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Beauty

Landlady
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Posted 05/31/08 - 04:22 PM: Subject: Beauty	#1
When one looks at a sunset and calls it a beautiful sunset, where is this beauty located? Is the beauty in the sunset itself, or is it in the person looking at it? Does the sunset possess this beauty or does it simply act as a reflection of something already in a person? Can we say, likewise, that when someone says that something is beautiful he is (technically) mistaken?
There is time to laugh and there is time not to laugh, and this is not one of them. - Insp. Clouseau. Each man is questioned by life; and he can only answer to life by answering for his own life; to life he can only respond by being responsible. - Frankl.

Lord Drivel
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Posted 05/31/08 - 09:29 PM:	#2
And to what extent is beauty a conditioned response because we have been told something is beautiful, and to what extent aesthetic? Great differences seem to exist within people in their capacity to appreciate beauty. How does this sensitivity come about?

swstephe
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Posted 05/31/08 - 11:53 PM:	#3
I think "beauty" is entirely inside the person's mind. It is a subjective valuation based on emotional and intellectual content. It is implied in the meaning of the word, that it is more visually appealing than something else. It might be a form of linguistic hyperbole. How many times have you heard someone say, "boy that's an ugly sunset". When you say something is "beautiful", it may be contextually understood that it would be visually appealing to the listener as well.
I do seem to remember a process where you people ask me questions and I give you answers, and then I ask you questions and you give me answers, and that's the way we find out things. I think I read that in a manual somewhere. -- Haywood Floyd 2010

meye1105
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Posted 06/01/08 - 07:08 AM:	#4
Landlady wrote: When one looks at a sunset and calls it a beautiful sunset, where is this beauty located? Is the beauty in the sunset itself, or is it in the person looking at it? Does the sunset possess this beauty or does it simply act as a reflection of something already in a person? Can we say, likewise, that when someone says that something is beautiful he is (technically) mistaken? Ugliness, as the antonym to beauty, is a state of contradiction, of clashes. If "ugly" is the opposite of "beauty", then beauty is harmony; that is, take the object which you call beautiful, as a unit and ask yourself: what parts is it made up of, what are its constituent elements, and are they all harmonious? If you take the sunset, you will regard it as beautiful if all the colors complement each other, or go well together, or are dramatic together. And you will call it ugly if it is a bad rainy afternoon, and the sky isn’t exactly pink nor exactly gray, but sort of “modern.”

Caldwell
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Posted 06/01/08 - 03:52 PM:	#5
Yes, I think something happens why we say something is beautiful. We are affected by its color, blending, shape that reach our senses, like the visual. So, it is in this connection, that the conclusion: beautiful, comes about. Several things must happen, and usually these things work in unison, in order for us to make the "beautiful" or "ugly" judgment. The same way we look at a wooden table painted red. One philosopher, whose name I forget, says, we don't really see first the wood, then the shape of this wood which is the shape of the table, then the color, before we make the claim: That is a red, wooden table.

Tobias
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Posted 06/02/08 - 12:34 AM:	#6
That is true, we see the table as a unity, not as a set of properties. But I think something is missing from your account. Sure, there is collor, blending, shape, but there is I think someting more. Something beautyful 'appeals' to you, as it were calls out to you. If beauty is just a matter of the shape, collor, blending etc. of the object than it is hard to find out why different people find different things beautyful. Something more is necessary, a certain relation. As in many things, I feel the relation of 'beauty' define subject and object both. The object is defined as beautyful, but the subject is defined as 'he or she who finds this beautyful'. Finding a certain artwork beautyful will shape the way you look at other artworks and so you become a person with an 'eye' for art or a good ear for music. I thik that is what beauty is, a force that shapes our judgement over time, not inhering in subject or object, but above both and shaping them both. I hardly find someone who tells me she runs through the Louvre without looking at that old junk beautyful. Instead I see ugly features in someone that says this, just because the remark creates a repulsion.
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

CypressMoon
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Posted 06/02/08 - 12:39 PM:	#7
#1 A Short Ontology of Beauty The picturesque, or "beautiful", it seems to me, is the order inherent in the universe. For example, fractals found in Jackson Pollocks paintings are the picturesque to a specific community. Orders exist on different scales and different modes, (e.g. the pattern in a nucleaic scale) all of which can be calculated with mathematics. Patterned modes, and scales swirling in the universe correspond to things, or objects on every scale. The anthropomorphization of objects, is a culturally and historically contingent power. Why can the beat be infinitesimally small? Why can music reach down into every scale and mode and manifest themselves, or express themselves? The limits of music stretch as long as technology and cultural attitudes will carry it. It reaches towards infinity in possible manifestations. Music is the picturesque, or rather, (the picturesque music is picturesque.) It is the synthesis of the world (being) and our temperament that insinuates corresponding calculations that create the Synthetic sound of the universe, in the picturesque music.
"IN THE spring, Tipasa is inhabited by gods and the gods speak in the sun and the scent of absinthe leaves, in the silver armor of the sea, in the raw blue sky, the flowercovered ruins, and the great bubbles of light among the heaps of stone." - Albert Camus, Lyrical and Critical Essays A good determinant of success is when people start buying your shit.

Tobias
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Posted 06/02/08 - 01:14 PM:	#8
Well if that is true than I don't see why it is "the order inherent in the universe". That is a one sided conception. It inheres in the object. This would make the penchant for symmetry total, but cannot we have beauty that is perhaps not symmetrical?
"The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you" "The Power of Kant compels you"

ManiacJack
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Posted 06/02/08 - 01:43 PM:	#9
Beauty is a balance of symmetry and asymmetry, fo sho' Maniac Jack's absurd rundown of Beauty: Socrates spoke of the beautiful, the just, and the good. Aristoltle spoke of the Pathos, ethos, logos. Freud spoke of the id, ego, and super-ego. Silversun Pickups sing of the moon, the sun, and (everything under) the sky. The triangle speaks of adjacent, opposite, and tangent. I think it may all be the same thing... realtively. Weather the beauty be prioritized in the sun or you makes little difference. It is there, definetly, and it cannot not-be there.
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natureculturenothing
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Posted 06/03/08 - 11:51 AM:	#10
Conditional beauty creates suffering. Unconditional beauty is necessarily absolutely subjective; it precedes objects, which are obviously relative, and both thoughts and emotions, which are also relative - and also objective. This, the objectivitity of thoughts and emotions, is almost impossible to grasp.

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