Beauty and aesthetics

[billcu1]

I brought up on another forum aesthetics (and on this one previously) and one person’s opinion was that the ancient greek philosophers tended to make something mysterious out of something not so mysterious. Kant was quoted as saying that beauty depends on goodness. Someone else maybe familiar with Kant but one of the sefirot in Kabbalah is called or translated as beauty. I would like to know what true beauty is and what is the beauty of God?

 

[Ion]

From my personal experience I can tell you that there was a peirod in my life when any person that i’ve seen was somehow beatiful; with my mind i knew was not beautiful because for example one was old or so, but my perception was of beautiful. I was wondering and I can’t explain it.

 

[paduard]

They say that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Applicable in my opinion to Eros as distinct from Agape.

 

[jimmy]

I brought up on another forum aesthetics (and on this one previously) and one person’s opinion was that the ancient greek philosophers tended to make something mysterious out of something not so mysterious. Kant was quoted as saying that beauty depends on goodness. Someone else maybe familiar with Kant but one of the sefirot in Kabbalah is called or translated as beauty. I would like to know what true beauty is and what is the beauty of God?

Dostoevsky said in the Brothers Karamazov something along the lines god and the devil do battle over beauty, and their battleground is the hearts of men.

A persons sense of beauty affects their sense of truth and goodness. If your emotions and passions - and consequently your sense of beauty - are perverted, it is going to change your sense of goodness and of truth. Beauty, goodness and truth go together.

Many saints have spoken of God as the Beautiful, and our purpose in this life is the pursuit of that beauty. There is a passion in us that drives us toward God. Maximus the Confessor spoke of God as the beautiful, and it is our desire for the good and the beautiful that drives us to love God.

 

[The_Serpent]

If you look at the body, we have two eyes two ears, arms and legs. The beauty we see is partly based on that symmetry. Remove any of that duality and we say it’s ugly. Symmetry then is an important aspect of beauty in my opinion.:hug3:

 

[Charlemagne_II]

Serpent

If you look at the body, we have two eyes two ears, arms and legs. The beauty we see is partly based on that symmetry. Remove any of that duality and we say it’s ugly. Symmetry then is an important aspect of beauty in my opinion.

Interesting point. So perhaps the reason why the snake is so ugly to us is that the only thing he has two of is predatory eyes.

“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” - that is all
Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know.
English poet John Keats