Aesthetics is the area of philosophy that deals with beauty and art, and with the creation and appreciation of beauty. Destiny chapters contained essentially no material about aesthetics or art. Does this mean that aesthetics or art are unimportant to our achieving Destiny goals? Certainly not!

Aesthetics was excluded primarily because we do not have a problem in that area of human life. Destiny focused almost exclusively on our most troublesome and chronic problem areas and our potential to overcome them. It is, however, appropriate and responsible to discuss aesthetics now to ensure that that most essential area of human life is recognized in its importance.

From a philosophical perspective, the purpose of aesthetics is to explain the meaning of beauty to us, so that we can participate in understanding and appreciating beauty and thus develop a sense of wonderment and joy in our existence. Beauty is the contrast to the other parts of our philosophical existence, which are physical, political, purely intellectual and comparatively cold and opposite to our raw response to beauty. Beauty provides inspiration, hope and joy to us in the very act of existing.

I will now depart from using the word beauty and instead use the word art in its most general sense. Art is about the perception of beauty and its opposite, and the creation of mediums to display those perceptions for our general use. Let us include painting, music, sculpture, dance, drama, poetry and other creative writings, that all speak to a reality that we might understand subliminally by personal perception rather than intellectual categorization and dissection of the example of the art form.

In short, we feel art. We do not think art. Art is both a stimulus to live and a soothing or exciting expression of the most powerful of our human perceptions. Art is appreciated emotionally, it is timeless, and it is the form of creativity that expresses our feelings about our world and our life, mostly in non-verbal ways.

Thus, music touches our "soul" with or without words. Thus, we experience awe in viewing the perfection of Michelangelo's sculpture of David. Thus, ballet speaks to us as a perfect blending of our conceptions and emotions with expressive physical movement. Thus, a truly good painting captures us as we feel the intensity of the moment and the ideal captured forever by the artist.

Note that the inherited genetic human limitations in intellect, that deny appreciation and contribution to most of humanity in advancing the human race through science and applied technology, do not diminish our fundamental appreciation and perception of art. We are not all accomplished artists, but our ability to enjoy the art created by others and ourselves is present in great portion in almost all of us. I may not enjoy opera, but I can certainly feel the joy of opera aficionados expressing what opera means to them. When I, in turn, express my feelings about a painting, I know that the opera lover understands my innermost feelings. Which of us has never been moved by classical, contemporary or popular music?

Overall, art is an expressed, physical form of acknowledgement and appreciation of life. It is that constant, beautiful reminder to all of us that our life, our very existence, has a higher meaning.

Art is treated by various people as good or bad, sophisticated or simple, rich or relatively barren. The critics, who tell us whether a play or an art exhibit is worth attending, are speaking only of their perceptions. Appreciation of art is a very personal experience. There is only one kind or type of bad art, and that is an art form example that evokes literally no response from those exposed. It is what we might call "dead" art, for it says nothing to us.

How can we approach tragic drama or music in their many forms and examples as art or aesthetics if the subject of aesthetics is beauty? The 1812 Overture was about war, death, and human struggle. Yet, does it not evoke deep and profound emotion from us when we listen to it? Is there a beauty in tragedy? Perhaps we can see a sense of beauty in the human struggle to survive and to grow. Les Miserable's also was about human struggle in a war of independence, and death was there. It is obvious that the subject chosen for that art form spoke to our "eternal" struggle to survive, to grow, and to throw off the shackles that bind us. Thus, we find pain and death in art, and thus the beauty is in the conquering of the pain or death, not in its happening.

We then understand art and aesthetics in terms of progress and contrasts. Art explores all of our emotions from horror and hopelessness to salvation and glory. Art is that unacknowledged force that caused me to understand, subliminally, that our highest intellectual pursuits are worth pursuing. Our intellect will be balanced by our deepest understanding of art as we proceed to develop our future. Aesthetics tells us that there is a "why" to existence, but aesthetics does not give us a direct answer, only guidance in appreciating existence and a sense of higher purpose.