December 2, 2007

• Beauty

  1. What factors make something so pleasing that we call it BEAUTIFUL?
  That’s Socrates_Cafe's question this week. A topic which has apparently excited humans since (or before) they became human.
  Perhaps Will Durant tied it most beautifully to philosophy:
  We enter into the heart of the realm and gaze upon Philosophy herself, as she reveals to her lovers the beautiful, the immortal, and the good. For Philosophy has a secret jealousy of Art, and envies her creative passion for beauty; here, and not in science, is her great rival for the possession and loyalty of the noblest men. Wisdom might gracefully yield, admitting that it is wiser to worship Beauty than to seek Truth; for eternal Truth is so proudly elusive that perhaps we shall never be allowed even to touch the hem of her garments, while Beauty, knowing that she must die, welcomes and rewards our adoration. So Philosophy modestly studies Beauty, while Art reveres and re-creates her; Art knows her in the ardent intimacy of love, in the fair strength of architectured temples, and the voluptuous splendor of sculptured forms, and the warmth of color, and the music of words, and the concourse of sweet sounds; but Philosophy, alas, knows only the problems of beauty: whence beauty comes; and what it means, and whether it lies in the form itself or only in the hunger of our hearts. And this is the realm of AEsthetics, made dreary for centuries by scholastic minds, but still full of wonder and delight.
  The Pleasures of Philosophy (S&S,1929, p.12-13)

  Philosophers since Plato have tried to codify beauty, their comments mostly seem to feature symmetry, proportion of form, organic unity, integrity of performance, harmonious proportion, et al.
  “...a sense of harmony in the relations of Faculty and Will and the understanding” (That’s Kant)
  “The underlying dynamism of the Universe and perfect combining of Apollonian rationality and Dionysic passion” (That’s Schopenhauer and that’s enough)

  A recognition and appreciation of Beauty seems to be both culturally defined and part of our innate admiration of symmetry and harmony in sensory perception. Something triggers our deepest emotional faculties on what Freud called the unconscious level.

  Perhaps Kahlil Gibran said it most succinctly:
  Beauty is eternity gazing at itself in a mirror.

  • 7:13 pm
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