What is "beauty"?

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Here’s another quote from the Maritain essay:

There is a fundamental need of art in the human community: “Nobody,” says Saint Thomas following Aristotle, “can do without delectation for long. That is why he who is deprived of spiritual delectations goes over to the carnal.”

Thus, when you see how spiritually impoverished movies are today, you can understand the enormous rise of interest in pornographic movies as the carnal counterpart.
 
Jim_Baur said:
Linus

Are you a professor of philosophy or theology?

THANKS!
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:blushing: Thanks for the kind thought, so few of those around these days. Nope, I’m just a retired farmer with a life long interest in philosophy. And a sinner like everyone else 🤷.

Linus2nd
 
Linusthe2nd said:
:blushing: Thanks for the kind thought, so few of those around these days. Nope, I’m just a retired farmer with a life long interest in philosophy. And a sinner like everyone else 🤷.

Linus2nd
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I’m glad you found a great way to explore your retirement years at Catholic Answers. 👍
 
Ion said:
Where does the fashion fit in ?:ehh:
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Fashion is a marketing ploy, not an aesthetic principle.

Some of the ugliest fashions have made a lot of money, such as the men’s leisure suit of the 1960s.

If you can persuade people that something ugly is really cool, they will buy it and wear it.

The same goes for “art-house” (or “out-house” :yup:) movies, novels, paintings, music, etc.
 
Beauty is one of the goals of creation. God creates beauty. We find it when we see symmetry, harmony, contrast, organization, goodness, purity, elegance, etc. Beauty is a little clue that the underlying universe is elegant and has organization and purpose. We like it when we see or hear it or experience it because we are created to be able to appreciate beauty.

Pope Benedict said that God gives us a clue that the purpose of creation is to be able to enjoy creation (on the sabbath). So every seven days we too imitate God and just enjoy creation, the beauty of it, that we spent 6 days working on.
 
Well it is true but it is not only that simple.
Speaking about fashion, I remember going with my daughter to buy her shoes, because she had “to try” them…
But if you look at an orthodox icon, there is certain beauty in it, even if the picture in itself it is not proportionate or having beautiful colors.
 
Charlemagne_III said:
. . . Define “beauty” or “the beautiful.” Is all beauty purely subjective, or is there objective beauty? Why do people disagree (sometimes violently) about what is beautiful? How do we distinguish the ugly from the beautiful? Is sacred art proof for the existence of God? . . . Pick just one.
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Generally it means pleasing to the senses, sensibilities or the intellect, which is how we know things. As has been stated, it is identical to the good, existence and the truth. God created everything and saw that it was good - it is beautiful, as He is Beauty.

One could say that beauty is witnessed in the context of relationships, so that it is beyond a subjective-objective dichotomy.
  • With people it is pretty clear that the more you love someone, in spite of whatever physical and psychological ugliness the bear, you are witness to their beauty. Sin is a deprivation of goodness and hence beauty, but as long as some of the person’s humanity remains, there is something to love, something beautiful.
  • There are physical wonders, so pure and powerful in their representation of nature that they open the heart to the beauties of creation.
A few weeks ago I was up north on a clear moonless night with a friend, the vastness of the heavens above, a fresh breeze carrying the scent of pines; the call of loons echoed from distant lakes to those nearby, accentuating the deepness of the silence around us.
My story led an old woman to reminisce about a warm summer nights, before the War, in the very small town where she was born. The men would meet after dinner at the local (and only bar) - a chorus making its way through the streets, the air filled with their alpine melodies of love, sadness and home. So much beauty, it broke your heart.

What proof is needed, knowing Love or Beauty, Truth: Being Itself? We search for Him because there is nothing else that can satisfy.

“The sweetest thing in all my life has been the longing — to reach the Mountain, to find the place where all the beauty came from — my country, the place where I ought to have been born. Do you think it all meant nothing, all the longing? The longing for home? For indeed it now feels not like going, but like going back.”
― C.S. Lewis, Till We Have Faces
 
I think that beauty is purely subjective, at least I have never seen or heard of anything that everyone thinks is beautiful. Even something like the Grand Canyon could be just a rocky hole in the ground to someone.

I’ll answer one more…art, of any kind is not proof of anything except for the artist’s creativity and skill or lack-there-of.
 
oldcelt said:
. . . Even something like the Grand Canyon could be just a rocky hole in the ground to someone. . .
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The world abounds in mystery, miracles and wonders.
The moment itself is a religious experience, resting on the eternal:
the mountains, the valleys, lands of milk and honey, empty deserts it contains.
Some people are actually bored - go figure.
It is all about one’s relationship with creation and its Creator.
 
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