we can define beauty or ugliness, which is not a discussion of the essence of beauty, but only a definition of its scope as a theoretical research object. Beauty is not equal to art, aesthetic feeling or artistic pleasure. It is only a part of artistic texts and works, that is, the purposeful part of "purposeless" and the affirmative part of people's artistic "expectation". This expectation is not ready-made and concrete, but only the possibility of making some response to the objective characteristics of the world. It is a psychological schema of people. Anyone who adapts to people's artistic expectations will immediately accept it, that is, assimilate it, and make a positive emotional response to it, that is, produce pleasure; Therefore, in a nutshell, beauty is a symbolic object and its objectification characteristics that can be directly assimilated by people's emotions, that is, to meet people's positive emotional expectations.

here, this objective feature is not limited to the real world, but also includes people's imaginary world, such as people's imaginary expectations for heaven, gods and angels. This objective feature is conceptual. In reality, if there is no object characteristic that can meet people's artistic expectation, people will create it themselves. The so-called object is the object of emotional betting-that is, the things that emotions are generated, expressed and felt, because emotions can't be generated for no reason, can't be expressed abstractly, and can't be felt out of thin air. It must be pointed, specifically, the image in art-including real objects and conceptual objects; The so-called feature is a phenomenon that fully shows the essence. "Feature is the most essential thing, which can only be seen on the most perfect individual representative." That is, it shows the essence of the whole class on a concrete object. Once the object characteristics in this reality or concept are the same as people's artistic expectations, they can be directly accepted by people, which is beauty.

Therefore, beauty is more than just a good appearance. It has no universal formal standard, such as harmony, symmetry and bright colors. Although people love things with these characteristics, it cannot be used to measure all species. "Compared with people, the most beautiful monkey is still ugly." It can only be measured according to the natural purpose of the species to which it belongs. Achieving the natural purpose is full of characteristics, and what can be directly assimilated by people's psychology is beauty. It must conform to the purpose of that species and show its characteristics, so that it is meaningful to people. Therefore, beauty is not beautiful, but it can be beautiful.

On the contrary, people's psychology can't directly accept anything that doesn't fit people's positive artistic expectations, but they have to make some psychological adjustments to adapt to it. This is adaptation, and the result is negative emotional reaction, that is, disgust. Therefore, ugliness is to force people to adapt, that is, to meet people's negative emotional expectations and its objectification characteristics. Generally speaking, what is offensive is ugliness. It constitutes another part of "purposiveness" in Kant's "purposiveness without purpose". So ugliness is not ugly, although it can be ugly.