aesthetic property a property or quality such as being dainty, garish, graceful, balanced, charming, majestic, trite, elegant, lifeless, ugly, or beautiful. By contrast, non-aesthetic properties are properties that require no special sensitivity or perceptiveness to perceive – such as a painting’s being predominantly blue, its having a small red square in a corner or a kneeling figure in the foreground, or that the music becomes louder at a given point. Sometimes it is argued that a special perceptiveness or taste is needed to perceive a work’s aesthetic qualities, and that this is a defining feature of a property’s being aesthetic. A corollary of this view is that aesthetic qualities cannot be defined in terms of non-aesthetic qualities, though some have held that aesthetic qualities supervene on non-aesthetic qualities. See also AESTHETICS , BEAUTY, SUPERVENIENC. S.L.F.