Note: Sorry about the pretentious title, but i'm a sucker for puns.
Note: As always, summary at the bottom.
Beauty.
It seems difficult to define, except perhaps by example, and even then, one person may be moved by the Mona Lisa - and another may see nothing special about it. I personally think it is technically good, but not as 'inspired' as I hear so often, a good example of a middle ground.
So, the nature of beauty is subjective; can we determine where it might come from? Well, there are four main options that I see -
The religious one, that we admire the work of Creation due to an inherent touch of deific majesty. The counter to this might be that this would render atheists incapable of appreciating beauty - something clearly false.
The derivative one, that we consider beauty beautiful because it *is*, and if we were to think of it otherwise, we would run into the same problem of trying to define something logically that did not happen except by chance. Essentially, the idea that beauty is chance - but if that is so, then why should beauty be so universal in many cases? Rather than having another culture's beauty 'dulled' to us by different standards, it should be incomprehensible, a mess. (Note that if you apply the 'we see it because we observe it' idea to the universe, you get the anthropic principle: We can wonder at how unlikely it was to get intelligent life in the universe because we are intelligent life, and without us such an improbability would simply be unnoticed.)
The communicative one - this one is starting to get good - that beauty, like language, is a way in which we convey meaning between people. If we enjoy a tree, and someone else does, we can consider ourselves to have a slight insight into another person's mind. Society merely turns these connections into a semi-codified method of transmission across civilization. The problem is that beauty has such appeal, again, across cultures, even if it is dulled slightly in translation.
The one to which I give the most credence is the evolutionary idea. We, as mammals, like things that indicate a good place to live. A love of green forests and fertile plains; of light rains but also sun; of other mammals that already confirm an area as habitable. In short, we consider beauty to be life, and life to be beautiful.
Even this last, the evolutionary idea, has a fundamental weakness, however. Look out upon the deserts of the American Southwest, for instance, and you will see many beautiful sights made up simply of great spires of multicolored rock - perhaps with not a single green plant of roving animal in sight. Shouldn't the sight of such a technically barren place repel us? By the same token, how could we admire the grace of a tiger - we should abhor it as competition, as a predator. Perhaps you could explain the second as proving that high predators can live best in places rich in life, but why can we admire a barren place for its beauty? Why should a sunset, heralding a night in which danger lurks, be such an evocative picture of emotions other than fear? Indeed, why should we feel any emotion more complex than Good/Bad? Perhaps it simply comes with the larger brains; even so, look at art made up of purely geometric shapes. There can still be intense beauty in those.
The most powerful aspect of beauty seems not to be any of these four schools of thought, but merely thought itself: We see beauty in things which are more. More full of life, more colorful, more sublimely proportioned, more regular. Anything which rises above the ordinary, even if horrible, has a certain beauty - terrible beauty, perhaps, but beauty nonetheless. Such pictures are the experiences that rise above a simple daily slog, and prove that life is worth living to see things beyond the ordinary.
For the obligatory little summary;
There are four common views of beauty.
Religious.
Derivative/Anthropic.
Communicative.
Evolutionary.
The truth of beauty is that we love things which are not 'more of the same' - Whether barren or vibrant with life, nothing seems to cause such sorrow for us as unchanging boredom.
Comments: Please, comment! I don't think I need any restrictions on this one. It's pretty nonoffensive, I hope.
Relevant Trope: http://tvtropes.org/pmwiki/pmwiki.php/Main.FertileFeet I find it rather interesting that natural beauty is seen as downright saintly.
WARNING! TvTropes can be an addictive experience!
WARNING! The trope listed was not used in the creation of this post - if you read it expecting a continuation, you may be deservedly disappointed.
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I find your conclusion satisfying, that we find beauty in what is more, in "fearful symmetry." I note that even the mundane can have beauty for us, but only when we notice it, when our attention raises it above the level of our usual notice. And that pleases me, that we have power to raise beauty in our perception: not universally, but often.
ReplyDeleteI do want to quibble with the counter you throw out for the religious nature of beauty. You say, "The counter to this might be that this would render atheists incapable of appreciating beauty." Not at all. Just because a person does not believe in God or in gods does not mean that the person is incapable of responding to the touch of the deity. Whether one believes or disbelieves in the divine, it is an article of faith. The world around us touches us just the same.
An interesting point about the touch of the divine being recognizable; I do find it less likely, however, under that definition of beauty, that it would be seen for what it is. I suppose that would meant that atheists in that definition would transfer what IS religious beauty to what they CONSIDER communicative (Essentially, seeing the beauty from the same cause in another way.) Hmmm... Does that mean that religious and communicative are really just two views of one cause?
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