Kant characterised the interest in beauty as "moral" because it derives from moral interest in practical ends. As such, an interest in beauty indicates a person's predisposition to a good moral disposition. A theory in which I agree.
Aesthetic beauty is one of the most important traditional values, something vastly undervalued in modern society since the emergence of post modern art. Post modern art is nothing but a perverse mockery of beauty and seeks to elevate its own value to the same standard as truly masterful works of art which meet the highest standard of aesthetic beauty. Again there is the subversion of aesthetic ideals and beauty where that which is ugly is artificially elevated to the same level as authentic aesthetic beauty.
You see a piece of art and you aesthetically experience that artwork. Realising how it is a composite yet unitary substance of matter and spirit. Human expression captured on a canvass for others to experience aesthetically. Post modern art only mocks beauty and is a disgusting synthetic piece of trash which reflects the degeneracy of the modern age through it's subversion of aesthetic values.
Conceptions of beauty and aesthetic values have degenerated over time. Below I'll go over some of the philosophical conceptions of beauty.
IDEALIST: Those who are idealists believe in art looking better than what it represents. They hold the metaphysical view that associates reality to ideas in the mind rather than to material objects. It lays emphasis on the mental or spiritual components of experience. Like materialism is strictly focused on matter, idealism is strictly focused on spirit.
In Plato's Theory of Forms he believed that everything in reality was the artistic expression of pure spirit. So in the ethereal would exist the perfect tree for example, and it is expressed artistically into reality in an imperfect form.
He believed that reality is a mental construct closely connected to ideas. A plane of metaphysical perfect representations of any given thing, but they are created imperfectly in physical reality. In the same way when you paint something it never looks how you envisioned it
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CLASSICAL: People who subscribe to the classical conception of beauty believe that beauty consists of an arrangement of integral parts into a coherent whole, according to symmetry, proportion and harmony.
Aristotle had a similar idea of beauty as Kant, in the sense that it isn't based on personal preference, but in truth. According to Aristotle beauty could be measured. “The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree,”.
We can see this in nature as well with the Golden ratio. Nature is definitely beautiful. There is nothing more aesthetically pleasing than viewing vast expanses of nature from a mountain top for example. Brahman is certainly artistic with their creation.
UTILITITARIAN: Those who hold the utilitarian view on art believe that art should be directly and immediately useful to society in order for it to have any meaning.
For example society is trying to resolve an issue, utilitarians believe that art should be used to resolve that issue, therefore only having a practical application. This removes any spiritual connections with art as shown in the Classical and Idealist conceptions of beauty and reduces art to nothing more than a tool with no deeper meaning at all.
POSTMODERN: The postmodern conception of beauty seeks to subvert previous conceptions of beauty and broaden the scope of what is considered as art. They espouse this philosophy of "relativism" where there is no such thing as objective truth, such as true aesthetic beauty. Instead they are focused more on the relative truths of each person.
Similar to how gender is now a relative truth specific to each person and how they feel, art and all its meaning has been gradually eroded and degenerated into the shit we see today with Postmodernism.
One example of postmodern art is a piece of shit in a jar! How the f**k can a turd in a jar be elevated to the status of art in the first place?! How can a piece of shit in a jar be elevated to the same level as the Mona Lisa or other such classical masterpieces of the Renaissance?!
This is why I think aesthetics are a moral imperative. Aristotle and Plato had differing, but normal conceptions of aesthetic beauty, connecting it with objective reality and spirituality. Even Chinese philosophers like Confucious believed beauty and goodness were connected.