The presentation will be divided into four parts.
PART I will discuss the "transcendental triad." This is a triad of values: truth, good, and beauty. We will discuss how these values interact. We will also discuss how relativism propagates through the three once it gets its foot in the door.
PART II will wrestle with the definition of "beauty." Interpretations from Aquinas and William James will be considered. Finally we will go into Immanuel Kant's theory of beauty.
PART III will talk about how aesthetic training can develop a person's sense of beauty. We will compare beauty in nature with beauty in art. Aristotle claims that they are the same, and Kant claims that they are different. We will compare two adjectives:
PART IV will deal with faculties engaged in the experience of beauty. We will compare desire with love (comparing Darwin's beauty with Plato's beauty). We will see what Plotinus has to say about beauty of the body versus beauty of the soul. Also we will touch on some distinctions of beauty, for example, types of beauty, and also grades of beauty (as mentioned in -The Symposium ).
The terms in the triad have been called "transcendental" on the ground that everything which is is in some measure or manner subject to denomination as true or false, good or evil, beautiful or ugly. Each has its own sphere of subject matter.
The true is assigned to thought and logic. The good is assigned to action and morals. The beautiful is assigned to enjoyment and aesthetics.
They are often referred to as "three fundamental values." This implies that the worth of anything under the sun can be exhaustively judged by reference to these three standards.
Spinoza and Mill went off on a tangent and considered other criteria, such as pleasure or utility.
Truth, goodness, and beauty, singly and together, have been the focus of the age-old controversy concerning the absolute and the relative, the objective and the subjective, the universal and the individual.
At some times, it is thought that distinctions such as true and false, good and evil, beautiful and ugly; have a basis in the very nature of things. It is thought that man's judgment of these matters is measured for soundness or accuracy by conformity to fact.
At other times, however, it is believed that man is the measure of all things.
Man measures truth, goodness, and beauty by the effect things have upon him, according to what they seem to him to be. These three terms have suffered different fortunes at different times.
For Spinoza, goodness and beauty are subjective, but not truth.
Because he "has persuaded himself that all things which exist are made for him," man, Spinoza says, judges that to be "of the greatest importance which is most useful to him, and he must esteem that to be of surpassing worth by which he is most beneficially affected."
The notions of good and evil, beauty and ugliness, do not conform to anything in the nature of things.
"The ignorant," says Spinoza, nevertheless, "call the nature of a thing good, evil, sound, putrid, or corrupt just as they are affected by it." For example, if the motion by which the nerves are affected by means of objects represented to the eye conduces to well-being, the objects by which it is caused are called beautiful ; while those exciting a contrary motion are called deformed .
Of the triad, beauty is by far the most subjective value. The familiar maxim -de gustibus non disputandum (One's tastes are not to be disputed.), has its original application in the sphere of beauty rather than truth or goodness.
From the ancient skeptics down to our own day, men have noted the great variety of traits, often sharply opposed, which have been considered beautiful at different times and places.
"We fancy its forms, " Montaigne says of beauty, "according to our appetite and liking . . . "
"Indians paint it black and tawny, with great swollen lips, big fat noses, and load the cartilage betwixt the nostrils with great rings of gold and make it hang down to the mouth . . . "
"In Peru, the greatest ears are the most beautiful and they stretch them out as far as they can by art . . . "
"There are, elsewhere, nations that take great care to blacken their teeth, and hate to see them white; elsewhere people that paint them red . . . "
"The Italians fashion beauty gross and massive; the Spanish gaunt and slender; among us one makes it white, another brown; one soft and delicate, another strong and vigorous . . . "
"Just as the preference in beauty is given by Plato to the spherical figure, the Epicureans give it to the pyramidal or the square, and cannot swallow a god in the form of a ball."
Darwin, like Montaigne, studied what made someone or something beautiful. Darwin also concluded that there was no objective basis for beauty.
If any consensus is found, among skeptics or relativists, about what is beautiful or ugly, they usually explain it by certain prejudices or customary standards.
These standards vary with different tribes and cultures and at different times and places.
Jean Auel was the author of -The Valley of the Horses , a sequel to -The Clan of the Cave Bear . In -The Valley of the Horses she had a drawn-out narrative about four Cro Magnon boys flailing their way through puberty. They were outspoken about their individual tastes, and they had opinions on everything under the sun. Anyone who told one of them that he had an eye for flathead girls would be in for a fistfight. (flathead = Neanderthal)
Beginning in the sphere of beauty, subjectivism or relativism spreads first to judgments of good and evil, and then to statements about truth, never in the opposite direction.
It becomes complete when what is good or true is held to be just as much a matter of private taste or customary opinion as what is beautiful.
PART II will wrestle with the definition of "beauty." Interpretations from Aquinas and William James will be considered. Finally we will go into Immanuel Kant's theory of beauty.
The term "beauty" does not readily lend itself to a logical or mathematical definition. There have been many attempts, however, to briefly state what beauty is.
Aquinas, for example, declares that "the beautiful is the same as the good, and they differ in aspect only . . . "
"The notion of good is that which calms the desire, while the notion of the beautiful is that which calms the desire by being seen or known."
This, according to Aquinas, implies that "beauty adds to goodness a relation to the cognitive faculty; so that -good means that which simply pleases the appetite, while -beautiful is something pleasant to apprehend.
Because of its relation to the cognitive power, Aquinas defines the beautiful as "that which pleases upon being seen" (-id quod visum pacet ). Hence, he continues, "beauty consists in due proportion, for the senses delight in things duly proportioned . . . because the sense too is a sort of reason, as is every cognitive power.
Some people try to equate beauty with pleasure, but this creates problems of its own. Can the same object which arouses pleasure in one individual, causing him to render a judgment of beauty; then arouse displeasure in another individual, causing him to render a judgment of ugliness?
Aquinas meets this difficulty by specifying certain objective elements of beauty, or "conditions," as he calls them.
"Beauty includes three conditions," he writes: "-integrity or -perfection , since those things which are impaired are by that very fact ugly; due -proportion or -harmony ; and lastly, -brightness or -clarity , whence things which are beautiful have a bright color."
Quite apart from individual reactions, objects may differ in the degree to which they possess such propertiesïtraits which are capable of pleasing or displeasing their beholder
In the controversy over the objectivity or subjectivity of beauty, it is possible to take a position midway between the two extremes.
One can claim that beauty is intrinsic to an object without denying the relevance of differences in individual sensibility.
William James takes such a position in his discussion of aesthetic principles. He says "We are once and for all so made that when certain impressions come before our mind, one of them will seem to call for or repel the others as its companions."
As an example, he cites the fact that "a note sounds good with its third and fifth."
Such an aesthetic judgment certainly depends upon individual sensibility, and, James adds, "to a certain extent the principle of habit will explain [it]."
But he also points out that "to explain -all aesthetic judgments in this way would be absurd; for it is notorious how seldom natural experiences come up to our aesthetic demands."
To the extent that aesthetic judgments "express inner harmonies and discords between objects of thought," the beautiful, according to James, has a certain objectivity; and good taste can be conceived as the capacity to be pleased by which -should elicit that reaction.
Kant's theory of the beautiful, to take another conception, must also be understood in the general context of his theory of knowledge, and his analysis of such terms as good, pleasure, and desire.
His definition, like that of Aquinas, calls an object beautiful if it satisfies the observer in a very special wayïnot merely pleasing his senses, or satisfying his desires in the ways in which things good as means or ends fit a man's interests or purposes.
The beautiful, according to Kant, "pleases -immediatedly . . . -apart from all interest ." The pleasure that results from its contemplation "may be said to be the one and only disinterested and -free delight; for, with it, no interest, whether of sense or reason, extorts approval."
The aesthetic experience is for Kant also unique in that its judgment "is represented as -universal , i.e. valid for every man," yet at the same time it is "incognizable by means of any universal concept."
In other words, "all judgments of taste are singular judgments"; they are without concept in the sense that they do not apply to a class of objects. Nevertheless, they have a ceratain universality and are not merely the formulation of private judgment.
When "we call the object beautiful," Kant says, "we believe ourselves to be speaking with a universal voice, and lay claim to the concurrence of every one, whereas no private sensation would be decisive except for the observer alone and -his liking.
In saying that aesthetic judgments have subjective, not objective, universality, and in holding that the beautiful is the object of a necessary satisfaction, Kant also seems to take the middle position, which recognizes the subjectivity of the aesthetic judgment without ddnying that beauty is somehow an intrinsic property of objects.
With regard to its subjective character, Kant cites Hume to the effect that "although critics are able to reason more plausibly than cooks, they must still share the same fate."
The universal character of the aesthetic judgment, however, keeps it from being completely subjective and Kant goes to some length to refute the notion that in matters of the beautiful one can seek refuge in the adage that "every one has his own taste."
The fact that the aesthetic judgment requires universal assent, even though the universal rule on whoich it is based cannot be formulated, does not, of course, preclude the failure of the object to win such assent from many individuals.
Not all men have good taste or, having it, have it to the same degree.
PART III will talk about how aesthetic training can develop a person's sense of beauty. We will compare beauty in nature with beauty in art. Aristotle claims that they are the same, and Kant claims that they are different. We will compare two adjectives: "sublime" and "beautiful."
The foregoing considerationsïselective rather than exhaustiveïshow the connection between definitions of beauty and the problem of aesthetic training.
In the traditional discussion of the ends of education, there is the problem of how to cultivate good tasteïthe ability to discriminate critically between the beautiful and the ugly.
If, beauty is entirely subjective, entirely a matter of individual feeling, then, except for conformity to standards set by customs of the time and place, no criteria would seem to be available for measuring the taste of the individuals.
In beauty is simply objectiveïsomething immediately apparent to observation as are the simple sensible qualitiesïno special training would seem to be needed for sharpening our perception of it.
The genuineness of the educational problem in the sphere of beauty seems, therefore, to depend upon a theory of the beautiful which avoids both extremes, and which permits the educator to aim at the development of individual sensibilities in accordance with the objective criteria of taste.
The foregoing considerations also provide background for the problem of beauty in nature and in art.
As indicated in the presentation on "Art," the consideration of art in recent times tends to become restricted to the theory of the fine arts.
So too the consideration of beauty has become more and more in analysis of excellence in poetry, music, printing, and sculpture.
In consequence, the meaning of the word "aesthetic" has progressively narrowed, until not it refers almost exclusively to the appreciation of works of fine art, where before it connoted any experience of the beautiful in the things of nature as well as in the works of man.
The question is raised, then, whether natural beauty, or the perception of beauty in nature involves the same elements and causes as beauty in art.
Is the beauty of a flower or of a flowering field determined by the same factors as the beauty of a still life or of a landscape painting?
The affirmative answer seems to be assumed in a large part of the tradition.
In his discussion of the beautiful in the -Poetics, Aristotle explicitly applies the same standard to both nature and art.
"To be beautiful," he writes, "a living creature and every whole made up of parts, must not only present a certain order in its arrangement of parts, but also be of a certain magnitude."
Aristotle's notion that art imitates nature indicates a further relation between the beautiful in art and nature.
Unity, proportion, and clarity would then be elements common to beauty in its every occurrence, though these elements may be embodied differently in things which have a difference in their mode of being, as do natural and artificial things.
With regard to the beauty of nature and or art, Kant tends to take the opposite position.
He points out that "the mind cannot reflect on the beauty of nature without at the same time finding its interests engaged."
Apart from any question of use that might be involved, he concludes that the "interest" aroused by the beautiful in nature is "akin to the moral, particularly from the fact that nature . . . in her beautiful products displays herself as art, not as a mere matter of chance, but, as it were, designedly, according to a law-directed arrangement.
The fact that natural things and works of art stand in a different relation to purpose or interests is for Kant an immediate indication that their beauty is different.
Their susceptibility to disinterested enjoyment is not the same.
Yet for Kant, as for his predecessors, nature provides the model or archetype which art follows, and he even speaks of art as an "imitation" of nature.
The Kantian discussion of nature and art moves into another dimension when it considers the distinction bewtween the beautiful and the sublime.
We must look for the sublime, Kant says, "not . . . in works of art . . . nor yet in things of nature, that in their very concept import a definite end, e.g. animals of a recognized natural order, but in rude nature merely as involving magnitude.
And Edmund Burke, Kant characterized the sublime by reference to the limitations of human powers.
Whereas the beautiful "consists in limitation," the sublime "immediately involves, or else by its presence provokes, a representation of limitlessness," which "may appear; indeed, in a point of form to contravene the ends of our power of judgment, to be ill-adapted to our faculty of presentation, and to be, as it were, an outrage on the imagination.
Made aware of his own weakness, man is dwarfed by nature's magnificence, but at that very moment he is also elevated by realizing his ability to appreciate that which is so much greater than himself.
This dual mood signalizes man's experience of the sublime.
Unlike the enjoyment of beauty, it is neither disinterested nor devoid of moral tone.
PART IV will deal with faculties engaged in the experience of beauty. We will compare desire with love (comparing Darwin's beauty with Plato's beauty). We will see what Plotinus has to say about beauty of the body versus beauty of the soul. Also we will touch on some distinctions of beauty, for example, types of beauty and also grades of beauty (as mentioned in -The Symposium) .
Truth is usually connected with perceptions and thought, the good with desire and action.
Both have been related to love and, in different ways, to pleasure and pain.
All these terms naturally occur in the traditional discussion of beauty, partly by way of definition, but also partly in the course of considering the faculties engaged in the experience of beauty.
Basic here is the question of whether beauty is an object of love or desire.
Desire is sometimes thought of as fundamentally acquisitive, directed toward the appropriation of a good; whereas love, on the contrary, aims at no personal aggrandizement but rather, with complete generosity, wishes only the well-being of the beloved.
Love, moreover, is more akin to knowledge than is desire.
It is the "privilege of beauty," Plato thinks, to offer man the readiest access to the world of ideas. According to the myth in the -Phaedrus , the contemplation of beauty enables the soul to "grow wings."
This experience, untimately intellectual in its aim, is described by Plato as identical with love.
The observer of beauty "is amazed when he sees anyone having a godlike face or form, which is the expression of divine beauty;
"and at first a shudder runs through him, and again the old awe steals over him,"
"then looking upon the face of his beloved as of a god, he reverences him, and if he were not afraid of being thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of god."
When the soul bathes herself "in the waters of beauty, her constraint is loosened, and she is refreshed and has no more pangs and pains."
This state of the soul enraptured by beauty, Plato goes on to say, "is by men called love."
Sharply opposed to Plato's intellectualization of beauty is that conception which connects it with sexual pleasure and sensual attraction.
When Darwin, for instance, considers the sense of beauty, he confines his attention
almost entirely to the colors and sounds used as "attractions of the opposite sex."
Darwin says that appreciation for female beauty is a constant throughout the animal kingdom.
On the other hand, Darwin attributes to man alone an aesthetic faculty for the appreciation of beauty apart from love or sex.
No other animal, he thinks, is "capable of admiring such scenes as the heavens at night, a beautiful landscape, or refined music; but such high tastes are acquired through culture and depend on complex associations; they are not enjoyed by barbarians or uneducated persons.
Beauty has a connection to the realm of thought as well as to the realm of perception.
Plotinus, holding that beauty of every kind comes from a "form" or "reason," traces the "beauty which is from bodies" as we;; as tjat "which is in the soul" to its source in "eternal intelligence." This "intelligible beauty" lies outside the range of desire even as it is beyond the reach of sense-perception.
These distinctions in types of beautyïnatural and artificial, sensible and intelligible, even, perhaps, material and spiritualïindicate the scope of the discussion, though not all writers on beauty deal with all its manifestations.
Primarily concerned with other subjects, many of the great books make only an indirect contribution to the theory of beauty:
The moral treatises which consider the spiritual beauty of a noble man or of a virtuous character;
The cosmologies of the philosophers or scientists which beauty in the structure of the worldïthe intelligible, not sensible, order of the universe;
The mathematical works which exhibit, and sometimes elucidate, an awareness of formal beauty in the necessary connection of ideas;
The great poems which crystallize beauty in a scene, in a face, in a deed;
And, above all, the writings of the theologians which do not try to do more than suggest the ineffable splendor of God's infinite beauty, a beauty fused with truth and goodness, all absolute in the one absolute perfection of the divine being.
The ladder of love in Plato's -Symposium describes an ascent from lower to higher forms of beauty.
"He who has been instructed thus far in the things of love, Diotima tells Socrates, "and who has learned to see beauty in due order and succession, when he comes toward the end will suddenly perceive a nature of wondrous beauty . . . beauty absolute, separate, simple, and everlasting, which without diminution and without encrease, or any change, is imparted to the ever-growing and perishing beauties of all other things."
"He who from these, ascending under the influence of true love, begins to perceive that beauty, is not far from the end."
The order of ascent, according to Diotima, begins "with the beauties of earth and mounts upwards for the sake of that other beauty," going from fair form to "all fair forms, and from fair forms to fair practices, and from fair practices to fair notions, until from fair notions" we come to "the notion of absolute beauty and at last know what the essence of beauty is."
"This, my dear Socrates," she concludes, "is the life above all others which man should live in the contemplation of beauty absolute."
For Plotinus the degrees of beauty correspond to degrees of emancipation from matter. "The more it goes towards matter . . . the feebler beauty becomes."
A thing is ugly only because, "not dominated by form and reason, the matter has not been completely informed by the idea." If a thing could be completely "without reason and form," it would be "absolute ugliness."
But whatever exists possesses form and reason to some extent and has some share of the effulgent beauty of the One, even as it has some share through emanation in its overflowing beingïthe grades of beauty, as of being signifying the remotion of each thing from its ultimate source.
Source: Philosophy-irc.org
