This is, apparently, the kind of question you might have to answer if you are a philosophy student at the Sorbonne:
Is Beauty limited to perception?
This is exactly the kind of question that philosophers in the Austro-Anglo-American analytical tradition really hate. Oh, by the way, the name of that philosophical stream would be simply "Anglo-American" if it were not for one single figure: Wittgenstein. He started out influenced by Frege, but then went to Cambridge and studied with Bertrand Russell so now he is a huge part of the analytical stream. But back to the question: This is looking at the old saw "Beauty is in the eye of the beholder" from a different angle. Yes, of course, Beauty is in perception, but is it limited to perception? I think not because when I am composing or playing I am certainly seeking to express Beauty in some way. And we have to define Beauty pretty widely as it has to include all the contrasts that occur in order to create moments of Beauty. Beauty is not simply sappy prettiness. So when I am attempting to create Beauty is it simply perception? Well, no, it is imagination and recollection and experimentation and serendipity and all sorts of things that we would not normally categorize as perception.
Your thoughts? And to listen to while you are mulling it over, here is a sarabande by Jacques de Saint-Luc:
Let's go Zen and answer each question with another question.
ReplyDeleteDoes beauty reside in an object?
You can't trick me! I've read a few sutras. Yes, beauty can reside in an object, which is what causes the perception of beauty. Are all perceptions of beauty true perceptions? Not necessarily.
ReplyDeleteIn a Universe with only inanimate objects, which objects have beauty in them?
ReplyDeleteSome artists don't think that Nature, natural objects are beautiful, though often perceived as such. Beauty is something only possessed by art objects, objects created with intention, agency and meaning.
ReplyDeleteWhat is meaning?
ReplyDeleteWhatever truths are communicated by the artwork--or, of course, unthruths, fictions.
ReplyDeleteI don't think there is any need to go further with this as even this limited exchange tells enough. You have a personal definition of beauty which works for you and is generated in all probability from your life as an artist. I doubt that the majority of people could accept the exclusion of natural phenomena from the definition of beauty but this in indicative that the definition of beauty stems from the outlook of the animate organism and so does its meaning.
ReplyDeleteI go back to Santayana who as I said before wrote the last significant book on the subject of beauty. His definition of beauty is, to paraphrase slightly, a positive feeling that is objectified as a property of the object. I have always been puzzled that Santayana is not more widely read among those who are not scientists or mathematicians or logicians since his philosophy is that of a rigorous common sense but I would emphasize the rigorous aspect. He is also quite readable if one accepts a certain poetic intensity about common sense.
To circle back to Wittgenstein and logical positivism to the extent I understand it, what Wittgenstein was distinguishing was the category of things that exist outside the universe we inhabit because they are logical mathematical tautologies versus the contingent facts that occur within the universe that are difficult to describe in a completely mathematical way the further we get from elemental particles and enter a biological and conceptual world. Beauty as a conceptual category has no part of mathematical logic but is a contingent fact of experience. Such contingent facts are described objectively by the limited means of correlation and consensus. And of course even logical positivism is limited in some ways, as discovered by Heisenberg and Cantor.
I have run into quotations from Santayana in a hundred places, but I'm sorry to say that I haven't read him--yet!
ReplyDeleteWe might consider that Natural beauty is something that is essentially created by human choices and observation. If you are looking in the right place at the right time you can perceive something beautiful in the natural world.