Word
Gems
What is a
man but the sum of his thoughts?
- Mortimer Adler's
- Syntopicon
Essays
Beauty
Truth, goodness, and beauty form a triad of terms... They 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.
But they have also been assigned to special spheres of being or subject
matter -- the true to thought and logic, the good to action and morals, the beautiful to
enjoyment and aesthetics.
They have been called "the three fundamental values" with the
implication that the worth of anything can be judged by reference to these three
standards...
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 certain times it has been thought that the distinction of true from
false, good from evil, beautiful from ugly, has its basis and warranty in the very nature
of things, and that a man's judgment of these matters is measured for its soundness or
accuracy by its conformity to fact.
At other times the opposite position has been dominant. One meaning of
the ancient saying that man is the measure of all things applies particularly to the true,
good, and beautiful. Man measures truth, goodness, and beauty by the effect things have
upon him, according to what they seem to him to be... What seems ugly or false
may also seem beautiful or true to different men or to the same man at different times...
Beauty has been most frequently regarded as subjective, or relative to
the individual judgment. The familiar maxim, de gustibus non disputandum...
"Truth is disputable," writes Hume, "not taste ... No man reasons
concerning another's beauty..."
Beauty being simply a matter of individual taste [according to some], it
could afford no basis for argument or reasoning -- no objective ground for settling
differences of opinion.
... men have noted the great variety of traits ... which have been
considered beautiful at different times and places. "We fancy its forms,"
Montaigne says of beauty, "according to our appetite and liking ..."
- 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...
The degree to which [truth, goodness, and beauty] must be considered
interdependently is determined by the extent to which each of the three terms requires the
context of the other two for its definition and analysis.
- Beauty is, perhaps, not definable in any strict sense of
definition.
But there have been ... many attempts... Usually notions of goodness, or
correlative notions of desire and love, enter into the statement.
- 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 ... [beauty does the same but does so] 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 [with the mind]."
[Beauty, so defined, is a form of goodness.]
- Aquinas defines the beautiful as "that which pleases
upon being seen" (id quod visum placet).
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."
- The pleasure or delight involved in the perception of
beauty belongs to the order of knowledge rather than to desire or action. The knowing ...
occurs intuitively [that is, the knowing is immediately present to us] or contemplatively,
rather than by judgment and reasoning [which is proper to science]. [In this sense, beauty
is also a form of truth.] ...
To define beauty in terms of pleasure would seem to make it relative to
the individual, for what gives pleasure ... to one man, may not to another.
- It should be noted, however, that the pleasure in
question is attributed to the object as its cause...
... what in the object is the cause? Can the same object just as readily
arouse displeasure in another individual...? Are these opposite reactions entirely the
result of the way an individual feels?
Aquinas appears to meet this difficulty by specifying certain objective
elements of beauty:
- "integrity or perfection" [unity, oneness]
- "proportion or harmony" [cohesion]
Quite apart from individual reactions, objects may vary
in the degree to which they possess such properties – traits which are capable of pleasing or displeasing their
beholder.
This does not mean that the individual reaction is
invariably in accordance with the objective characteristics of the thing beheld.
Once again in the controversy concerning the
objectivity or subjectivity of beauty, there seems to be
William James would seem to be indicating such a
position when, in his discussion of aesthetic principles, he declares:
"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 objects 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 way--not 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 immediately … 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 judgements of taste are
singular judgements"; they are without concept in the sense that they do not apply to
a class of objects. Nevertheless they have a certain universality and are not merely the
formulation of a 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 denying 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 which it is based cannot be
formulated, does not, of course, preclude the failure of the object to win such assent
from many individuals.
THE FOREGOING CONSIDERATIONS -- selective rather than
exhaustive -- show 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 taste -- the 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
the customs of the time and place, no criteria would seem to he available for measuring
the taste of individuals.
If beauty is simply objective
-- something immediately apparent to observation as are the simple sensible qualities --
no 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
and which permits the educator to aim at a development
of individual sensibilities in accordance with objective criteria of taste.
THE FOREGOING CONSIDERATIONS also provide background
for the problem of beauty in nature and in art. As indicated in the chapter 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 an analysis of excellence n poetry, music, painting, and sculpture.
In consequence, the meaning of the word
"aesthetic" has progressively narrowed, until now 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 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 of 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 interest 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 interest 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 between 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."
In company with Longinus and Edmund Burke, Kant
characterizes 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 point of form to contravene the ends of our power of judgement, 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.
TRUTH IS USUALLY connected with perception 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 whether beauty is an object
of love or desire. The meaning of any answer will, of course, vary with different
conceptions of desire and love.
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.
In this context, beauty seems to be more closely
associated with a good that is loved than with a good desired.
Love, moreover, is more akin to knowledge than is
desire. The act of contemplation is sometimes understood as a union with the object
through both knowledge and love. Here again the context of meaning favors the alignment of
beauty with love, at least for theories which make beauty primarily an object of
contemplation. In Plato and Plotinus, and on another level in the theologians, the two
considerations -- of love and beauty -- fuse together inseparably.
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, ultimately 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 reverence him, and if he were not afraid of being
thought a downright madman, he would sacrifice to his beloved as to the image of a
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 sensual pleasure and sexual attraction.
When Darwin, for instance, considers sense of beauty,
he confines his attention almost entirely to the colors and sounds used as
"attractions of the opposite sex."
Freud, likewise, while admitting that
"psycho-analysis has less to say about beauty than about most things," claims
that "its derivation from the realms of sexual sensation . . . seems certain."
Such considerations may not remove beauty from the
sphere of love, but, as the chapter LOVE makes clear, love has many meanings, and is of
many sorts. The beautiful which is sexually attractive is the object of a love which is
almost identical with desire -- sometimes with lust -- and certainly involves animal
impulses and bodily pleasures.
"The taste for the beautiful," writes
Darwin, "at least as far as female beauty is concerned, is not of a special nature in
the human mind."
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;
For Freud, however, the appreciation of such beauties
remains ultimately sexual in motivation, no matter how sublimated in effect. "The
love of beauty," he says, "is the perfect example of a feeling with an inhibited
aim. 'Beauty' and 'attraction' are first of all the attributes of a sexual object."
The theme of beauty's relation to desire and love is
connected with another basic theme -- the relation of beauty to sense and intellect, or to
the realms of perception and thought. The two discussions naturally run parallel.
The main question here concerns the existence of
beauty in the order of purely intelligible objects, and its relation to the sensible
beauty of material things. Plotinus, holding that beauty of every kind comes from a
"form" or "reason," traces the "beauty which is in bodies,"
as well as that "which is in the soul" to its source in the "eternal
intelligence." This "intelligible beauty" lies outside the range of desire
even as it is beyond the reach of sense-perception. Only the admiration or the adoration
of love is proper to it.
THESE DISTINCTIONS in types of beauty -- natural and
artificial, sensible and intelligible, even, perhaps, material and spiritual -- indicate
the scope of the discussion, though not all writers on beauty deal with all its
manifestations.
Primarily concerned with other subjects, any 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 find beauty in the structure of the world -- the
intelligible, not sensible, order of the universe; the mathematical works which exhibit
and sometimes enunciate, 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 Divine Goodness," observes Dante,
"which from Itself spurns all envy, burning in Itself so sparkles that It displays
the eternal beauties."
Some of the great books consider the various kinds of
beauty, not so much with a view to classifying their variety, as in order to set forth the
concordance of the grades of beauty with the grades of being, and with the levels of love
and knowledge.
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 increase, 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 one fair form to "all fair forms, and from fair forms
to fair practises, and from fair practises 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 a 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 being -- the grades of beauty, as of being,
signifying the remotion of each thing from its ultimate source.
Even separated from a continuous scale of beauty, the
extreme terms -- the beauty of God and the beauty of the least of finite things -- have
similitude for a theologian like Aquinas.
The word visum in his
definition of the beautiful (id quod visum placet, "that which pleases upon
being seen") is the word used to signify the type of supernatural knowledge promised
to the souls of the blessed -- the beatific vision in which God is beheld intuitively, not
known discursively, and in which knowledge united with love is the principle of the soul's
union with God.
An analogy is obviously implied. In this life and on
the natural level, every experience of beauty -- in nature or art, in sensible things or
in ideas -- occasions something like an act of vision, a moment of contemplation,
of enjoyment detached from desire or action, and clear without the articulations of
analysis or the demonstrations of reason.
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