Principle: Beauty is not subjective. Certain traits of ‘the beautiful’ repeat thematically through all perceptible phenomenon.
What are some of the common traits of that which we call beautiful?
Symmetry
Proportion
Balance
Flow
As it relates to human beauty in particular there are also evolutionary underpinnings to beauty. Those things commonly deemed attractive are also signs of good health, fertility, and the like; such things are not subjective, but rather objective. Even the traits listed above are signs of the integrity, health, or functionality of the object, be it a chair, a building, a machine, etc. This would seem to reinforce my designation of life as the foundation of all ethically inquiry as well.
1st - You are assuming that out of what you know (or what we know through the media of history, etc). There might be a group that view beauty differently and you don’t know it, like punk, etc
2nd -
made my point.
3rd - So much of modern architecture and arts that are based on the opposite of YOUR concepts of true beauty.
4th - As a continuation of 1st point, I could point out that you are even talking about HUMAN view on this. What makes us so special as to define what’s true? I agree that we can define a convention, which is simulated truth to those who agree with/follow it.
Indeed there are groups that deem beauty differently, however, their personalities and lifestyles often betray a certain ill health, disaffection, or dysfunction (e.g. “punk” ala CBGB’s replete with alcoholism, rampant drug use, promiscuity, violence, etc). True beauty serves as a sign of health, fertility, functionality, etc. One need only examine nature or human civilization to glean as much. I would imagine that “the beautiful” among male apes is a healthy, fertile female ape, and any astronomer can attest to the aesthetic quailty of functional celestial objects or systems.
Define health. There’s no “true” state of health as you can say it’s “perfect”. We are in constant changing and an “equilibrium” state is actually one we feel as such because we like it.
Affection can be contrary to maintaining your “good” health. Thinking in yourself is the way to go to maintain your “good” health.
Dysfunction is the opposite to what? When are we “functioning” right?
But would you call that healthy female ape beautiful? Or a healthy sloth? Or whatever animal you don’t like the appearance of?
I won’t go on repeating what I said before, but applying to astronomy, however you can apply those to it. In fact, the ways astronomy is taking appear to show that universe is chaos and order is the exception.
Affection is an emotional condition though there is certainly application here: For whom do you have affection? For those who love you, care for you, treat you well, all of which are healthy and functional aspects of a relationship. The exception is for the ill, as in the case of those stuck in abusive relationships, the effects of which cause mental dysfunction and so too flawed judgement.
Positive thinking is beneficial for health, but only as a part of a healthy lifestyle that includes proper nutrition, exercise, healthy relaionships, and the like, all of which are objective rather than subjective in nature; food is healthy if it is indeed healthy, not if you want it to be.
Dysfunction can be mental (depression), physical (cancer), or social (corruption), all of which are objective.
While I am not designed to recognize the above as beautiful per se, I do have an appreciation for nature and can see the beauty in it; what would be more readily apparent to me would be the creature level of health. As a caveat I would say that appreciation of beauty can likely be cultivated and refined in much the same way wine taster can discriminate between good and bad quality wines.
What we call chaos is an illusion birthed by a lack of data, a superstition which posits a causeless effect or a completely random action; such things don’t exist.
The Form of the Beautiful. Lovely concept, somewhat undermined these days.
That which YOU call beautiful. Beauty is everywhere if you’re a merry go lucky Christian who thinks God created it all and it’s all the glory of God’s creation. Beauty is simply another term in a never-ending nexus of terms that never truly pin down presence in any metaphysical sense if you’re a Derridan. And so on.
Well, one can make the aesthetic connection if one so desires. One isn’t obliged to do so.
I beg to differ. Such things are transsubjective - held between people via a series of semiotic systems of exchange.
Why? Even if this were true, that these beautiful things share inherent properties that make them beautiful, what does that have to do with ethics?
The Deconstructionism of Derrida is refuted by this very system of thought. Interpretation is a matter of fact rather than opinion just as beauty is a matter of objective rather than subjective analysis. Men like Derrida poision the living water of logical thought with their sophistries. Within the analysis of a given text, the primary interpretation lies with the author and all other interpretations are secondary. Within the analysis of a given object, the primary valuation of it’s beauty or lack thereof lies with it’s structure and quality and all other valuations (such as the beauty one ascribes to a loved one) are secondary. One proceedes in an intellectually dishonest (or corrupt) way in denying that beautiful objects exhibit common traits such as symmetry and proportion or characteristics such as the fitness and good health (healthy rose vs. healthy rose, healthy person vs. unhealthy person, etc.)
Difference of opinion is of no import as it relates to the veracity of fact; reality is as it is dispite our protests. One need only refer to the consistency of human valuations as it pertains to beauty to increase the weight of my case. The most renowned objects of beauty all exhibit the traits and characterists mentioned above, from the classics such as the Parthenon and the Taj Mahal to Beethoven’s Fifth and modern human beauties such as bollywood actress Aishwarya Rai (please pardon the leap, but Rai provides a modern transient example that is supported by worldwide consensus).
The point it helps to illustrate is that those things which are so often considered subjective, such as ‘The beautiful’, are not. See the following thread for context:
No, you can’t. The conception of many movements such as punk was adopting a new way of living as to oppose the decay of their societies. “We” have our problems, they have theirs.
If surviving is the greatest value, what the ‘survavilists’ would do is attract affection to them while giving nothing. Affection may lead to taking away from you to give to the others, being the greatest sacrifice giving your life away; however all other sacrifices are a minus to surviving.
Food, etc, are healthy up to a certain point, which depends on what you are doing/eating and your body/methabolistic conditions. Some people should eat less, others more, but all have different necessities.
What I am trying to say is - Your life (as in the life of the subject who’s thinking this) doesn’t have to be the greatest value. You think that way, apparently. But some people may choose to live less, but have drink a lot, etc and there are those who choose not to live. There’s those who value life as a whole and those who value other people’s lifes too. You can say it’s an ethical absolute, thus all your thinking as an absolut falls apart. It’s a relative.
Hardly objective. Depression may be seen as realizing truth as it is, even if it’s ugly; cancer can be seen as another state of life and, in time, as a way to overcome yourself and needed to life and corruption is really discussable and even if not so, if you value yourself over others (or your family over human race, etc) can be seen as right to you.
To be absolut, a thought needs more than being the best way for humanity as a whole to go on. Each relative isn’t OBLIGATED to care.
Then it’s not beautiful in the aesthetic way for you. And what’s that about being ‘designed’? Don’t make that a big point of the discussion though.
Firstly, the concept of nature is discussable. Second - you have the appreciation for the generalization (you may argue and call that the system, whole or whatever)- you see beauty in it in general, but an ape see beauty in parts of it in which you don’t, even though those parts are ‘healthy’ as an ‘absolut’.
Some people like wine with more alcohol, some with more sugar, some like those which are close to juice and some don’t even like it at all.
Well, there are basically two ways to see things - universe as ever existing (thus causeless) and a god as ever existing (causeless) - so I guess at least one thing is causeless to you. I think more are, but that’s arguable, since I don’t know everything.
Even if they are objective, they are not absolute (relative health, symmetry, etc.).
But then I would not even say that they’re objective. Why are they deemed beautiful? Because man adores himself in them. A healthy human being must affirm whatever reminds him of health - moreover, of the health of his type.
The more healthy an organism, the more symmetrical an object, the more beautiful they are in reaching closer to perfection. Such judgements are contextually absolute (apples, oranges, Greek architecture, etc) which is how we establish varying tables of value. Moreover, they are objective in that the beautiful, as the Good and the Just, “bear fruit”; By this I mean that they exhude vitality, order, proportion, etc. The antithesis of these are forms and conditions that reek of decedance, exhuding illness, disorder, disproportion, etc. The evolutionary process gives to those generative ones who have life and gives them more while taking from those degenerative ones who have little life what little they have; this includes the recognition of life exhibiting conditions such as beauty.
How about the Golden Section? That is not symmetrical.
The Golden Section is universal. However, it is not beautiful in itself. Because it is universal, it applies to man, and because it applies to man, man finds it beautiful. Because it reflects his own optimum.
That they “exhude” this is what makes them beautiful (to us).
I disagree that that is what the evolutionary process does. It is often the degenerative many who live on the expense of the generative few. Because health is relative, the healthiest individuals are necessarily the rarest. And even these are not “perfectly healthy”.
The golden ratio is proportioned beautifully and repeates in both nature and art.
Indeed it is that which they exhude which gives them beauty and the elements they exhude are objective, that is, empirically verifiable (e.g. the health of the organism and the proportion of the figure).
Ah Sauwelios, dont you see that life perpetuates and increases itself (via the evolutionary, that is unfolding, process) through the healthiest individuals despite the degenerative many? The system operates in perfect balance when viewed holistically, as any more healthy ones would necessarily impinge upon the very integrity of life which the process promotes; the earth could not bear it. All the while, the evolutionary process continues making the old high the new low (e.g. our benchmark for knowledge, for power, for speed, etc.), but I digress…
That its proportioning is beautiful is a subjective statement.
The proportion of the figure may be objective, but the standard as to what is beautiful is not. Is symmetry beautiful (i.e., a ratio of 50%), or rather the Golden Section (a ratio of almost 62%)?
What is the standard or measure of health? How do you determine the health of an organism?
Well, the earth might, but the species might not. I understand that.
I disagree. I don’t think we have attained the height of the Greeks since - the Greeks. The pre-Socratic Greeks. But I find your views on health and sickness interesting and praiseworthy. Don’t let my questioning obscure that fact.
How does this refute the notion of beauty as ‘simply another term in a never-ending nexus’. If you’re claiming something is objective, rather than either your own subjective opinion or a transsubjective view held between people via a dynamic relation of symbols then you need more than simply the assertion that this is the case.
When in doubt, call something a sophistry. Especially if you’re a Platonist.
Why? The words don’t belong to the author. Many of the particular arrangements of them are not unique. Anyone else could arrange those words in those ways. And words are often, possibly always, polysemic. Even if there were an individual artist existing in a creative vacuum, language, text, is a dodgy means at best to elucidating any such personal thing.
Why? Why should certain perceived qualities be ranked as prior to other ones? And what do you mean ‘it’s structure and [i]quality[i]’. Can ‘quality’ be a quality of something? Well, a perceived quality of something?
Ad hom, you’re calling me dishonest. Useless, and you can fuck off if you think I’ll tolerate such ‘arguments’.
On the contrary - disputes about what it real illustrate that there is no self-evident objective reality. If there were, it would be self-evident and there’d be no room for argument.
Consistency and objectivity are wildly different. Using a metaphor adds nothing to your case at this point.
For differing reasons. You believe it is because they exhibit inherent properties. Someone else will usually have different reasons. Like I say, if there’s a dispute, then there’s no self-evident reality you can appeal to. You’ll have to argue your case better than that.
They may not be subjective. But there are other options on the table than objective and subjective. The disproof of one thing isn’t an argument for another unless they are the only two options available.
Such language, and from an editor no less! I fear the soil of our discussion is sterile, as I can’t imagine the dialectical process growing here when language is thought to have no meaning (say nothing of beauty and the like), and when such meaningless language can be usurped by “looters” (thank you Ayn Rand) to suit whatever purpose they seek to bend it towards. Imagine a world where authors lose ownership of their texts to any given member of the herd…scandalous!
That’s quite alright anyways, as I’m no fascist; I’ll compel no one to face the world as it is. You may have it as you like it: language has no meaning, the world has no order, and no valuation is of any non-subjective value. I will, however, leave you with a scrap to gnaw upon: your Derridan position has a self-inflicted wound in holding that language has no meaning, as it uses that meaningless language to try to convey meaning…which, to your mind, ought to be meaningless. It’s a bit like the relativist who claims that their are no absolutes and who in stating so attempts to estabish an absolute.
I never said that language is meaningless. The differing/deferring is what makes meaning possible (Derrida’s metaphysical position). Feel free to believe in a popular misconception of poststructuralism if you must, but it’s an argument from ignorance.
Yes, we must maintain the elitist culture of putting artists on pedestals. I mean, it’s served us so well…
You’ll simply allege that it is a certain way and refuse to argue the case for your position.
Never said that…
Never said that either…
Three times now…
As I said:
Don’t patronise me. You are the one refusing to justify your position.
I’m well aware of this criticism. It is based on a notion of deconstructionism as relativism, which is sheer fantasy on the part of its critics.
One could argue that the most fervent supporters concerning the existence of absolutes fail, repeatedly and consistently, to provide evidence and definitions for a concept that only exists in their mind, as a projected, imagined exaggeration of what is known.
The thing about human consciousness is that it simplifies sensual awareness – whatever part of it is perceived – to make sense of it.
This simplification depends on generalizations and the absence of definitions and often results in the creation of false absolutes.
This simplification makes the more efficient focus of energies possible, so as to facilitate the preservation of an emerging unity to maintain itself in the constant flow of time.
Philosophical debate and scientific insight is this struggle to establish which simplified and generalized absolute corresponds most accurately to the human condition and to our common perception of existence.
We judge whose opinions are more likely by how close they reflect our common understandings and incorporate in their extrapolations the largest amount of details.
Language offers the false sense that the word actually corresponds to something solid and absolute.
Such words as Self, Here, Now, Other are all simplifications of what can only be described as a temporal flow, a constantly changing reality coalescing in appearances (phenomena) which are nothing more than the pooling of temporal flow, characterized by a different temporal speed in relation to that of the observer, which we call matter or energy or whatever.
The simplification of sensual awareness – in fact awareness depending on the extrapolation of grander concepts from a few pieces of phenomena – through abstraction leads to this illusion of absolutes.
The Whole is a particular example since the idea of a Whole corresponds to the totality of human perception and conceptualization and not to anything actual.
We cannot claim to know of anything whole, since this would be an absolute and would entail the end of time - it would be a truth. We hypothesize a whole, from the totality of our awareness and knowledge.
Our concept of a Whole is the entirety of our individual experiences and our heritage of inherited communal experiences in the form of psychological imprints and genetic encoding.
In the same way a snapshot represents a frozen moment, a representation of temporal inertia where the image is simplified and copied upon a format that is itself temporal and changing, so as to make the moment in time comprehensible and able to be stored in memory or in any format but not really presenting the actual experience of that moment or of existence, so the mind freezes temporal flow into manageable snapshots, by simplifying them into representations of absolutes.
In fact the exchange of ideas depends on this simplification and generalization, since no possibility for consciousness or for communication would be possible otherwise.
This results in the error of contradiction, since language is a simplification, depending on and resulting in the false creation of absolutes, trying to understand and to express the human condition which is lacking in all sense of absolutes.
So, yes the mind attempts to establish absolutes, as a manifestation of a piece of conscious temporality attempting to complete itself into a something.
So, there are some things that are objectively beautiful and if I don’t find them beautiful myself, I’m just wrong?
I have a question - who/what decides what is/isn’t beautiful? I’m guessing it’s some kind of golden dragon upon whose scales are written the values of a thousand years?
