The subject of the article is a reference to beauty in the preamble to the Constitution of the Republic of Poland of 1997. First, the legislative history of the fragment of the introduction to the Constitution, which constitutes beauty as a universal value, has been presented. Then it has been interpreted, taking the position that the constitutional concept of beauty is not only an aesthetic category but also an ethical category. Finally, a study of jurisprudence and normative acts has allowed to define the scope of beauty operationalization as a constitutional value. Critical reference has been made to the state of affairs in which beauty, being an element of constitutional axiology, plays a barely noticeable role in the practice of creating and applying Polish law.

Evolutionist Perspective in Empirical Aesthetics. Premises, Traditions, Problems

The article presents the main assumptions, traditions and problems, which make up the evolutionary perspective in studies of human aesthetic taste. Article begins by describing the main assumptions of evolutionary aesthetics and presenting the aesthetic theory of Ellen Dissanayake, which is regarded as the most general approach to this problem. Then the article discusses the natural evolutionary adaptations, distinguished by evolutionary scientists. Evolutionary theory assumes that as a result of development of the human makeup in the course of evolution have developed some universal aesthetic predispositions (e.g. a penchant for of the representations of certain animals or preferring images of a day over images of a night). The final part of the article discusses some difficulties, which evolutionary aesthetics has to face. The objective of this article is to draw attention to social scientists on this research perspective, as in the author’s opinion it can enrich the classical studies based on the paradigm derived from the works of Pierre Bourdieu.