Beauty in the Persian Garden

This paper is a philosophical review of aspects of beauty in the Persian Garden. The first part is a general review of aesthetics theories concluding with two notions of beauty. The former is a human-centered view that defines beauty as a sensory pleasure, while the latter view is that of traditional art, which defines the cognition of beauty as a demystifying process applied to nature or to a work of art to achieve a deeper understanding of its quintessential ‘truth’. The second part reviews the principles of beauty in the Persian Garden, namely: order and balance; simplicity; utility; knowledge; dignity and identity; taste; symbolism; dignity; tranquility; truth and virtue. On this basis, the authors argue that the Persian Garden aims at representing the cosmic truth in a limited landscape, the beauty of which is not merely sensory and objective, but rather ontological and spiritual.