It is easy to read a book, look at an image, hear a sound, and claim it as beautiful. Unless someone else denies that claim to beautiful, then how is beauty to be analyzed? Can beauty be seen through one person as objective and seen really subjective? What makes something an object of art and how are we to appreciate it? Two of the greatest minds of 5th-4th c. BCE, Plato and Aristotle introduce what essentially is the backbone of how art began to be assessed. Plato was more focused on the metaphysical and psychological part of part where as Aristotle viewed art as something that is common to all. An epic poem written by Homer in the early 8th c. BCE depicts a journey that consists of a hero of the ancient Greek times and his journey home. This world-renowned poem can be argued and debated over for the aesthetic value of which that it contains. So what constitutes this poem as aesthetically appealing or beautiful according to Aristotle and Plato? How do these two philosophers view the value or art and what constitute their assessments? Not only does this poem, The Odyssey, display illustrative details that arouse the reader’s imagination but also it addresses a bigger problem, which Homer structures to be the main aesthetic value of beauty. This epic poem was written as a result of the great wars during the time of Greek gods and unlikely realities, yet The Odyssey holds value throughout all categories.
