆς (ὁ Μιλήσιος), Thalēs; c. 624 BC – c. 546 BC) was a pre-Socratic Greek philosopher from Miletus in Asia Minor, and one of the Seven Sages of Greece. Many, most notably Aristotle, regard him as the first philosopher in theGreek tradition.[1] According to Bertrand Russell, "Western philosophy begins with Thales."[2] Thales attempted to explain natural phenomena without reference to mythology and was tremendously influential in this respect. Almost all of the other Pre-Socraticphilosophers follow him in attempting to provide an explanation of ultimate substance, change, and the existence of the world—without reference to mythology. Those philosophers were also influential, and eventually Thales' rejection of mythological explanations became an essential idea for the scientific revolution. He was also the first to define general principles and set forth hypotheses, and as a result has been dubbed the "Father of Science", though it is argued that Democritus is actually more deserving of this title.[3][4]

In mathematics, Thales used geometry to solve problems such as calculating the height of pyramids and the distance of ships from the shore. He is credited with the first use of deductive reasoning applied to geometry, by deriving four corollaries to Thales' Theorem. As a result, he has been hailed as the first true mathematician and is the first known individual to whom a mathematical discovery has been attributed.[5]