Is Beauty Objective? or subjective?

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I believe beauty is objective no matter what senses are being stimulated. I believe that if we come to view non beautiful sensory stimuli as beautiful or appealing then this is the result of experiential distortion. I believe we are innately ordered toward particular forms of stimuli and innately repelled by particular stimuli.

I believe that this must be true because God ordered the universe and that which he created was good.

Can we discuss alternatives and agreements on this issue as my explanation is fairly weak and I would like to strengthen my position.

Thanks

Adrian Quinn
 
From my blog entries about St. Thomas Aquinas on truth and beauty:
Beauty …] consists in a certain clarity and due proportion. Now each of these is found radically in the reason; because both the light that makes beauty seen, and the establishing of due proportion among things belong to reason. Hence since the contemplative life consists in an act of the reason, there is beauty in it by its very nature and essence; wherefore it is written (Wisdom 8:2) of the contemplation of wisdom: “I became a lover of her beauty.”
—Summa Theologica IIª-IIae, q. 180 a. 2 ad 3​
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[T]ruth resides primarily in the intellect, and secondarily in things according as they are related to the intellect as their principle. Consequently there are various definitions of truth. Augustine says (De Vera Relig. xxxvi), “Truth is that whereby is made manifest that which is;” and Hilary says (De Trin. v) that “Truth makes being clear and evident” and this pertains to truth according as it is in the intellect. As to the truth of things in so far as they are related to the intellect, we have Augustine’s definition (De Vera Relig. xxxvi), “Truth is a supreme likeness without any unlikeness to a principle”: also Anselm’s definition (De Verit. xii), “Truth is rightness, perceptible by the mind alone”; for that is right which is in accordance with the principle; also Avicenna’s definition (Metaph. viii, 6), “The truth of each thing is a property of the essence which is immutably attached to it.” The definition that “Truth is the equation of thought and thing” is applicable to it under either aspect.
—St. Thomas Aquinas’s Summa Theologica Iª q. 16 a. 1 co.​
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[W]hatever is true, is true by reason of truth. If, then, truth is only in the intellect, nothing will be true except in so far as it is understood. But this is the error of the ancient philosophers, who said that whatever seems to be true is so. Consequently mutual contradictories seem to be true as seen by different persons at the same time.
—ibid. Iª q. 16 a. 1 arg. 2​
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The ancient philosophers held that the species of natural things did not proceed from any intellect, but were produced by chance.* But as they saw that truth implies relation to intellect, they were compelled to base the truth of things on their relation to our intellect. From this, conclusions result that are inadmissible, and which the Philosopher refutes (Metaph. iv, 5ff.). Such, however, do not follow, if we say that the truth of things consists in their relation to the divine intellect.
—ibid. Iª q. 16 a. 1 ad 2​
*Chance, or randomness, has neither clarity nor due proportion; therefore, chance is opposed to beauty.]
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Therefore, truth is objective because God, who has and is the divine intellect, is an objective reality apart from us; He exists outside our intellects (St. Anselm’s ontological argument: “God, being defined as most great or perfect, must exist, since a God who exists is greater than a God who does not” (OED) and exists only in the mind.).
Now God is truth:
As said above (Article 1), truth is found in the intellect according as it apprehends a thing as it is; and in things according as they have being conformable to an intellect. This is to the greatest degree found in God. For His being is not only conformed to His intellect, but it is the very act of His intellect; and His act of understanding is the measure and cause of every other being and of every other intellect, and He Himself is His own existence and act of understanding. Whence it follows not only that truth is in Him, but that He is truth itself, and the sovereign and first truth.
—ibid. Iª q. 16 a. 5 co.​
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Also, “God is said to be beautiful, as being ‘the cause of the harmony and clarity of the universe.’” (Deus dicitur pulcher sicut universorum consonantiæ et claritatis causa; IIª-IIae, q. 145 a. 2 co.Summa Theologica). Therefore, truth is beauty, and because truth is objective, so is beauty.
 
It might help for me to make a little more explicit that clarity is truth:
Geremia said:
Also, “God is said to be beautiful, as being ‘the cause of the harmony and clarity [viz., “equation of thought and thing:” truth] of the universe.’” (Deus dicitur pulcher sicut universorum consonantiæ et claritatis causa; Summa Theologica IIª-IIae, q. 145 a. 2 co.).
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I think it is utterly amazing how truth, beauty, and reason relate to one another because of God.
 
Beauty is the teleology of any species.

The perception of Beauty is an object of the intellect in it’s preferances.

👍
 
ocuinn said:
I believe beauty is objective no matter what senses are being stimulated.
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If I could be bothered, I would attempt to demonstrate that it can be both. Beauty can sometimes be subjective in the sense of modern art. For instance a brick simply sitting in space can invoke in some people a sense of awe or beauty. But you would have to hold certain sentimentalities to see it. In other-words, it is not the brick that you find beautiful but it is what the brink “means” to you or what the brick reminds you of, that inspires the awe or beauty. But this is not beauty in the objective sense. Some human beings are objectively beautiful. Even though there are some women that are not my type, I would have to be blind to not realise that they are in fact objectively beautiful or pretty as opposed to being ugly. Even a openly gay guy I use to know said to me that a women looked beautiful, regardless of the fact that he didn’t find her sexually attractive. There is certainly such a thing beauty and ugliness. It is objective. Even if it could be shown that beauty doesn’t actually exist in the things outside our minds, beauty would still, nevertheless, exist in the sense that we are experiencing it, since you cannot experience nothing. It would be an illusion in the sense that it only appears to relate to something outside of our minds, but we would still be experiencing a real sense of beauty and ugliness which is provoked by our experience of things. Thus it would still require an explanation; which I don’t think physical reality alone can provide.

From a theistic perspective it could be argued that contingent beings are not beautiful because of themselves, but they are beautiful because of God; which would suggest that things are made to appear as having degrees of beauty in reference to the subjective mind that is perceiving.
 
Drum

*Beaury is objective and subjective according to Thomas Aquinas. *

Do you have the text of his remarks handy?

I happen to agree, but I’ve never seen that statement in Aquinas.

Thanks,
Carlie
 
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