Philosophic Beauty

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billcu1

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I have always wondered what beauty is. It can be found in an idea, sunrise, sunset. And in people in different ways. Of my 3 favorite American authors Wilder, Thoreau, and Emerson; Emerson puts it like this. Does anyone think this sounds right?

rwe.org/chapter-iii-beauty.html

I don’t know if this is first hand knowledge or where he got it.

Bill
 
The problem with defining and appreciating beauty is that it comes in so many different forms and is so subjective that you can only identify it as a personal as opposed to a universal experience.

We hope others experience the beautiful in the same way we do, and often that is very possible, but sometimes there is a perverse rejection of the beautiful in favor of the ugly. It’s when that happens that critics start throwing tomatoes at the artists, and artists and critics even start throwing tomatoes at each other.

Here is an interesting brief article on beauty in the thought of St. Thomas Aquinas.

orthodoxcatholicism.com/2012/10/11/beauty-in-the-thought-of-st-thomas/

And here is the most sublimely beautiful piece of music I have ever heard. (3 minutes)

youtube.com/watch?v=6KUDs8KJc_c
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The problem with defining and appreciating beauty is that it comes in so many different forms and is so subjective that you can only identify it as a personal as opposed to a universal experience.

We hope others experience the beautiful in the same way we do, and often that is very possible, but sometimes there is a perverse rejection of the beautiful in favor of the ugly. It’s when that happens that critics start throwing tomatoes at the artists, and artists and critics even start throwing tomatoes at each other.
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I know what you mean about subjective. It sounds though to me like what he’s saying is that’s God’s creation is beauty. That makes sense to me. As for ugly I don’t believe there really is such a thing. Only lack of beauty. Beauty in the making. There is either beauty or lack thereof. Appreciation of beauty is almost like a “karmic” thing. Beauty is depending on your experiential makeup. Which isn’t perfection as God is. Karma does not apply to God so what he calls beauty is “universally” beautiful. That’s the way I see it. You would have to see through God’s eyes. Which a few of us have been fortunate enough for him to allow this.

Bill
 
Charlemagne_III said:
The problem with defining and appreciating beauty is that it comes in so many different forms and is so subjective that you can only identify it as a personal as opposed to a universal experience.
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Granted that there are so many different forms and there could be differing judgments at times- but it does indeed ‘come in so many different forms’.

The objective and subjective are both involved.

A person may have some impediment in appredicating say the Grand Canyon…or Niagra Falls…but that is not because they are not beautiful.

The very fact that such are visited by so many persons day in and day out – all wowed by the beauty is not due to the beauty of such places being a rather universal experience?

Same goes for so many popular “beautiful places” in the world.

There is quite an objective reality involved.
 
Bookcat said:
There is quite an objective reality involved.
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Absolutely, though some are deprived for one reason or another of the beauty. 👍

Sin is ugly, so virtue must be beautiful, though some deny that virtue even exists.

Some so-called art is downright ugly, and possibly because the artist is a sinner and his art connects with the ugliness of sin.
 
Beauty may be subjective, but that is only because it must be encountered by a subject. Truth is also subjective for the same reason. That doesn’t imply that it doesn’t have an objective reality. The only way you can know it is if you see it.
 
billcu1 said:
I have always wondered what beauty is. It can be found in an idea, sunrise, sunset. And in people in different ways. Of my 3 favorite American authors Wilder, Thoreau, and Emerson; Emerson puts it like this. Does anyone think this sounds right?

rwe.org/chapter-iii-beauty.html

I don’t know if this is first hand knowledge or where he got it.

Bill
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We keep seeing beauty around us as long as we have open eyes to see.
 
Despite the idea of “eye of the beholder”, I think it remains true that Beauty is one thing that people have not wholly rejected. People have rejected what is good, and they have rejected what is true, but not yet what is beautiful (for the most part). This is why Fr. Barron and others say that Beauty is the key to evangelization in today’s culture. Present them to beauty; they shall find it good; and lastly, they shall find it true.

Beauty, Goodness, and Truth are interconnected. If that is the case, I agree with the above posters that Beauty must inherently have a essential objectivity to it (in order to be True). I have often held that things that are beautiful correspond to the deliberate order of the cosmos. This manifests itself in musical theory through the rule of 3’s, through the classical understanding of the Heavenly spheres and the institution of the octave, to the Golden Mean in Greek geometry and the perfection of the human form (depiction) in the Renaissance, and so on.

There is a very intimate connection between Beauty and Order. Not colorless order, but order that reveals a things true final cause.

However, I really am fascinated by Mongo’s point: that beauty becomes subjective when it is experienced by a subject. That’s a really intriguing idea. It is not so much that we proclaim subjectivity upon beauty, but that we–in that we are human–perceive beauty through a subjective lens.
 
Boreas said:
Despite the idea of “eye of the beholder”, I think it remains true that Beauty is one thing that people have not wholly rejected. People have rejected what is good, and they have rejected what is true, but not yet what is beautiful (for the most part). This is why Fr. Barron and others say that Beauty is the key to evangelization in today’s culture. Present them to beauty; they shall find it good; and lastly, they shall find it true.

Beauty, Goodness, and Truth are interconnected. If that is the case, I agree with the above posters that Beauty must inherently have a essential objectivity to it (in order to be True). I have often held that things that are beautiful correspond to the deliberate order of the cosmos. This manifests itself in musical theory through the rule of 3’s, through the classical understanding of the Heavenly spheres and the institution of the octave, to the Golden Mean in Greek geometry and the perfection of the human form (depiction) in the Renaissance, and so on.

There is a very intimate connection between Beauty and Order. Not colorless order, but order that reveals a things true final cause.

However, I really am fascinated by Mongo’s point: that beauty becomes subjective when it is experienced by a subject. That’s a really intriguing idea. It is not so much that we proclaim subjectivity upon beauty, but that we–in that we are human–perceive beauty through a subjective lens.
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I wish I understood Goethe’s color theory. And Emerson says the word Cosmos means beauty in Greek. I think people confuse 3 different things. Beauty, sexual attraction, and inordinate lust.

Bill
 
Aquinas, after Aristotle, defined beauty as “that which, when seen (or apprehended) pleases”.

This definition implies that beauty comes to the mind through the senses (sight, sound, etc.) and as such is incarnational. I would go further and say that beauty is the temporal expression of eternal glory (Glory = the sum of perfections which belong to God, but which He shares).

While the apprehension of beauty is subjective, eternal beauty (through Christ’s incarnation and shared with us) is objective. The ugly, like evil, is not a positive value, but a negative one – a temporal deprivation of, or degradation of beauty due to varying degrees of evil.

Those who cannot apprehend beauty, or who consider the ugly beautiful, --suffer this by reason of defect of the senses – either temporal (blindness, deafness, etc) or by defect of character, the moral sense deformed by sin.
 
Aunt_Raven said:
Those who cannot apprehend beauty, or who consider the ugly beautiful, --suffer this by reason of defect of the senses – either temporal (blindness, deafness, etc) or by defect of character, the moral sense deformed by sin.
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Defect of character can also include defect of upbringing. Poverty, lack of education, child abuse, drug abuse, all these can produce defect of character along with “the moral sense deformed by sin.”

What I could never understand when acid rock appeared on the scene was how so many young people could be drawn to it. Was acid rock a reflection of child abuse or drug abuse in teenagers? How could they be so far gone so young that they had to turn up the volume until all the neighbors were ready to scream?
 
What a good point you raise. How does does this moral tragedy happen ?

– Perfectly good “middle class” children, raised by well-meaning parents, who never suffered poverty or abuse of any sort, --nevertheless succumbed to the blandishments of a materialistic society because their “progressive” parents, --who had been raised in the Catholic Faith, – decided that they would not “force” or indoctrineate" their children in the same faith they had been raised in. Why? A misapprehension of “intellectual freedom” and a disregard of parental duty to pass on the faith.

You’ve heard it before --“Let the children decide for themselves rationally what they want to believe.” The big lie. As if children will betake themselves off to church without the example of their parents ! The children, once grown, become functional agnostics. They never darken the door of a church except for “Marrying and burying”. This is a sure recipe for an unformed conscience, ignorant of the laws of God, unaccustomed to the power and discipline of prayer; they may be “nice” kids, full of PC state-supported liberal ideas of “pro-choice” feminism, homosexual and free-form “marriage” & pornography & euthanasia on demand, – but this makes them easy prey to slick propaganda of evil in the guise of appealing tunes of Rock music and mesmerizing lure of trivial celebrity Rock culture, --which for some is an easy step to drugs and sex without thought of “marriage-for-life” and self-sacrifice for the family.
No Faith, No character.
Resulting in bad taste at best, —eternal damnation at worst.
 
“Yes, man is broad, too broad, indeed. I’d have him narrower. The devil only knows what to make of it! What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom. Did you know that secret? The awful thing is that beauty is mysterious as well as terrible. God and the devil are fighting there and the battlefield is the heart of man.”
The Brothers Karamazov
 
Mongo said:
“What to the mind is shameful is beauty and nothing else to the heart. Is there beauty in Sodom? Believe me, that for the immense mass of mankind beauty is found in Sodom.”
The Brothers Karamazov
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There is no beauty in Sodom. There may be perverse pleasure, but never beauty.
 
Mongo said:
That is in the eye of the beholder. The vast majority of people may disagree with you.
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Have you even heard the story about the chest that was opened and all kinds of evil came out. Left in the chest was a little light of hope. When sin abounds grace does that much more abound.

Bill
 
Mongo said:
That is in the eye of the beholder. The vast majority of people may disagree with you.
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Very possibly.

The vast majority may also possibly confuse sinful pleasure with beauty. 🤷
 
Charlemagne_III said:
Very possibly.

The vast majority may also possibly confuse sinful pleasure with beauty. 🤷
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IMO there is beauty and beauty in the making. Whatever good, bad or ugliness there is in the world. God is turning somehow around to be for the good. Same with beauty.

Bill
 
billcu1 said:
Have you even heard the story about the chest that was opened and all kinds of evil came out. Left in the chest was a little light of hope. When sin abounds grace does that much more abound.

Bill
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I am not quite sure of the point you are getting at , but maybe you should reread my post that started this tangent. It seems that Charlemagne misunderstood what I was saying with the quote.
 
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