Reflections on Rat Fest ’25
Showing only those parts of the discussion which lead to #2106.
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With an account, you can revise, criticize, and comment on ideas.Justin says it’s better to spell it ‘aesthetics’ than ‘esthetics’.
My macOS Dictionary app says “aesthetics … (also esthetics)”.
Isn’t ‘esthetics’ just the American spelling and ‘aesthetics’ is British?
From https://nocoaaa.com/blog/aesthetics-vs-esthetics:
Many individuals are confused about the distinction between Aesthetics and Esthetics. The only difference between these two terms is that they are spelled differently. People in European and Commonwealth countries use the term aesthetics. Americans, on the other hand, commonly use the term esthetic.
Justin says no philosopher would drop the ‘a’, including Tom Hyde, whom Justin calls a serious British philosopher.
Ayn Rand’s book The Romantic Manifesto has 114 matches for the string ‘esthetic’ and no matches for the string ‘aesthetic’. Rand was a serious philosopher who did extensive work on art and (a)esthetics.
There’s also her talk ‘The Esthetic Vacuum of Our Age’, though it may have been the Ayn Rand Institute that chose that spelling.