Definition of "estheticism" [estheticism]

• Variant of aestheticism. (noun)

American Heritage(R) Dictionary of the English Language, Fifth Edition. Copyright (c) 2011 by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. Published by Houghton Mifflin Harcourt Publishing Company. All rights reserved.

• ""subjects of humanity" seize possession of Goethe's poetry, as they had taken possession of the poetry of Germany with Lessing -- as shown by his whole work up to _Nathan_: for Lessing, the strongest adversary of mere "estheticism," really accomplished what those Anacreontic poets had merely wished to do -- or seemed to wish -- and brought literature into close touch with life."
• "In the course of that discussion, extending over a whole week, one of the participants Lee Yearley (a specialist in estheticism and, at the time, professor of religion at Stanford University) raised the question of whether there is ever any justification for killing."
• "He also mounts a furious assault on his early master Joyce, whose "hermetic ego" he feels had seduced him into a sterile estheticism."