Aesthetics is a philosophical discipline aimed perceptions, meaning, beauty (in nature or art), or that relates exclusively to the concept of art. The aesthetic is thus designated area until the eighteenth century by science or critical fine taste, and since the nineteenth century became the philosophy of art.
Aesthetics refers, for example, the emotions caused by a work of art (or some gestures, attitudes, things), judgments of the work, what is specific or unique to an expression (artistic, literary, poetic, etc..), what might be described as beautiful as opposed to the useful and functional.
Aesthetics is generally within the philosophy of knowledge, science of the sensible, what is the meaning given in intuition or vision, that is to say, in space and time, as opposed to what is the intelligible, the understanding or pure reason, or metaphysics.
In common parlance, the word is synonymous with aesthetic beauty. And as the name, aesthetics is a concept denoting all those characteristics that determine the appearance of something, often synonymous with design or physical aspect of the human body.
Source: http://fr.wikipedia.org/wiki/Esth% C3% A9tique
