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| W H A T I S B E A U T Y |
“BEAUTY”
Philosophers have philosophized and intellectuals have rationalized about ‘beauty’. Have they succeeded? I think not, but what I think is that only a very few have, and the rest have only managed to build imaginary castles in the air without any solid foundations, and into these castles they have imprisoned most of the people of the world.
I don’t intend to demean anybody in this way, but the idea of beauty has been so very drastically misunderstood and misrepresented that I think strong words are needed indeed to express this idea with due gravity for what it actually means.
Beauty in simplest essential terms is nothing but a ‘sense of harmony and perfection’. This harmony and perfection applies to anything that we wish to take up with the intention of aesthetic examination, whether it be an ordinary pebble, a painting, music, nature, human body, human character etc. It even applies to the realm of ideas.
An idea, an object or anything at all can be considered beautiful if all of their constituent parts fit together into a coherent logical structure and project harmony and perfection. A perfectly proportioned human face looks beautiful because of the nature and arrangement of its constituent parts i.e. when the eye, the mouth, the nose and the overall shape are all, harmoniously integrated together. Suppose it were not so and the face were disfigured, like an uneven forehead and a nose flattened sideways one eye smaller than the other, cleft lips etc. then one would certainly not find such a face beautiful because different parts contradict, are asymmetrical and hence disharmonious. Beauty is not always merely visual but can also be abstract and can sometimes, be grasped in conceptual terms. For example, the character of a person, which depends on appraisal of the sum total of the virtues possessed by that person, can make the person beautiful in an abstract way, or consider a scientific theory, in which all parts fit together and are able to explain flawlessly a true picture of reality. An example is Einstein’s theory of relativity, though the theory does not explain everything but it definitely is able to explain successfully with unerring consistency, a true picture of reality pertaining to massive objects. The theory is coherent in itself and demonstrable to be true and thus it is quite harmonious in the way all its parts fit together to explain reality as it is.
The present day widely accepted notion of beauty is, “beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.” This thinking originated in ancient Greece and today it is still going strong because philosophers like Hume and the intellectual brigade with similar ideologies have been keeping it alive. Hume said that, “Beauty in things exists merely in the mind which contemplates them." I am sure almost everyone agrees to this and today most of the world swears by it when questioned about beauty, but this idea is actually wrong. There are inherent fundamental flaws in it, which are so great, and their impact so wide and far reaching that none realize the damage they have incurred to our understanding of not only beauty but even other important areas of life.
This very notion, even if it looks right and logical on the surface constitutes the greatest fallacy pertaining to the idea of beauty. Much of the modern art is a direct result of this flawed conception of beauty and this article is, aimed at refuting this idea and showing reasons why it is wrong. Furthermore, the article’s goal is to bring about a proper understanding of what beauty truly means and show an overall picture of how beauty must be understood and why.
“Beauty lies in the eye of the beholder.” Let us first examine the statement and see if it really is as ‘fallacious’ as I say it is. One chief direct implication of this statement is that beauty is something, which depends only on an individual’s perception and hence is independent of the outside reality, i.e. that anything we choose to call as beautiful must be beautiful because we say it is beautiful. This constitutes a purely subjectivist thinking on which most of the modern and contemporary art is based. The premise that ‘anything we choose to call as beautiful, must be beautiful because we say it is beautiful,’ is a wrong one because it evades the consideration of ethics and morality in defining and understanding of what beauty is.
Now one may ask, what has ethics and morality got to do with beauty? Well here is the answer. Beauty is a positive concept because the very idea of beauty rests on a morality that is positive and ethics that is life enhancing. If we do not have the idea of good and bad then we cannot have the idea of beauty. For example consider dog shit, it may be hard to believe but there are really some people who will say it is beautiful, but when you ask them what is ‘beauty’ they will not be able to define it and will give a hazy and meaningless reply. So, in absence of any objective definition people gain free license to call something, anything they wish and this is exactly the matter with the idea of beauty in the world of today. To appreciate dog shit and call it beautiful one has to evade the ethical and morality considerations because there is no other way to call it beautiful without feeling any kind of guilt. To such a person each and everything can be beautiful. Dog shit and the Monalisa painting are to be held in equal regard, even a cheat and a noble man of character are supposed to be equal too. Such a person does not judge, but merely accepts any and every random thing as beautiful, ugly, good or bad because for such a person there is no such thing as good and bad because either everything is good or everything is bad. For such a person, the capacity to judge beauty or anything at all, has been paralyzed due to the moral and ethical evasions. Hence, the only way for such a person to justify his or her stand is by adhering to the notion that beauty does not depend on reality but is entirely dependent only on one’s perception and thinking. This adherence gives one an escape from judging anyone or anything. It works by providing refuge inside a faulty philosophical framework, which gives them guiltless freedom to do and proclaim as they please without testing its basis in reality.
The biggest hurdle in the way of an objective definition of beauty comes from the popular rationalization, i.e., “what is beautiful for one may not be beautiful for another and vice-versa.” The statement is true in a certain context, but here too lies a big inherent flaw in the way its meaning is generally interpreted and comprehended. Let me illustrate with an example. Let us consider people of different racial groups, the blacks and the whites. Now it is obvious that, what maybe considered beautiful by the white may not seem beautiful to the black. A white man may not like the facial structure and the skin color of a black woman and may think her to be ugly, whereas a black man may positively find the same woman to be beautiful. So, who is right? Well, both are right, but not in the way one might think, but for entirely different reasons.
On immediate reflection people usually get stumped by this example and begin to think that beauty must indeed depend only on our perception and hence beauty must really be a subjective idea and no other standards can be possible to define it. Due to such superficial examination, they must conclude that beauty truly lies in the eyes of the beholder. But in truth this is not the case, the error will become clear once we examine the example even more deeply.
There is always a precondition to judging anything or calling anything beautiful or ugly, that precondition is, ‘having knowledge’ about the thing under scrutiny. Because, without possessing any previous knowledge at all, you cannot have any reference for judging anything, you would be just like a newborn who has just opened its eyes to the world. Based on this ‘knowledge’, one develops a system of values, according to which, one judges the good, bad, right, wrong, beautiful, ugly etc. in varying degrees. Now, this ‘precondition knowledge’ that one possesses, does not come from mere imagination but it has to have a basis in reality which one has perceived in the past and integrated by thinking. Hence, the standards by which we judge anything, will have to be based on reality.
Now, the white man who has been raised among the whites, will have a different set of aesthetic values than that of a black man who has been raised in quite a different cultural and social conditions. Both men’s aesthetic appraisal will be quite different, because their value systems will differ and will depend to a great extent, on their cultural and social influences and also on their evolutionary differences. But, this does not mean that beauty is dependent merely on their personal whims and fancies. Because one has to keep in mind the social, cultural influences and evolutionary differences that go into the appraisal of the woman. To the black man, the aesthetic elements of the black woman will be more important due to his particular and unique cultural,social and evolutionary influences, than to the white man.
A male monkey would find a female monkey more beautiful than a female of human species. Why? Mainly because of the inherent evolutionary differences between the two dissimilar species. I will not say ‘cultural differences’ because monkeys do not have a highly developed and complex cultural structure as do humans, so it would be safe to assume that the cultural influence in monkeys, would hardly play a noteworthy part in the appraisal of an individual of their own species.
One might further interject and object, that what about when people of different racial background sometimes find each other to be beautiful. The answer is simple, because the value system they hold as true keeps changing and evolving as one learns more and more and one and one can then at times, override such cultural and social differences and consider them to be quite unimportant in appraisal of an individual of different racial background but of the same species. This is what learning brings to us. A person devoid of learning and stunted philosophical growth will not be able to appreciate something like art at the same level and within the same range of contexts as a learned person. So the conclusion is that, what we already know, influences to a great extent, our conception and appraisal of something as beautiful.
Now, there are those who think that beauty is a property of an object and no observer is required to judge it. They are few in numbers, but they are there with this definition of theirs and hence it must be discussed here, in order to get as complete picture as possible. The kind of definition propounded by them is a result of an intrinsic mode of thought. According to which something is supposed to be beautiful all by itself and it is a quality the object possesses automatically and is supposed to exist in some unknown and undefined dimension, independent of any need to be perceived. Well, this too, is erroneous and the error will become very apparent in a short while as we proceed further.
Beauty : How much is it actually based in reality and how much is it real, does it only reside in our imagination and nowhere else as Hume says? Well, let’s see. Consider again the example of a well-proportioned face, suppose that one finds such a face beautiful, now consider the question, why does one find the face beautiful? Is it that the observer is just imagining it or is the observer hallucinating that there actually is a beautiful face? The answer is ‘obviously not.’ Because, since the face is there, it is for real and it is exists. The essential to note is that the face actually must exist before the person perceives it. Now suppose the face were not perfectly proportioned and it were ugly, having cleft lips, lopsided head and drooping eyes and an uneven nose and very bad pale skin. Will the person still find the face as beautiful as the well proportioned one? The answer is ‘obviously not.’ A person actually finds a face beautiful or ugly, because the person first perceives the characteristics like the shape, symmetry, proportion, color etc which must be inherent in the object (face) and if these characteristics change then whatever he perceives will change too accordingly. Hence, the obvious implication to be drawn is that for doing an aesthetic appraisal of an object, it has to exist first, and it must have specific inherent qualities and characteristics which are absolute properties of the object itself. Then, through our senses, we perceive it (object) and appraise it on the basis of our knowledge, conceptual ability and philosophical criterion that we have learned beforehand in our life.
Hence, the conclusion is that beauty must depend on two things, the absolute qualities possessed by an object and, our perception and appraisal of its aesthetics. Hence, the ‘subjectivist’s’ thinking that beauty lies only in the eyes of beholder is wrong and the ‘intrinsic’ rationalization is wrong too, that beauty is an independent property of an object and exists in some unknown dimension having no need for an observer for perceiving it. ‘Beauty’ is therefore a positive thing, it is a sense of harmony and it depends on the object under observation and on the observer observing the object for aesthetic appraisal. Beauty does not merely depend on random whimsical thinking and imagination of a person and neither is it a totally absolute and independent quality possessed by any object outside of observation.
Most of the modern art and contemporary art is a result of this flawed conception of beauty. The Dadaists have done away with the idea of ethics and morality and have influenced a whole generation of artists with their flawed subjectivist ideology. The result is for all to see, art without beauty. It reflects the state of consciousness of the Mankind as a whole. It is very important for us to re-establish the right ideas and principles of beauty in art and also within our lives, if we are to see better times, in spirit and in kind. Good art nourishes the spirit and does not kill or diminish it. The purpose of beauty in art and elsewhere is the survival of consciousness, to show us life and not death.
Thank You.
