The book The Desire for Beauty, written by Lê Thành Khôi and translated by Dr. Mohammad Yamani Doozi Sorkhabi, a faculty member of the Faculty of Educational Sciences and Psychology at Shahid Beheshti University, has been published.
This work was released in 2025 by the Center for Academic Publishing in a 310-page large-format edition.
According to Kant, is beauty something that does not rely on concepts? Is beauty merely subjective? Despite cultural diversity, perceptions, and various approaches to aesthetics, can we identify some shared foundations in how beauty is valued? Beauty is not confined to art alone—it is found in the simple objects of daily life, in fleeting paintings on walls, on the ground, in the sand, and in natural things where humans find resonance with themselves.
Through comparisons of works from a wide range of civilizations—African, Latin American, Asian, Western, and Oceanic—several universal criteria of beauty emerge: purity of lines, harmony of colors, rhythm and movement, and evident emotion. In these works, subjective and objective foundations intertwine, reflecting a dialectic that is both universal and specific. Every nation produces beauty, though in different forms and with different meanings based on its beliefs, ideas, environment, and available materials and techniques.
Is it possible to find common ground in aesthetic perception despite the diversity of cultures? In The Desire for Beauty, Lothar Kóv poses this question and explores it through the lens of different societies and their artistic and aesthetic expressions, offering thoughtful responses.
He argues that beauty is not confined to nature and art museums but can be discovered in the everyday lives of people from different cultures. Beauty is not necessarily found only in galleries or among valuable artifacts—it is intertwined with the daily lives of people who express it through handmade objects connected to their minds, emotions, anxieties, hopes, and ideals. Through these creations, they attempt to transcend their anxieties and build a bridge between the transient and the eternal. Thus, what may seem beautiful to one individual or group may not immediately appear so to another—unless the latter understands the roots of the creator’s simple or complex expressions and comes closer to their perception of beauty.