Ideas, relating to the world around us and the human's relationship to it, in philosophy are called as categories. Accordingly, the beauty and ugliness can also be defined as a special kind of category - aesthetic categories. As categories, they differ from just emotional aesthetic values. Aesthetic categories form the basis of the specialized vocabulary, which is necessary in order to express our aesthetic experience in a word and thereby make it available to others.

However, "simply beautiful" is perceived differently than the sublime: as Kant says, in the first case we are in a state of quiet contemplation, in the second - excitement, enthusiasm. Let's try to re-interpret the categories "beauty" and "beautiful" in new theoretical contexts, including a wide range of modern knowledge gained in the social sciences in recent decades.

It has been known for a long time such a type of human relationship to the world, in which the objective and subjective as the beginning would be equivalent and are in a state of harmonic balance.

On the one hand - like a person, which reacts to the world as an individual in the fullness of his spiritual qualities, on the other - like a subject relevant to that person simply because he is exactly like he is. The very subject I just like or I don’t. And this fact is taken as an absolute, without any analysis or justification, acting as a basis for judgments of taste.

The aesthetic attitude, along with the utilitarian and theoretical, can be characterized as universal.

The most ancient form of aesthetic attitude is the difference between beautiful and ugly.

The ability to produce such a distinction has, obviously, biological roots, as in the behavior of highly organized animals can be observed some elements that resemble the aesthetic human's reaction.

But the human sense of beauty, which is qualitatively differs from the primitive reactions of animals in breadth, stability and richness of emotional shades, had been forming on this biological basis for many millennia. We can assume that the mating instincts connection with the typical reflex of primates "curiosity", manifesting itself in an ongoing effort to hear and feel everything coming across unusual objects, contributed to this. It is probable that this reflex helped to transform the emerging response to a strictly defined type of stimuli in a sustained response to the shape of things. However, the decisive role in the genesis of an actual aesthetic attitude as a specifically human quality played the emergence of social forms of life and culture that embodies the historical memory of humanity and the developed models of behavior, as well as the types of relationship to reality in meaningful and symbolic forms. Primary biological reactions in this case do not disappear: for example, the physical beauty remains for us as the strongest magnet. However, these reactions are much more complex and refined. But the most important thing is that a person acquires the capacity to evaluate as "beautiful" and "ugly" variety of things and phenomena, regardless of any kind of connection with their biological needs. These estimates are the result of culture, they carry a social content. For instance, a nice gold color, resembling in color of sunlight, is one of the reasons that the metal is not only an embodiment of value, but also an aesthetic form of wealth. The peculiarity of the external form performs the function of a launcher, setting "an installation on the aesthetic."

Human's history can be viewed from different perspectives: as a process of a spiritual self-development, as a progress in the realization of freedom, the progress of productive forces. We can also regard it as a continuous expansion of the human understanding of beauty.  The starting point of this process is a certain core of biologically based responses to a fixed set of stimuli, which are gradually enveloped by new substantive sections, pushing the boundaries of the area, in which the concept of beauty is real and valid.

This continuous process has its own specific internal mechanism - the conversion unaesthetic relations and reactions into the aesthetic. The benefit, and the welfare, and the truth, and moral dignity under certain conditions may be reinterpreted aesthetically, becoming the real internal cause of beauty. This unsightly aesthetic value is stored in a "withdrawal" form. Even without disappearing, it fades into the background, moving into the "rolled", "virtual" form.

Some nations had been considering for a long time that the festinating gait was an obligatory attribute of the female beauty. The ancient Chinese even produced special shoes, in which it is just impossible to make broad steps, and the ancient Egyptians with the same goal made too narrow the hem of the female skirt. Why could receive such a custom? What unaesthetic meaning did lay in his way? Mainly the one that only women who are not engaged in work could ware the constricting garments, i.e. women from rich and noble families. The demonstration of idleness associated with high social status by acquiring an indirect form, the form of "hint", was transformed into an aesthetic form, into a conception of beauty.

The implementation of unaesthetic values into the aesthetic one - is a process no less mysterious than the biblical transformation of water into wine.

The psychological laws, managing this mystery, are very complex and not fully understood. Therefore, it is absolutely impossible to predict what effect will acquire aesthetic value, and what does not. However, when this happens, we can see again and again that the aesthetic attitude arises from the unaesthetic and it is, therefore, a special stage in the process of inclusion of an item in the system of culture.

As beauty absorbs the contents of public practice and culture, it appears not like a kind of permanent nature, but as something changeable. This variability has three main vectors.

The first of them – is the ethno cultural.

We provide it because the understanding and images of beauty vary from nation to nation, and among the nations, which belong to different civilizations, they are separated one from another far enough. This does not preclude the cultural interactions, which grows stronger as the international contacts become more intense. But, nevertheless, in the context of such an interaction each nation introduces into the idea of beauty something special, thereby maintaining its spiritual identity. A modern Tokyo resident wares a European suit, looks European films, listening to American rock, but, like the medieval Jap, he doesn't like the symmetrical shape, while in European cultures symmetry, by contrast, had long been considered as one of the hallmarks of beauty.

Further, within the same culture notions of beauty are usually not exactly the same in different social strata and classes. For the peasant who got accustomed to having good health and the strength, a secular "air" pretty likely would have seemed not refined and elegant, but simply painful. In this context, we can talk about the social vector of beauty.

Finally, the beauty has the cultural historical vector of the evolution associated with the fact that both the national culture and many regional civilizations, spanning national cultures ("Western", "African", " Islamist ", etc.), and also the whole human civilization, are immersed in the general stream of history, in which each of them also changes. This process captures all parts of life, including the scope of aesthetic relationship to reality.

Considering the ability to treat the world aesthetically, in its historical development, we must note that the "beauty industry" has very moving boundaries, and these boundaries can be clearly defined and rigid - but can also be "fuzzy" and permeable. However, in the dynamics of all the changes that are associated with the development of aesthetic features, there is a steady trend - as the development of civilization grows the conception of the beauty internally differentiates. Undifferentiated at the beginning, it gradually becomes more complicated, and people begin to distinguish its different colors and species: elegance, grace, beauty, proportionality, etc. Gradually the sense of beauty transforms from direct response to color and form into a complex experience, which includes a deep spiritual content associated with our views on what should be a man and his surrounding world. Our life begins to relate to the aesthetic ideal from our imagination and thoughts. Thus was born an idea of the beautiful and the idea of the beautiful as the higher, spiritual and refined, socially significant form of beauty.

In the initial period of history "a substantive field" of beauty is still very narrow. But beyond biologically determined attractiveness of men and women we already can see here the desire to decorate the utensils and weapons of a variety of simple ornaments. Nature, full of dangers, from the standpoint of beauty is not perceived.  The attitude to it is utilitarian; it can't become the object of a disinterested admiration yet, because man is too concerned about what he should take from nature to sustain its existence. Perhaps it is true that in the Late Paleolithic man begins to feel the beauty of the animal. In any case, the famous cave paintings of Altamira, which relate to the Magdalenian period (15-18 thousands of years BC), perfectly convey not only the shape of wild men and bulls, but their plasticity, emphasizing their physical strength and momentum of motion. However we can't be sure that the authors themselves regarded this as both a certain value and object of admiration. Rather, they simply sought to emphasize the qualities that made the life of a hunting tribe difficult and dangerous and, consequently, were the most important for them and attracted the greatest attention.

The more specialized notation of Beauty ("Kalos") we find in Ancient Greece, what corresponds to the important new shifts in the history of human culture and the spiritual world of the individual. In Greece, the beauty for the first time is recognized as a kind of special quality and as a specific sphere of life. However, the enjoyment of beauty gains in independent importance, whereas in the more archaic cultures, it is not separated from the worship of the gods, as well as from other kinds of pleasure; it is even partly merging with them.

In ancient times finds its completion the process of establishing the higher understanding of beauty - the idea of beauty, - which had begun in the civilizations of the Ancient East.

The beautiful differs from other kinds of beauty quantitatively (the beautiful as superlative degree of beauty) and, the most important, qualitatively.

First of all, the perception of beauty involves the moment of mediation: it is assumed to relate the object, being evaluated as excellent, with some measure or model. For an ancient man it was usually some divine origin. For us the aesthetic ideal is this measure, which embodied inherent in society at a particular stage of development of an aesthetically designed presentation of duty.

The beautiful always claim to be some flexibility and in varying degrees realize these claims. In this sense, it cannot be regarded as something purely subjective, depending only on me personally. "The concept of beauty,- wrote a famous German philosopher G. Gadamar - includes publicity, the presence of authority".  Hence comes into existence the opportunity to judge about the beautiful not only explaining and justifying one's own aesthetic evaluation and relations, but trying to convince the companions. However, these judgments are based not on the concepts and logical proofs, but on an uncertain standard of taste or "common sense". It doesn't have in this case the decisive importance if there is a "common sense" actually: it is important that its existence is assumed as a prerequisite for aesthetic experience.

Finally, in a number of different types and degrees of beauty the beautiful particularly differs with spiritual richness. The lowest forms of beauty are almost entirely enclosed within their sensually perceived form and are completely conditioned by it. The beautiful pushes that form, we can say. Through the sensual envelope of beauty some inner sense has always seemed to shine through, which, however, we cannot adequately convey in words.

Hardly anyone would call the Renoir's Parisian’s beautiful. Although they have something that could be called an ordinary appeal, they certainly mediocre, and their appeal is not sublime at all. This beauty is purely physical, whereas Anna Akhmatova in the portrait of Yuri Annenkov is really beautiful, because her whole look embodies the proud majesty of creation, the hard life of the human spirit.

The beauty in its highest form is directly conjugated with truth, justice and good, and the content of these concepts is partly pouring into each other. It is no coincidence that while the formation of ideas of beauty the word "Beauty" began to be used for the instructive characteristics and valuation of human actions. For example, in Homer's "Iliad," the concept of "Kalos" ("the beautiful") was first applied not only to gods, to a woman, dresses and weapons, but also to characterize the actions of heroes. The ancient Greeks were the first who began to consider the general features of beauty, to form the conditions that could make it possible, when they brought the idea of beauty in a particular concept.  From that time the beautiful becomes an object of analysis, the problem of philosophical reflection.

The first fully developed theory of beauty was created in the 4-th century BC by the great Greek philosopher Plato. The very Plato put the question of what is "generally the beautiful" - "beautiful for everyone and all times", - for the first time.

While learning the beautiful, thought Plato, we go from the physical body to the idea of a beautiful body in general, then - to the beautiful souls, beautiful manners and customs, to the beautiful knowledge. At the end of this way we find ourselves in the extrasensory realm of ideas, where we find what we sought - the idea, the archetype of beauty. This is the beautiful as it is, the reflection of which is the limited and imperfect sensual beauty of earthly things. But the human soul, falling into the realm of ideas, is unable to hold on the top of the world. They rush down to his earthly abode, retaining only a vague recollection of the true order of Universe and truly beautiful.

Like Plato, another great philosopher of antiquity, Aristotle, also sought to prove the universality and the universal validity of the beautiful. But he did it without resorting to mysticism of transcendental realm of ideas. To deny the commitment, the unity in the understanding of beauty, from his point of view, would be to deny the reality of beauty: that would contradict all our experience.

Developing this idea, Aristotle tried to highlight some features and qualities of things that constitute the objective basis of beauty. From his point of view, it is primarily the unity, wholeness, balance components, the proportionality of the beautiful object to its surroundings. These symptoms can be found in the beautiful objects of any kind: in the living creatures, in the architectural structures, in the literary works.

The idea of beauty entered into a culture with its opposite - the notion of ugly, often mated with evil and imperfection. In the ancient Greeks’ mind, and in the subsequent development of civilization, the mess usually acted as the aesthetic form of evil, as the external image of the dark, destructive forces, opposing the light and the heroic beginning, personified by the gods. Here can be, for example, the characters of Greek mythology - giants with 100 arms, with whom Zeus had to fight, disgusting Gorgon, seeing which people turned to stone, ugly Cyclops, devouring daring travelers and others. But in the early stages of history there had been a very different interpretation of the ugliness: it acts as an aesthetic challenge to the purely external deceptive beauty, and in this sense it is sometimes mated with a hidden wisdom, inaccessible to superficial understanding of the life true happiness, and even turns out to be disguised form of beauty (the beautiful spirituality).

Such an approach we can find already in the ancient Greek Cynics, who believed that an attachment to beauty takes away the most important - the spiritual freedom. Wanting not to depend either on wealth or on glory and the beauty, Cynic aestheticized what other people referred to repulsive. They neglected the propriety, wore rags, and even advocated dialogs with women who attracted nobody already: Cynics have been convinced that only such women can appreciate the attention to themselves.

Fashion inevitably means the leveling of taste, lifestyle, world view; "ripple" of mode from time to time gives the instantaneous emissions of originality, but it also slowly turns this "newborn" originality into its opposite - mass, averaged, replicable.

From fashion history it is known another contradiction that defines the dynamics of its motion - the contradiction between natural and artificial. Fashion, as Hegel said, is a man's change of his natural form. It is no mere chance that one of the most serious charges against fashion - is her constant attacks on common sense and destiny of nature. A classic case in this point of view may serve a costume - it is like a concentrated expression of the phenomenon of fashion. Recall incredibly large sizes of "Long-toe" shoes with bells, constricting tight corsets, which disfigured the shape's line, haircuts, which were like an integral architectural construction, etc.

It is no coincidence that "favorite" time of fashion - is mostly free, festive time. There is a division of the world into two parts - "work and care", where power of fashion decreases, and the rest is defined usually through the concept of "free time", where fashion reigns. Roland Barthes noted in this connection: "In fashion festival has a tyrannical power, subjugating the time: the time of Fashion is the most festive time". The history of costume shows indeed that fashion has flourished precisely at times, which had a celebratory attitude.

Fashion allows a person to rise above the world of affairs, to go out of its frame in another temporary sphere of activity, which has its own focus. Fashion, like the game, is some kind of a redundancy, decoration. J. Huizinga emphasizes that the game is represented as "interlude in the course of everyday life, as repose". Because of very this feature of fashion psychologists say about the psycho-physiological relaxation, which is especially important in today's context,  taking into account the negative impact on the individual factors, such as the monotony of many manufacturing processes, the monotony of the urban environment.

So, we can specify the certain places like playgrounds, where the "fashion's game" unfolds, or, more precisely, fashion as a game. In ancient times these were, for example, agora and the forum, in the Middle Ages until the 18-th century - urban areas and courtyards of the European monarchs of different scale, then this function had a theater, fairs, balls, gala events, dinners, visits. In modern times many points leisure space may be noted - from cafes and attractions to the house and the street where the fashion "concentrates".

Every time a change of fashion revives aesthetic experience "full of sensual life", which man is afraid to lose. Fashion realizes itself in the system of aesthetic evaluations and definitions. However, while involving in this system, the concept of fashion itself becomes an aesthetic category with a value irreducible to the value of other categories of this system: a beautiful and elegant mustn't be fashionable, but fashion is always attractive in its own way and thus, calling something fashionable, we attribute it to the number of aesthetic values.