Beauty is in the eye of the beholder?

  • Thread starter Thread starter ZoonCorp
  • Start date Start date
Status
Not open for further replies.
Z

ZoonCorp

Guest
So I have been thinking a little about this, but I haven’t come up with an answer.

If the saying is true, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it would mean that beauty is something subjective. But all that is beautiful comes from God. Without God, there is no beauty.

That said, it’s hard to say that a flower is not beautiful. Or that the night sky isn’t beautiful. So it seems like there are some things that we take for a fact that are beautiful.

However, when it comes to people, beauty seems to be subjective. While there are some people who are attractive to lots of viewers, there are also people that are considered not so attractive, but still there are a few people who thinks that that person is beautiful.

So my question is: Are people inherently beautiful, or is beauty entirely judged by our perception and personal taste/qualifications, thus making beauty something subjective?

I know beauty in people is more than just looks though, which makes this question even more complicated.
 
I’m by no means particularly qualified to speak on this matter, but I would say that something is indeed objectively beautiful inasmuch as it reveals some aspect of the divine beauty. Something is ugly inasmuch as it is a deformation of what is beautiful.

On top of this come layers of learned and cultural tastes.
 
ZoonCorp said:
However, when it comes to people, beauty seems to be subjective.
Click to expand...
Hi ZoonCorp;

Thank you for your interesting post.

In philosophy, beauty is a transcendental reality; this means that beauty is an objective reality which transcends individual instances of it. In other words, things (including people) participate in beauty but are not the sum of beauty.

The fact that we can disagree over whether or not a certain person is beautiful (and indeed, throughout history, ideas about what makes a person beautiful have changed) does not disprove that beauty is an objective, transcendent reality but in fact proves this!

Imagine for example two people having a debate about whether or not a particular person or painting is beautiful. The first person argues that it is not really beautiful; the other person thinks that it is truly beautiful.

Such a discussion should not lead us to the false conclusion that “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” or, in other words, that beauty is merely something subjective. In fact, the two people in our debate about whether or not the painting is beautiful or not could not have such a discussion if they did not have a shared understanding of the objective and transcendence of beauty. They are only able to debate whether or not this particular thing is beautiful because they have an understanding of what beauty is. Their disagreement only demonstrates that they have limited understanding of how particular things participate in beauty and how beauty is to be classified. This limitation in understanding can be conditioned by personality and culture for example…but it can also be trained and reconditioned.

Hope this makes sense!
 
Thank you both for your replies. Very interesting!

I just have a question for you, hicetnunc. Are you saying that things and people aren’t *inherently *beautiful, but that they only *participate *in beauty?
 
ZoonCorp said:
Are you saying that things and people aren’t *inherently *beautiful, but that they only *participate *in beauty?
Click to expand...
Yes, exactly that, if by ‘inherently’ I correctly understand you to mean ‘essentially’.

As St Thomas says in his Summa, only God is Good, Beautiful ect, in His essence. No created thing can claim to be good/beautiful in essence (the good and the beautiful are considered to be convertible terms) but only by participation.

This doctrine of participation has a long and honoured tradition in Catholic philosophy and theology. We find in especially in Pseudo-Dionysius and through him in Hugh and Richard of St Vicotr, St Thomas, St Bonaventure and so on.
 
ZoonCorp said:
So I have been thinking a little about this, but I haven’t come up with an answer.

If the saying is true, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, .
Click to expand...
Some interesting studies have been done on this.
When the shape of facial features is varied (with skin textures held constant), increasing symmetry of face shape increases ratings of attractiveness for both male and female faces. These findings imply facial symmetry may have a positive impact on mate selection in humans.
Click to expand...
ehbonline.org/article/S1090-5138(99)00014-8/abstract

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Facial_symmetry
One’s opinion of beauty may be influenced very early but beauty is looked upon with interest by even infants. Infants who don’t know what an ideal weight or Chanel lip color means. Infants will gaze upon a symmetrical face longer than an asymmetrical one. Even if that face is not of it’s mother or father. Children often stare at beautiful women and mimic their moves – even showing favoritism towards more attractive individuals.
Click to expand...
en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Physical_attractiveness

Sarah x 🙂
 
ZoonCorp said:
So I have been thinking a little about this, but I haven’t come up with an answer.

If the saying is true, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it would mean that beauty is something subjective. But all that is beautiful comes from God. Without God, there is no beauty.

That said, it’s hard to say that a flower is not beautiful. Or that the night sky isn’t beautiful. So it seems like there are some things that we take for a fact that are beautiful.

However, when it comes to people, beauty seems to be subjective. While there are some people who are attractive to lots of viewers, there are also people that are considered not so attractive, but still there are a few people who thinks that that person is beautiful.

So my question is: Are people inherently beautiful, or is beauty entirely judged by our perception and personal taste/qualifications, thus making beauty something subjective?

I know beauty in people is more than just looks though, which makes this question even more complicated.
Click to expand...
Today…“Beauty” is an awkward, English expression for what an individual acknowledges as “proper order”.
We live in a society that rejects any (Judeo-Christian) overarching acknowledgement of universal order. Therefore, if an individual claims that something is beautiful in itself…that person cannot base such a claim on the God of Scripture.

Now, to me…God has put order into Nature…and we can clearly see disorder–a child with a cleft pallet for example.
 
Solomon uses a comical and striking picture to contrast one that is physically beautiful but spiritually ugly.
*Proverbs 11.22, “Like a gold ring in a pig’s snout is a beautiful woman without discretion.” *😛
 
I think no and yes. Adam was supposed to care for the garden, that means to make it beautiful, and God would have considered it beautiful looking too.
After the fall, there is the education/meditation that give different ideeas about what is beautiful, probably from the interference with the knowledge of good/evil.
 
ZoonCorp said:
So I have been thinking a little about this, but I haven’t come up with an answer.

If the saying is true, that beauty is in the eye of the beholder, it would mean that beauty is something subjective. But all that is beautiful comes from God. Without God, there is no beauty.

That said, it’s hard to say that a flower is not beautiful. Or that the night sky isn’t beautiful. So it seems like there are some things that we take for a fact that are beautiful.

However, when it comes to people, beauty seems to be subjective. While there are some people who are attractive to lots of viewers, there are also people that are considered not so attractive, but still there are a few people who thinks that that person is beautiful.

So my question is: Are people inherently beautiful, or is beauty entirely judged by our perception and personal taste/qualifications, thus making beauty something subjective?

I know beauty in people is more than just looks though, which makes this question even more complicated.
Click to expand...
Albert Einstein famously suggested “looking for beauty to find truth”. Now, would a great scientist claim that beauty had a traceable order if there really was no order…that beauty was only a whim of the beholder?
 
Beauty itself is objective and transcendent in and of itself. Beauty exists in existence as created by, from and through God who is beauty itself. There are things that are subjectively beautiful, paintings pictures, photographs, however beauty in and of itself is not something one can only hold to themselves. If one would look out over the pacific ocean at sunset, it would be hard to say, it is not beauty itself, however not everyone will see the depth of that beauty the same.

As created contingent human beings, we are only able grasp at the idea of beauty in a limited way, as the fallen world we live in. However, that does not mean we cannot experience beauty itself, in our daily lives. Is it a privation to not see the beauty in an infant, a red rose in full bloom, the sun setting over the pacific ocean? I would assert that whether or not something or someone is not pleasing to the eyes to look at, does not mean that someone or something does not possess beauty. One could compare the idea of a person not having the faith to see God in existence, to that of a person not seeing the beauty in an infant, sunset…etc, that does not mean God does not exist.

The correct human response when looking at an infant would be that of awe and deep affection not because of the physical appearance, but because of the infant itself and what it is because of the beauty that exists in the infant of and in itself, outside of our perception. Whether the infant itself is pleasing to the eye, does not matter.
 
Fairjer said:
Beauty itself is objective and transcendent in and of itself. Beauty exists in existence as created by, from and through God who is beauty itself. There are things that are subjectively beautiful, paintings pictures, photographs, however beauty in and of itself is not something one can only hold to themselves. If one would look out over the pacific ocean at sunset, it would be hard to say, it is not beauty itself, however not everyone will see the depth of that beauty the same.

As created contingent human beings, we are only able grasp at the idea of beauty in a limited way, as the fallen world we live in. However, that does not mean we cannot experience beauty itself, in our daily lives. Is it a privation to not see the beauty in an infant, a red rose in full bloom, the sun setting over the pacific ocean? I would assert that whether or not something or someone is not pleasing to the eyes to look at, does not mean that someone or something does not possess beauty. One could compare the idea of a person not having the faith to see God in existence, to that of a person not seeing the beauty in an infant, sunset…etc, that does not mean God does not exist.

The correct human response when looking at an infant would be that of awe and deep affection not because of the physical appearance, but because of the infant itself and what it is because of the beauty that exists in the infant of and in itself, outside of our perception. Whether the infant itself is pleasing to the eye, does not matter.
Click to expand...
Baby, you said it all
 
Status
Not open for further replies.
Back
Top