Category of Beauty in Enlightenment Philosophers’ Aesthetics

Background. The study is devoted to the analysis of individual perception of contemplated objects. The works of Enlightenment philosophers are examined from the perspective of studying the cognition of image reflection, its internal and external definiteness in terms of the constituent features of beauty and pragmatic application. The author has determined that “beauty” in a perfect image represents the unity of subjective and objective perception. The purpose of the study is to identify and correlate subjective and objective perception of the image in the aesthetics of Enlightenment philosophers. Materials and methods. Research methods: comparative analysis, synthesis and generalization, historical and logical analysis of approaches to studying the concepts of Enlightenment philosophers, and bibliographic analysis in selecting scientific literature on the research topic. The concepts of G. Hegel, I. Kant, and D. Diderot served as the material for the research. Results. The Enlightenment period is characterized by the replacement of religious perception of the divine side of the creation of the world and man with a transition to rational and reasonable criteria for understanding the social and world order. The ideas of the individual began to be identified with the concept of reason, and the ideal of existence was filled with ideas of external and internal perfection. The work analyzes the concept of “beauty” and notes that philosophers identified this concept not with the free beauty that arises in the images of the contemplator, but filled it with internal expediency, the possibility of pragmatic application. The article examines “beauty” in its subjective perception of the surrounding world, noting that it does not exist separately from the mind of the individual and his interest in the object, noting that it is man who is capable of feeling the internal significance of the object. It is concluded that Enlightenment philosophers had a rational conceptual basis for contemplating an object, subjectively considering it beautiful, singling it out among the objects of their perception, endowing it with expediency and positive qualities. The practical significance of the work is due to the fact that the results can be used by specialists in the field of aesthetics, as well as when working on the creation of an object or image that consolidates internal and external perfection, and when developing analytical and prognostic solutions in the field of studying the authority of the human personality and the sustainable development of self‑awareness.