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 and artistic pleasure. It is only a part of artistic texts and works, that is, the purposeful part of "no purpose" and the affirmative part of people's artistic "expectation". This expectation is not ready-made and concrete, but only the possibility of making some kind of 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 that can be directly assimilated by human emotions and its objectification characteristics, 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 are no object characteristics that can meet people's artistic expectations, people will create them themselves. The so-called object is the object of emotional betting-that is, the things that emotions are generated, expressed and felt, because emotions cannot be generated for no reason, expressed abstractly, and felt out of thin air. It must be pointed out that, specifically, images in art-including real objects and conceptual objects; The so-called characteristics are phenomena that fully show the essence. "Characteristics are the most essential things, which can only be seen in the most perfect individual representatives." That is to show 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, it can be directly accepted by people, which is beauty.

Therefore, beauty is not just a good-looking appearance, it has no universal formal standards, such as harmony, symmetry and bright colors. Although people like things with these characteristics, it cannot be used to measure all species. "Compared with people, the most beautiful monkey is still ugly." Can only be measured according to the natural purpose of the species. Achieving the purpose of nature is full of characteristics, and what can be directly assimilated by human psychology is beauty. It must meet the purpose of that species and show its characteristics so that it is meaningful to talents. Therefore, beauty is not beautiful, but it can be beautiful.

On the contrary, anything that is incompatible with people's positive artistic expectations can't be accepted directly, but must be adjusted psychologically to adapt. This is adaptation, and the result is a negative emotional response, which is disgust. Therefore, ugliness is to force people to adapt, that is, to meet people's negative emotional expectations of symbolic objects and their objectification characteristics. Generally speaking, ugliness is disgusting. It constitutes another part of "purposiveness" in Kant's "purposiveness without purpose". So ugly is not ugly, although it can be ugly.