I have been talking with my friend Matt about John Mark's lecture on Beauty. We were trying to decide what is beautiful, that we love, that we should pursue. We soon got to thinking that we didn't even know what the definition for beauty was and thus it could be hard to find something beautiful to pursue.
So my question for you all is "What is beauty?"
Answers.com says beauty is "The quality that gives pleasure to the mind or senses and is associated with such properties as harmony of form or color, excellence of artistry, truthfulness, and originality."
But it seems this would mean beauty is in the eye of the beholder which I disagree with completely.
My brother gave some interesting ideas on what beauty is but I would like to hear your opinions first.
3 comments:
Well, first, sometimes we can know and love a thing without having a definition for it. My wife, for instance: being my wife, or named Katie, or a painter, are not definitions of her (just descriptions), not are they the reasons why I love her. Likewise, perhaps we can know and love the beautiful even if we don't have a well worked out philosophy of beauty.
Second, the Answers.com definition is interesting, because the first part really does seem to make beauty a subjective quality. But the second part seems to make it objective. We can talk about harmony of form, proportion, truth, excellence, independently of our feelings about such things.
So are you saying that because things have intrinsic beauty (such as your wife) we can know something is beautiful without really knowing what beauty is? If this is the case than I agree because I know what things I should pursue. I guess the reason I want to know the definition of beauty is because I want to know why I think the thing is beautiful. Why do I find rock climbing beautiful in the same way I find my little sister beautiful or the love of my life beautiful?
Concerning Answer.com, can't people have different opinions of harmony of form, proportion, truth, and excellence thus making the whole definition of beauty subjective?
I wish there was a way of being notified when comments get posted. I didn't notice your post until today.
The beauty question is hard; I don't have an answer that satisfies me. We can talk about how the beautiful affects us, but we also want to say that a thing can be beautiful even if we don't recognize it to be such. Thus, we don't want to DEFINE beauty in terms of a human response. On the other hand, we don't want to say that beauty just IS some list of characteristics. As you point out, beauty seems to apply to many things, in somewhat different ways. How is the beauty of a rose related to the beauty of a mountain, or a horse, or a song?
Here's my best shot at an answer. Tell me what you think: a thing is beautiful insofar as it is able to cause a kind of cognitive satisfaction when thought about.
The definition has to be very general, in order to account for all the different uses. The "cognitive satisfaction" here is to be thought of as irreducible or sui generis. It's not as though anything that anyone is cognitively satisfied by, is beautiful. Some people may not have the capacity, through sin or ignorance, to recognize something as beautiful.
More thoughts later...or perhaps in response to questions/criticisms you have...
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