I hate to be “that guy” but…
What’s your definition of “beauty”?
Sure, it’s an annoying question, but your answer to the OP will be determined by it. Since the main purpose of language is to communicate ideas to each other, a definition should, in most cases, reflect common usage so as to avoid confusion. “Beauty” is certainly used in the subjective sense in its common usage.
Even if beauty is (sometimes or often) used in common parlance to express subjective preference, that does not mean it is always used in that way.
I made the point a while ago that if everyone accepted and agreed that the preference sense of beauty was THE proper sense, there would be no disagreements about whether any object was beautiful or not. It would be reducible to a claim meaning something similar to “I like that painting.” Who would argue about that?
I would argue that most people in ages past did NOT use the word in that way. The reductionism that collapses the word “beauty” to a mere expression of personal preference is more prevalent in modern western ego-dominant cultures where all qualities and values have come to reside in the ego or one or other of its pretenses. Virtually the same has happened with the meaning of ethical/moral/good and the same reductionist nonsense threatens the word “truth” in some quarters.
Now you can opt for a more esoteric definition if you wish, but then you don’t necessarily disagree with the logic of someone using the other definition. A disagreement of definitions is not an actual ideological disagreement, since definitions are conventions. Unless you feel that there is a moral imperative to associate utterances with meaning in a certain fashion, in which case I’ll be most interested in hearing your defense of the English language, which is pretty much the bastard child of each of its predecessors. Good luck trying to argue that English is the “correct” language, in that case.
So, is your contention that if some quality or entity cannot be completely reduced to a proper definition, that quality or entity does not exist?
In Catholic thought (but by NO means ONLY in Catholic thought,) beauty is understood as one of the three great transcendentals - beauty, truth and goodness. Now these three apply in some sense to everything that exists. In fact, it is claimed that beauty, truth and goodness are three fundamental aspects of Being Itself (God) and it is their inhering in Being Itself that makes them present in particular beings.
The difficulty, regarding a proper definition, is that beauty, like truth and goodness, expresses something fundamental about Being and beings.
To simplify the challenge at hand regarding beauty, try to define what the experience or qualia of colour, for example, refers to. I am not speaking here of the wavelength of light, but, rather, of that internally perceived component of our experience which we call “colour.” What precisely IS colour as a quality? Try to define that. It is so fundamental that we are lost and unable to say much beyond “Colour is colour,” hoping that other experiencers of colour “get” what we are talking about. A definition is quite another matter, however.
Another word, with a similar problem is the word “person” or “consciousness.” What exactly is a person? What does it mean to be conscious? Define either word, getting at their essential “what it means to be or have” that quality. It isn’t as easy as you make it out to be with many aspects of reality, not even everyday ones we - on the surface - are so familiar with yet CANNOT properly define.
What is “truth?” What is “goodness?” What is “beauty?” All three have very similar issues with regard to arriving at a suitable and non-contentious definition.
Certainly, you wouldn’t argue or make the self-defeating truth-claim that ”truth” does not or cannot exist BECAUSE it is difficult to arrive at a non-controversial definition, would you? Similarly, “good” suffers from an almost identical problem.
All three, I would suggest, are part of the great mystery of existence, the puzzling through and solving which is one of the things that does make life worth living. The more we grapple with these great transcendentals, the more, in fact, that life becomes worth living because they each express something of the quality of what it means TO BE.
Finding the definition isn’t the starting point. I doubt very much that it has much to do with the destination point either, precisely because the reality is far greater than a word or words can capture or encapsulate. In short, this isn’t the problem you make it out to be.
Personally, I doubt that the definition of any word is as effective in its prescribed function as you claim. Take any word in common usage, at some point when we try to fully comprehend the referent of that word we arrive smack into a wall. We know intuitively that the reality of the thing is far beyond what can be expressed by the word(s) used to denote it.
A word is a symbol pointing at something greater and a definition is a collection of symbols that are invoked when we try to push the function of the word and hit that wall of incomprehension. Words will fail precisely because our understanding is limited.
I have a busy schedule outside of the Internet. Take care.
Good points to ponder!