aestheticism

See also: æstheticism

English edit

aestheticism (countable and uncountable, plural aestheticisms)

A doctrine which holds aesthetics or beauty as the highest ideal or most basic standard.
- 1938, Norman Lindsay, chapter XIII, in Age of Consent, London: T[homas] Werner Laurie […], →OCLC, page 133:
  He went over his canvases with disgust and anger, unable to see virtue in any one of them. Even his sacred Oyster Girl went back on him. The creature of a vitiated æstheticism, he could only suppose that conceit had played an abominable trick on his eyesight.
- 1972, Triumph - Volume 7, page 33:
  Born the most sensitive of children into an unhappy family that misreared and misschooled him, Rilke recoiled into introspectiveness and dilletante^[sic] aestheticism, and long remained there; the world, or outwardness, was what had hurt him, was the enemy.

doctrine which holds aesthetics as the highest ideal