7. History of Aesthetics: Hellenistic Philosophy

The Stoics and Epicureans

The hellenistic period in philosophy is often said to begin with the death of Alexander the Great, one on Aristotle’s students, around 323 BC. When speaking broadly about this period of philosophical thought, the ideas often revolve around ethics, logic, and physics. Rarely do ideas in aesthetics get a stage of their own. Just because Hellenistic philosophers focused their attention on these other areas dos not mean they had no thoughts about concepts, like beauty.

The two most prominent schools were the Stoics and the Epicureans. Neither group developed a fully worked out system or theory of aesthetics. But we can explore what they did say about beauty and art.