Abstract

For Koreans, 'being aesthetic' is referred to the situation of 'being matching.' Due to the attraction of the values of 'being aesthetic' they desire to have their beautiful face, beautiful figure, sweet temper, beautiful clothes, beautiful house, well-off life, beautiful world. In this vein, Koreans often use the aesthetic words such as 'beauty,' 'beautiful,' 'being beautiful,' and 'making something beautiful' when they represent their desires. From the Korean perspective, the phrases are composed of two different lexical entries, '아름' ('beauty') and 다음 ('matching'). This composition enables them to produce various meanings of 'being beautiful' by weaving other nouns such as 'taste,' 'being stylish, 'trembling, 'ringing,' 'individual,' 'whole,' 'combining,' and 'rolling.' This paper attempts to identify what Koreans mean by 'being aesthetic' by analyzing their related words, 'taste,' 'being stylish,'trembling,'ringing,' 'individual,' 'whole,' 'combining,' and 'rolling. The analysis result shows that 'being aesthetic' the subject 'beauty' reaches a condition of matching it with its surroundings by trembling and ringing both inside and outside. Futhermore, this indicates that the transformation of 'I', a private being, into 'we,' a public being, is a phenomenon of revealing 'being aesthetic.' In this line, the individual entity, 'I,' is an important being in that it is based on 'we' by matching it with other entities in the range of 'we.' From this point of view we may suggest that the individual entity, 'I,' should not remain in it's status, but be developed into the public entity, 'we.' thus becoming the 'bigger I,' a grand person, because this process enables Koreans to become a grand person of virtue, benevolence and righteousness.