Beauty can be a complex subject to discuss and the word itself is one that evokes a variety of images, emotions and thoughts. It is a term that can describe something in nature, an artifact or a person and it can be found in the world around us. We can find it in sunsets, night skies and the trees, or we can look inside of ourselves and see how beautiful we are.
Throughout the weekend, we have examined a variety of texts that have addressed beauty, including Thomas Mann’s Death in Venice, Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye and bell hooks’ Appalachian Elegy. Each text has a different take on what is beautiful and how to perceive it. Regardless of how each individual interprets the concept, they all share certain qualities that make up beauty.
Many of these texts have a religious aspect to them, which can influence how we think about beauty. In particular, a Christian view of beauty is that it has three requirements: Integrity or perfection; due proportion; and clarity or radiance. The first requirement requires that an object is complete and follows its own internal logic. For example, a realistic portrait of a woman would not have integrity if it portrayed her with an extra eye. However, a cubist painting of that same woman might have integrity because it is following the rules of its own style.
The next quality is that an object must be proportionate to its size and the parts of the whole. This was a common concern among Greek philosophers, such as Plato and Aristotle, who often looked at natural and artistic objects to discern beauty. They argued that if an object possesses these ratios it is beautiful, such as the golden section of a sculpture or a harmony of definite portions in a painting. This approach to beauty was further developed by Thomas Aquinas, who Christianized Aristotle’s aesthetics by connecting it to the Second Person of the Trinity.
Finally, an object must induce pleasure in the observer. This was a common theme in ancient treatments of beauty, with one of the most famous examples being Plotinus’ description of the pleasures that beauty can bring: “Beauty is joy to the soul, a delicious trouble and love, longing and trembling all delight” (Ennead I, 3). This version of beauty is not as objective as some others but it does incorporate elements of hedonism and a higher spiritual experience.
In the modern era, it seems that many of these traditional treatments of beauty are no longer relevant, and indeed some have been seen as exploitative or harmful. The hedonism of a Rococo painting, for instance, does not seem as attractive when it is paired with the oppressive economic conditions in which it was produced. This has led to a revival of interest in the idea of beauty, with many feminist-oriented approaches to the topic. This has included a focus on the notion of ‘esthetic utility,’ in which an object is judged by how well it performs its purpose, as in a work of art or a functional machine, with an added dimension that is purely subjective.