Beauty is often described as the visual beauty of things, which makes these things pleasant to see. These things include sunsets, landscapes, beautiful humans and creative works of art. Beauty, along with art and aesthetic sense, is perhaps the most significant part of aesthetic art, another of the major branches of modern philosophy. It can be considered as an ideal, or a standard, by which beauty is evaluated.
In aesthetic theory there are two main theories, two ways to look at beauty. According to the first category, beauty is purely subjective, something that can be seen, touched or felt. According to the second category beauty is objective, something which can be measured and scientifically studied. Each of these two theories fundamentally oppose the other, yet they all derive from a common core, the idea that beauty is inherently pleasurable.
The first school of thought, concerning beauty, regards the definition of beauty to be entirely relative. What is beautiful to me may not be beautiful to you, so your opinion about beauty would be irrelevant to my ability to appreciate beauty. Beauty therefore is subject to culture, each culture having its own set of ideas about what beauty consists of. Beauty then becomes a matter of opinion, but opinions are always subjective and based on your own perception of beauty rather than a universal standard.
A second school of thought, regarding beauty, sees beauty as something created by the mind. Everything in the world including the most simple objects of physical desire are perceived through the human brain, so beauty exists only relative to the human mind. Every object that exists in the universe, including beauty itself, is a creation of the mind. Because beauty exists outside of the mind, it is subjective, and not a concrete, measurable quality. Beauty therefore can only be perceived by the beholder, and beauty is not a quality inherent in objects.
The third school of thought, which I believe to be the true definition of beauty, believes that beauty is a unique physical state that cannot be measured. Rather, beauty is a state that is independent of any single mind or bodies, and that can only be perceived by the beholder. Because beauty is an indeterminable quality, there are no external grounds on which it can be measured or judged. For this reason, there is no right or wrong way to define beauty. Beauty is therefore subjective and not dependent on any definition.
Beauty then is the subjective experience that occurs when an object meets the aesthetic desires of its beholder. For some people, being beautiful means looking pretty, while for others, it is the splendor of their home. It is up to each individual to determine what beauty means to them and to establish how that defines their own aesthetic experience. Each individual differs, but beauty exists in all of us, because beauty is a subjective experience, an indeterminable quality, and a universal standard.