Beauty

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tomarin

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Do you think it serves any functional purpose?

For example, music is very important to me, and has been since I was a child. I would go so far as to say that life would be unbearable to me if I didn’t have music in it, on a nearly daily basis. Yet there are other people (the philosopher Henry James to name one) who are or were totally indifferent to music, believing it to be a useless waste of time.

To me asking if music is ‘worthwhile’ or not is like asking whether beauty serves any real purpose, or is it just there to adorn and well, beautify our lives? Is it merely window-dressing, in other words? Or is the pursuit of it integral to who we are as human beings?
 
Great question. I think beauty brings happiness. I am artistic type. Some people do not see the point in art though. Music changes my mood. Looking outside on a sunny day uplifts my mood.
 
I think the search for beauty brings us to God, when rightly ordered.
 
Beauty is of God. When someone / something is beautiful, it’s a full realization of God’s design. Whether on the inside or out, beauty is all around us.

Sexy is a perversion, based on sin (often lust)
 
tomarin said:
To me asking if music is ‘worthwhile’ or not is like asking whether beauty serves any real purpose, or is it just there to adorn and well, beautify our lives? Is it merely window-dressing, in other words? Or is the pursuit of it integral to who we are as human beings?
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Here’s some theories which may strike a chord 🙂 remembering of course that any aspects on evolution shouldn’t be discussed as per the ban.

plato.stanford.edu/entries/music/
pbs.org/wgbh/nova/blogs/secretlife/blogposts/the-evolution-of-music/
 
tomarin said:
Do you think it serves any functional purpose?

For example, music is very important to me, and has been since I was a child. I would go so far as to say that life would be unbearable to me if I didn’t have music in it, on a nearly daily basis. Yet there are other people (the philosopher Henry James to name one) who are or were totally indifferent to music, believing it to be a useless waste of time.

To me asking if music is ‘worthwhile’ or not is like asking whether beauty serves any real purpose, or is it just there to adorn and well, beautify our lives? Is it merely window-dressing, in other words? Or is the pursuit of it integral to who we are as human beings?
Click to expand...
In one of his more lucid moments, Kant explained a difference in the method human beings experience beauty. Of the goods desired for sensual pleasure – food, drink, wealth, health, etc. – the pleasure occurs only after possessing the good desired. The pleasure of beauty, Kant tells us, is a totally disinterested pleasure. Repeating Aquinas’ insight, beauty is enjoyed simply in its apprehension, upon being seen or in the case of music being heard.

Beyond pleasure, the extrinsic graces available to us assisting at Mass are magnified when the decorum of the Mass is elevated by music. In my case, acapella Gregorian chant, the human voice being the most pleasing musical instrument to God, and chant, I think, one of if not His highest preferred forms.
 
There is no way to explain the profound appeal of sacred music other than to say that it is an expression of God’s grace to us all. Mozart’s “Ave verum Corpus” cannot be heard by anyone without a profound sense of uplift toward our Savior.

If the uplift is not felt, it is because the soul is too deadened to be uplifted.

youtube.com/watch?v=6KUDs8KJc_c
 
A person who can not recognize any music as good or beautiful is like a person who sees a magestic mountain vista and is indifferent to it. It is a person who is trapped in a dark cave and sees no reason to believe there is light outside of it. Good music can take you outside of yourself and transport you into a realm where you believe there must be more to this reality than meets the eye. I have heard of atheists who became theists simply from listening to beautiful music. Beauty can transport us to another dimension of thought.
 
A man who has no time for beauty is a man distracted by his own mind. He cannot slow down to smell the flowers. His mind is elsewhere to notice the beauty that surrounds him. Does he act in the name of progress? Is his goal efficiency? Progress and efficiency does not lead to happiness. Next time you drive to work you can see that. Cars take us there faster. But, do they make us any more happy? Are people happier today than they were 150 years ago? Has progress fulfilled us? Perhaps, we would be happier if we walked to work and could smell the flowers.

:flowers:
 
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