What is Beauty?

Elis said:
Beauty is simple. It's nailing the core principles that play to our values.
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What kinds of values? Individual values, socio-cultural values, universal values...?
 
For me beauty is a feeling. There is beauty all around us in different forms. In the nature, little moments of laughter or tears, birds chirping outside, rain.. Feeling beauty through love, sorrow or humor. So many beautiful things. Beauty is a true connection to your soul which connects to the universe. I believe beauty starts from the inside.

I can't explain it more but I tried haha.
 
flower said:
For me beauty is a feeling. There is beauty all around us in different forms. In the nature, little moments of laughter or tears, birds chirping outside, rain.. Feeling beauty through love, sorrow or humor. So many beautiful things. Beauty is a true connection to your soul which connects to the universe. I believe beauty starts from the inside.

I can't explain it more but I tried haha.
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I'm glad you mentioned this, flower! I agree that beauty is — at least in part — a feeling. I think we're missing something as long as we don't mention this. When you say that beauty "starts from the inside", do you mean that you can bring about beauty from within yourself? Or do you still need an external 'stimulus' of some sort, even though the feeling itself is internal?
 
John K said:
I have to add that the expression ‘just right’ really doesn’t do justice to how I experience it. There is a numinous quality to something or someone beautiful that is part of that feeling - inferior Se gives them a magical glow sometime.
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Hi John, I am very interested in this "numinous quality" which you are referring to here. I personally am convinced, though I am not quite sure how to articulate it, that this "quality" contributes to making a beautiful thing beautiful; that it is part of the essence of the beautiful, as opposed, for example, to the merely pleasant, attractive, entertaining, etc. Do you think there might be a way of rationalizing this numinous quality, or is it for you akin to a mystical experience, impervious to descriptive scrutiny?

Reverist said:
Beauty is that which pleases the senses.
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Would you be willing to hold that nutella is beautiful? It certainly pleases my senses. :yum:
 
Ren said:
What kinds of values? Individual values, socio-cultural values, universal values...?
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I'm thinking mainly genetics here, and maybe an appreciation for what we've come to accrue over the years. There's a reason why we see beauty in a pretty face, a situation, or a good answer. There's something there that resonates with our values.
 
Ren said:
I'm glad you mentioned this, flower! I agree that beauty is — at least in part — a feeling. I think we're missing something as long as we don't mention this. When you say that beauty "starts from the inside", do you mean that you can bring about beauty from within yourself? Or do you still need an external 'stimulus' of some sort, even though the feeling itself is internal?
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Both. Everyone can spread beauty around them, just within a genuine smile to another person for example. Smiles are beautiful! Another example is when writing a poem or creating any kind of art, you feel good and project beauty around you (if they see your art lol) etc.
 
Darwina babbling: Beauty is the "image" that triggers attraction and serves as a guide in selection, categorization and choice. Beauty on a basic level is the attraction we experience when we (mentally or physically) perceive harmony (beautiful symmetry=perfection, beautiful asymmetry=perfectly balanced imperfections). Next level is the attraction to slight disturbances in harmony (beneficial mutations?). Next level is attraction to ugliness, which is necessary for exploration/development/healing and for not losing the sense of contrasts ("no branches reaching heaven without roots reaching hell").

So the first level is the universal build-in perception of beauty and doesn't have to be tough.

The second one I think is more situational, and maybe a mix of the personal preference you've developed and socially constructed ideas of what's beautiful now (what's beneficial for the species to be attracted to now).

The third level I think mostly has to do with each individuals unconsciousness, and the reason why different people can find beauty in the strangest things.
 
Ren said:
Hi John, I am very interested in this "numinous quality" which you are referring to here. I personally am convinced, though I am not quite sure how to articulate it, that this "quality" contributes to making a beautiful thing beautiful; that it is part of the essence of the beautiful, as opposed, for example, to the merely pleasant, attractive, entertaining, etc. Do you think there might be a way of rationalizing this numinous quality, or is it for you akin to a mystical experience, impervious to descriptive scrutiny?
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I'll have wander around it and see what comes out :)

I think there may be some way of rationalising it, analogous to the way Jung rationalised similar experiences in his psychology. The problem with the concept of the numinous is that it means 'having a religious or spiritual quality' so am I using the word as a metaphor, or do I really mean that something beautiful must of necessity have a special spiritual presence? It's obvious that a convinced atheist can experience beauty too, but is that the same thing that I experience? A way of approaching this may be to consider that the human psyche is wired to experience and access its deepest inner integrative self as a spiritual journey and this is so regardless of whether this world is all there is, or whether there is existence beyond this world. Jung's insights here give us a common ground for all people to be able to identify with numinous experiences completely independently of the controversial issues of whether gods, or nirvana are meaningful or not, etc. It is an experience of transcendence - not in a controversial philosophical sense, but in a surprising incremental awareness of a greater self within us.

So when I encounter or attempt to create beauty, I think it pulls out of me to varying degrees an experience of my unconscious deeper self and this is accompanied by emotion - and maybe a feeling of revelation, a joy in the moment of existence, a simple pleasure, great intellectual satisfaction, a fresh viewpoint, a challenge, a setting aside of ego in the moment, a joy in the achievement of the other that possesses or creates the beauty, etc. It maybe does this by making active some of the universal symbols that lie at the heart of our collective unconscious. Not all of these things at once of course, and in varying degrees as well according to how much beauty lies before me. Now these things don't define beauty, because they can happen through other experiences as well, but for me, they accompany it.

For those of us who do have a religious perspective, I think beauty and an encounter with spirit run into each other. At its most intense, I find my spiritual awareness bathes the whole world (inside and out) and everyone in it with a glow of spirit-filled beauty - but sadly that isn't an everyday awareness.

I have had to think hard about this because I don't run through an analysis of all these things whenever I come across beauty or try to capture it myself. I don't think this gives an answer, but perhaps it gives some pointers to consider. I'm also aware that Jung's model of the psyche may not be appropriate for your philosophical goals, but it may well be useful as a springboard for your own conceptualisation of what is happening.

I'm very aware that the perspective I'm putting forward here makes beauty more subjective than objective (though an appeal to collective symbols does provide a sort of objectivity at the level of humanity) - I think this fits well with my own deep feelings about it.

There may be some other things worth exploring to try and uncover what is going on. For example, it seems to me that beauty is not as of necessity bound to pleasure, entertainment, feel good feelings. Some forms of beauty seem to be tied up with the dark side too - the wild spirits of the night that seem to attract people by the millions. It might sound self-contradictory, but intense ugliness can be seen as holding a deep beauty as in some of Goya's paintings for example. The exquisite expression of a dark feeling or concept lies at the heart of it, with a frisson of fear and an echo in our own shadow that awakens us, even shakes us up in some way to a deeper awareness. This is consistent with the ideas I was suggesting above.
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Then there is intellectual beauty that is maybe only accessible to a small number of people who have the interest and the focused education to appreciate it. I'd pick out Euler's identity as an incredibly beautiful piece of mathematics, for example. It relates together the 5 most important numbers in all of mathematics in a simple statement that is totally unexpectable, and with amazing elegance. There is 3 millennia of slowly evolving mathematical insight embodied in the soul of this equation, and it is rooted in the most fundamental structure of our world. It doesn't need a physical expression like this for the beauty to be manifest - just the idea of it.
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I'm sure that you have similar examples from the profound expressions of deep philosophy whose beauty cannot be accessed without a lot of knowledge of the field.
 
John K said:
It is an experience of transcendence - not in a controversial philosophical sense, but in a surprising incremental awareness of a greater self within us.
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I like this. Very well said.


John K said:
For example, it seems to me that beauty is not as of necessity bound to pleasure, entertainment, feel good feelings. Some forms of beauty seem to be tied up with the dark side too - the wild spirits of the night that seem to attract people by the millions. It might sound self-contradictory, but intense ugliness can be seen as holding a deep beauty as in some of Goya's paintings for example. The exquisite expression of a dark feeling or concept lies at the heart of it, with a frisson of fear and an echo in our own shadow that awakens us, even shakes us up in some way to a deeper awareness. This is consistent with the ideas I was suggesting above.
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I agree beauty is not bound just to what feels good or entertains. I think it is tied to an intense response, interest, or appreciation that, for whatever reason, creates a positive impression on a person's senses. Someone can find an item or experience sad, ugly, or grotesque, but derive some kind of positive impression, and I can see how it can be considered beautiful. It's quite subjective as it would be driven by the individual's senses and whatever drives their interest. I can also see how a negative impression could cause disgust and someone can be revolted by something, or unable to find or appreciate the beauty in it. Perhaps this explains how someone can see a person as beautiful, but have a distaste for them or be unattracted to them because, despite the fact that their senses are pleased, the impression is negative.
 
Reverist said:
I like this. Very well said.




I agree beauty is not bound just to what feels good or entertains. I think it is tied to an intense response, interest, or appreciation that, for whatever reason, creates a positive impression on a person's senses. Someone can find an item or experience sad, ugly, or grotesque, but derive some kind of positive impression, and I can see how it can be considered beautiful. It's quite subjective as it would be driven by the individual's senses and whatever drives their interest. I can also see how a negative impression could cause disgust and someone can be revolted by something, or unable to find or appreciate the beauty in it. Perhaps this explains how someone can see a person as beautiful, but have a distaste for them or be unattracted to them because, despite the fact that their senses are pleased, the impression is negative.
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Thanks for your comments Reverist. I haven’t seen you around the Forum for a while - how are you doing? I’ve missed your insights.
 
Ren said:
Hi guys,

Lately I've been quite interested in the philosophical field of aesthetics, which is usually defined as "the branch of philosophy concerned with the nature and appreciation of beauty." Which leads to the following question: what exactly is beauty? How do we understand it? People have an intuitive understanding of what the word beauty refers to, but tend to disagree wildly on how to define it.

It would be cool to hear your thoughts and hopefully arrive at a satisfactory definition of what beauty is. :)
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(Big picture, abstract) Beauty is being able to observe the unique patterns that dance elegantly in life- also seeing their mutations and their coalescence. (In conversation) Your astonished reaction from a perfectly delivered sentence which opens your heart, or blows your mind opening you to a new world.

Shaking off an old form to embrace something freer and more fluid. The simplicity of palatable silence that nourishes you in an uncanny way. Immediate connection felt and reflected in your lover's eyes.

Different cultures establish different values to what beauty is. That is a vast spectrum to talk about. But universally, most cultures would a agree that some aspects of 'nature' are beautiful.

Check out "The Unknown Craftsman" by Soetsu Yanagi. It is a good book on Japanese aesthetics. This is where asymmetry is valued. Very different values than the balanced proportions of Thomas Aquinas' theory of aesthetics found in "The Aesthetics of Thomas Aquinas" by Umberto Eco.
 
Different cultures establish different values to what beauty is. That is a vast spectrum to talk about. But universally, most cultures would a agree that some aspects of 'nature' are beautiful.


It is believed by some that the "Golden Ratio" or "Golden Section" is said to be aesthetically pleasing to the human brain and is found in nature everywhere. Mankind in its quest for understanding derived a number for it as it was so captive. Amazing to think that as we sit her in 2019 discussing the meaning of beauty, as far back as 300 BC it was being pondered. Goodness this is a good thread! Nice to meet you QuicksilverElf.
 
Before I (hopefully) respond to the more recent posts later today: I came across this passage from an essay by Heidegger yesterday. Here it is:

“Thus in the work it is truth, not only something true, that is at work. The picture that shows the peasant shoes, the poem that says the Roman fountain, do not just make manifest what this isolated being as such is—if indeed they manifest anything at all; rather, they make unconcealedness as such happen in regard to what is as a whole. The more simply and authentically the shoes are engrossed in their nature, the more plainly and purely the fountain is engrossed in its nature—the more directly and engagingly do all beings attain to a greater degree of being along with them. That is how self-concealing being is illuminated. Light of this kind joins its shining to and into the work. This shining, joined in the work, is the beautiful. ” M. Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’
 
Ren said:
Before I (hopefully) respond to the more recent posts later today: I came across this passage from an essay by Heidegger yesterday. Here it is:

“Thus in the work it is truth, not only something true, that is at work. The picture that shows the peasant shoes, the poem that says the Roman fountain, do not just make manifest what this isolated being as such is—if indeed they manifest anything at all; rather, they make unconcealedness as such happen in regard to what is as a whole. The more simply and authentically the shoes are engrossed in their nature, the more plainly and purely the fountain is engrossed in its nature—the more directly and engagingly do all beings attain to a greater degree of being along with them. That is how self-concealing being is illuminated. Light of this kind joins its shining to and into the work. This shining, joined in the work, is the beautiful. ” M. Heidegger, ‘The Origin of the Work of Art’
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This reminds me of many connected themes within the western tradition- the immanent coalescing with the transcendent. I would like to add later other artists and viewpoints from Japanese aesthetics (Tea ceremony and zen). I can see this eventually leading to talking about international film and aesthetics as well. These are not well thought out, or elegantly polished for any essay. So I am going to blurt out quotes and mention the root systems I sense growing out and connecting the interesting themes. I see the themes of "shining" and the "concealing" and "unconcealing ". And what is aesthetics?

Since you are in Ireland, I will start off with the Irish poet John O'Donohue. He was influenced by Heidegger. “What you encounter, recognize or discover depends to a large degree on the quality of your approach. Many of the ancient cultures practiced careful rituals of approach. An encounter of depth and spirit was preceded by careful preparation.
When we approach with reverence, great things decide to approach us. Our real life comes to the surface and its light awakens the concealed beauty in things. When we walk on the earth with reverence, beauty will decide to trust us. The rushed heart and arrogant mind lack the gentleness and patience to enter that embrace.”

Next, is from the Neo-Jungian Psychologist, James Hillman quoted from Philosophical Intimations. "The images we have witnessed feel beautiful — Manet’s and Redon’s flowers, Monet’s and Van Gogh’s landscapes. These paintings evoke an aesthetic response, despite our critical acumen that discounts these popular and easy images, despite our anti-Paris and anti-Impressionist attitudes. Despite what we know, the soul does gasp. What is this gasp? The images arrest, causing us to look again, that is, “re-spect” them. Let me surprise you: this gasp is the true root of aesthetics! The Homeric and later Greek word aio meant “I perceive,” “I take in,” in the sense of “breathing in.” In Homeric Greek, aisthou meaning “I gasp, breathe in” [4] is contained still within the later Greek aisthesis from which our aesthetics is derived. Aesthetics is a response, a sucking in of the breath as the Japanese do when encountering a beautiful or surprising event, entering a garden, for instance. Beauty does not have to be defined as a formal property of an image, its gestalt, nor does it reside in the tasteful eye of an observer. Rather, beauty is an instinctual response of the psyche to a particular display."

And also quoted from Hillman, The Thought of the Heart and the Soul of the World . “At that moment,” writes Dante, “I say … the spirit of life, which hath its dwelling in the secretest chamber of the heart, began to tremble so violently that the least pulses of my body shook; and in trembling it said these words: ‘Here is a deity stronger than I, who, coming, shall rule over me’  ” (Vita Nuova II). From then on he was a devotee of this deity in the shape of his soul figure, dedicated to love, imagination, and poetic beauty, all three inseparably. These couples, Petrarch and Laura, Dante and Beatrice, had no personal satisfaction, no human relationship. Yet what emerged from these happenings in the heart was the transformation of all Western culture, commencing as an aesthetic transformation; it was generated by Beauty. Was not Psyche in the Apuleius tale singled out by her beauty, and is not Aphrodite, the Beautiful One, the soul of the universe (psyché tou kosmou or anima mundi) that produces the perceptible world according to Plotinus (III. 5.4) and also the soul of each of us? Can we attend to what these figures and tales are saying? Can we realize that we are each, in soul, children of Aphrodite, that the soul is a therapeutes, as was Psyche, in the temple of Venus – that is where it is in devotion. The soul is born in beauty and feeds on beauty, requires beauty for its life.

If we read Plato the way Plotinus did, and understand Psyche the way Apuleius did, and experience soul as did Petrarch and Dante, then psyche is the life of our aesthetic responses, that sense of taste in relation with things, that thrill or pain, disgust or expansion of breast: those primordial aesthetic reactions of the heart are soul itself speaking. Psyche’s first trait, and the way we know her first, is neither by her labors, the work of soul-making, nor by her sufferings for love, nor in her oppression in lostness, the absence and deprivation of soul – these in the Apuleian tale all come later. We know her first by her primary characteristic given with her nature: Psyche is beautiful."

Here, we can jump to Plotinus. "Intellect Itself therefore is the First Beauty; it is total, and is everywhere total, without suffering a defect of beauty in any part. What, then, is the Beautiful Itself to be called? Certainly, not any thing which is not the whole itself, but either possesses a part only, or is entirely destitute of its participation. Indeed, unless this is the Beautiful Itself, what else can merit this appellation? For That which is prior to Intellect does not will Itself to be beautiful, but is something ineffably more excellent."

And

"The reason, therefore, of the beauty contained in nature is the exemplar of the beauty appearing in body: but the exemplar of natural beauty is a more beautiful reason contained in soul, from which the beauty of nature flows. But this shines brighter in a worthy soul, already advanced in beauty, than in nature herself; since it adorns such a soul, and affords a light, derived from one much greater; and which is no other than the First Beauty. -Plotinus

Over centuries, you see the focus change from the First Beauty to the ornament of the world and its beauty. The theme of shining, or luminous shows up in Gaston Bachelard, in his On Poetic Imagination and Reverie. Bachelard says, "The cosmos, in some way, has a touch of narcissism. The world wants to see itself. The will, considered in its Schopenhauerian aspect, creates eyes in order to contemplate, to feed upon beauty. Is not the eye itself a luminous beauty? Does it not bear the mark of pancalism? [2] It must be beautiful in order to see beauty. The iris of the eye must have a beautiful color so that beautiful colors may enter the pupil. Without blue eyes, how may we really see the blue sky? Without black eyes, how may we look at the night? Conversely, all beauty is ocellated."

Whew!
 
Ren said:
Here is a video today I made on the topic, for those interested :)

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I found this video very interesting Ren and it feels like you are on to something with the concept of giving. The sort of questions it raises for me are:

How can something be giving to one person and not to another? We don't agree at all on whether something has beauty or not - I find the Goya I posted earlier in the thread quite beautiful in its grotesqueness, but many people would disagree.

It seems to me that the elegence of presentation of something functional can be filled with beauty purely because of the way it presents its functionality - there is a reason that so many people are in love with steam locomotives and cars for example, though steam engines are no longer used as primary sources of power these days. You referred to this possibility in the video - I guess what I'm saying is that the very way some functional things are given can itself be beautiful. The often used phrase 'the beauty of this solution ....' comes to mind too in this context. But maybe I'm fearing dichotomy where none exists - why should something not be giving through the beauty of its givenness?
 
John K said:
I found this video very interesting Ren and it feels like you are on to something with the concept of giving.
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Thanks John! :) Let me try to answer your — as usual very pertinent — questions.

John K said:
How can something be giving to one person and not to another? We don't agree at all on whether something has beauty or not - I find the Goya I posted earlier in the thread quite beautiful in its grotesqueness, but many people would disagree.
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You're absolutely right, it is pretty self-evident that people differ wildly over what they consider "beautiful" or not. I think the way in which my theory might be able to meet this challenge is that it proposes to conceptualize beauty as something that is distinct from (though related to) what most people think about when they call a Goya painting "beautiful". Sometimes they will tend to think in terms of whether the painting is aesthetically pleasing 'to the senses', other times a little more than that, though this "little more" would be difficult for them to explain (whether numinous or not). But to conceive of beauty as the giving of itself for free amounts to a 'broader' understanding of what beauty means, in a sense. The Goya painting may be called beautiful by some, not beautiful by others; and yet in OA terms, both parties might have had an experience of beauty while looking at it. The basic idea here is that although people experience beauty, they don't necessarily call by the name "beauty" all of what OA defines as beauty; although what they do call by the name "beauty", OA would also usually define as beauty, too.

John K said:
It seems to me that the elegence of presentation of something functional can be filled with beauty purely because of the way it presents its functionality - there is a reason that so many people are in love with steam locomotives and cars for example, though steam engines are no longer used as primary sources of power these days. You referred to this possibility in the video - I guess what I'm saying is that the very way some functional things are given can itself be beautiful. The often used phrase 'the beauty of this solution ....' comes to mind too in this context. But maybe I'm fearing dichotomy where none exists - why should something not be giving through the beauty of its givenness?
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OK, so in the OM understanding, the folding of presence as giving/given is not dualistic: whatever 'self-gives' (i.e. being-as-presence in this case) both gives and is given. But it may be possible to imagine one's focus being directed on one fold over another, though the other fold will always be implicit is the experience as well. I usually speak of the foregrounding versus backgrounding of experiential aspects. And I would argue that in the example that you provide above, the focus will be primarily on the givingness of the thing: you refer to the beauty of something functional "purely because of the way in which it presents its functionality" — but if this presentation were given over being giving, one would just be using the thing, or think about it as something to be used. One would not ponder "the way in which the thing presents its functionality..." — to think in that way already showcases a foregrounding of givingness.

John K said:
Jung's insights here give us a common ground for all people to be able to identify with numinous experiences completely independently of the controversial issues of whether gods, or nirvana are meaningful or not, etc. It is an experience of transcendence - not in a controversial philosophical sense, but in a surprising incremental awareness of a greater self within us.
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I wonder if this idea of transcendence as "incremental awareness" might not be conceptually related, in some way or other, to the idea of beauty as giving presence. In my notebook, I call the mode of experience in which ◌ directs its focus towards the givingness of a beautiful event, being-attentive; and I think that there might be a kinship here between being-attentive and the "incremental awareness" you speak about.
 
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