1. Home
  2. Religion & Spirituality
  3. Agnosticism / Atheism
genre
<Back to Last Page >     <Glossary Index>

 Related Terms
• aesthetics
• beauty

 

Definition:
The word genre is a French term which simply means "type." It is used to refer to some specific sub-group in an artistic field. For example, historical biographies is a genre of writing.

The word genre has also come to be applied to a particular style of painting in which scenes of normal life are depicted without any idealization.

Also Known As: none

Alternate Spellings: none

Common Misspellings: none

Related Resources:

What is Aesthetics?
In philosophy, aesthetics is the study of beauty and taste, whether in the form of the comic, the tragic or the sublime. Aesthetics has traditionally been part of other philosophical pursuits like the investigation of epistemology or ethics. However, it started to come into its own and become a more independent pursuit under Immanuel Kant, the German philosopher who saw aesthetics as a unitary and self-sufficient type of human experience.

What is Philosophy?
What is philosophy? Is there any point in studying philosophy, or is it a useless subject? What are the different branches of philosophy - what's the difference between aestheitcs and ethics? What's the difference between metaphysics and epistemology?

<Back to Last Page >     <Glossary Index>

Explore Agnosticism / Atheism

More from About.com

  1. Home
  2. Religion & Spirituality
  3. Agnosticism / Atheism

©2008 About.com, a part of The New York Times Company.

All rights reserved.