noun. An artistic and intellectual movement originating in Britain in the late 19th century and characterized by the doctrine that beauty is the basic principle from which all other principles, especially moral ones, are derived.

noun. Devotion to and pursuit of the beautiful; sensitivity to artistic beauty and refined taste.

noun. The doctrine of æsthetics; æsthetic principles; devotion to the beautiful in nature and art.

noun. A doctrine which holds aesthetics or beauty as the highest ideal or most basic standard.

"The combination Nietzsche-Wilde-Mallarmé, incongruous as it is, recurs frequently in English aestheticism and it is amusing and symptomatic to find it back in the early Gide, Mr. Scott, however, was clearly not amused."

aesthete  aesthetics  

Philistine  alienage  almshouse  banqueting-house  caricaturist