Beauty
Beauty is one of core values, that gives pleasure and joy. From antiquity till Middle Ages, beauty was conceived in association with truth, goodness, love, being, and the divine. Philosophers understood beauty as a constitutive element of the cosmos, and recognized its association with order, harmony, and the mathematical.
Studies of beauty made a major shift with modern philosophy. Modern philosophers shifted studies of beauty from the ontological sphere to that of human faculties. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) coined Aesthetics which literary meant a study of human sensibility. With this turn, beauty was dissociated from other ontological components such as truth, good, love, being, and the divine.
Both ancient and medieval philosophers generally did not conceive the study of beauty as an autonomous area and their discussions were often scattered wide range of literatures. Immanuel Kant was the first major philosopher who developed the studies of beauty as an autonomous discipline.
Diversity of Beauty and Cultural Traditions
As one of core values,
Ancient Philosophy
Greek philosophy was build upon the presupposition that happiness (eudaimonia) is the highest good. Eudaimonism formed the general contexts. Philosophers presented different views for the interpretation of what happiness is and method of achieving it, but shared the same conviction for this ultimate goal of life. Accordingly, issues of beauty were also discussed within this framework.
Pythagoras and Pythagoreasns: Beauty and Harmony: mathematical order of cosmos
Pythagoras and Pythagoreasns, Pre-Socratic philosophers understood that: harmony is the objectively existing principle that constitutes the cosmos as a unified whole; harmony is built upon mathematical order and balance; beauty exists as the objective principle in beings which maintain harmony, order, and balance. They realized that aesthetic experiences in arts such as music have closely tied to mathematical ratios of tones and rhythms.
Pythagoras and Pythagoreasns understood experiences of beauty and contemplating the mathematical as central part of their religious exercises to purify the soul. Aesthetic experience and exercise of reason were understood as an integral part of religious practices, a necessary process and training to cultivate the soul. which they understood as immortal. They built a theory of beauty within the framework of their religious thought. Their conviction of the immortality of the soul, the relationship between the mathematical and the beautiful, gave strong impacts on Plato.
Plato: Eternal Existence of Beauty and Good
Plato conceived beauty, together with other Ideas such as “good,” “justice” and other virtues, as eternal, immutable, divine existence. Ideas for Plato are not mental images or psychological objects of mind, but are objectively existing, unchanging, permanent, and eternal beings. They belong to a divine realm.
For Plato, the Idea (often capitalized in order to distinguish modern concept of idea as a mental image) of beauty exists in perfect form for eternity in the realm of immortal gods. These Ideas are manifested in imperfect forms in material world we live in. Plato called the world we live in as a “shadow” of perfect world of Ideas. Concept of beauty was built into Plato’s metaphysics.
Human souls are immortal. Man is born with implicit understanding of the Idea of beauty as well as that of all other Ideas. Upon entering into the body at birth, man temporarily “forget” these Ideas. Throughout man’s life course, he seeks to experience these Ideas and his experience of beauty and other Ideas is a recollection of Ideas the soul has temporarily forgotten.
The process of ascent of the experience of beauty begins with beauty in manifested in human bodies, and it is gradually elevated to the beauty in the soul, characters, and other incorporeal realms. Beauty manifested in bodies and physical materials are less perfect for Plato, and the soul is naturally led to seek permanent and perfect beauty. For Plato, the power of eros is the driving force for the quest of perfect Ideas in man.
Plato conceived the Idea of good as the supreme one, and all other Ideas including that of beauty exist under it. In Plato’s ontology, beauty, good, truth, other virtues and being are all tied together. Accordingly, “to be beautiful,” “to be virtuous,” and “to have true knowledge” are inseparable.
Plotinus (205-270), who developed a Neo-Platonist tradition, also held that: good and beauty are one in the realm of thought; and the soul must be cultivated to see good and beauty. In both Platonist and Neo-Platonist traditions, concepts of being, good, and beauty are always understood to be inseparable, and experience of beauty is, therefore, also inseparable from that of being and good.
Aristotle
Unlike Plato, Aristotle conceived beauty not an immutable, permanent being existing above the world we live in, but as a property of the nature and the works of arts. While Aristotle tied beauty with the good, he also made conceptual distinction between them.
Aristotle developed a theory of art and presented its particular part in Poetics, but his ideas and discussions on beauty and arts are scattered in diverse works including Metaphysics, Nichomachean Ethics, Physics, and Rhetoric. He focused more on examining existing forms of Arts and developing art theories.
Medieval Philosophy
As a Christian thinker, St. Augustine ascribed the origin of beauty, good, and being to the Creator God. Beauty as well as goodness and existence come from the Creator alone. Platonic unity of beauty, goodness, being, perfection, and other virtues is found in Augustine. Rational understanding of the order and the harmony of the cosmos and recognizing the beauty was also the path of ascent of the soul to the divine realm and the process of purifying the soul.
Another important source is pseudo-dyinisious areopagita. He developed his unique “metaphysic of light” and presented aesthetics in the contexts of mysticism.
Thomas Aquinas distinguished beauty and good in terms of its meaning (ratio), but he identified them as the same being (subjectum), indistinguishable in reality. Since God is the only source of beauty, good, and being, they were said to be in oneness. He enumerated elements of beauty: perfection (integritas sive perfectio); harmony (debita proportion sive consonantia); clarity (claritas) (singakutaizenn 1.5.4 The answer to the first objection 39.8)
In and after Modern Philosophy
After Christian thoughts receded from the main stream of philosophy, discussion of beauty was also shifted from the metaphysical discussions to the studies of man’s perception of beauty. With and after Renaissance, the realm of the arts flourished and the concept of beauty was discussed in relation to man’s capacities in the arts. Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (1714-1762) coined “aesthetics” for the studies of human sensibility (aesthesis). The concept of “sublime” was also discussed in relation to morality.
Prior to the publication of Critique of Pure Reason (1781), the major work on his epistemology, Kant wrote Observations on the Feeling of the Beautiful and the Sublime (1764). Through Critique of Judgment, together with Critique of Pure Reason and Critique of Practical Reason, Kant established the field of the philosophy of art as autonomous independent genre. Three domains of nature, freedom, and art were discussed through the analyses of three faculties of mind: cognition, desire, and pleasure and pain. With Kant, analyses of beauty became one of major branch of philosophy comparable to Ethics and Epistemology. For both Greeks and Medievals, the area of beauty and art was not an independent or autonomous area of study. (see Kant for his philosophy)
The focus of the studies of beauty made a shift from the beauty of the nature to that of the arts after Kant. German classicists such as Goethe, Schiller, and Holderlin; poets of German Romanticism; Schelling and Hegel further developed philosophies of arts. Studies of beauty of German Idealism reached the peak at Schelling and Hegel approached arts from historical perspective.
After Hegel, studies of beauty were further dissociated from metaphysics and the arts were also separated from the traditional concept of beauty. In the twentieth century, metaphysical discussions of beauty were revived by Heidegger and Gadamer. Philosophy of beauty and arts today is one of important branches of philosophy.
Eastern Thought
Far Eastern thought are formed by three major traditions: Taoism, Confucianism, and Buddhism. These traditions intertwined and formed a general background within which their experience and concept of beauty was formed.
Unlike the traditions of western philosophy, abstract theory of beauty did not sufficiently develop in these traditions. Beauty was often discussed within ethical (Confucianism) and cosmological (Taoism) contexts.
Chinese character of beauty (美) is consisted of the components of “sheep” (羊) and “big” or “great” (大) . Chinese character of good (善) and justice (義) similarly contains a component of “sheep” (羊). As Confucius described in Analects, sheep was an animal offered at religious rituals as an offering to the Heaven. Beauty implies “great sacrifice” which connotes “self-sacrifice.” The self-sacrifice out of traditional virtues such as filial piety and loyalty were considered to be noble and beautiful. The beauty is therefore often ascribed to virtuous actions, characters, and life style.
Beauty was also understood as a part of nature. Nature in Far Eastern tradition was the totality of the cosmos which encompassed human life as well. “To be natural” means “to be authentic.” In Taosim in particular, ethics and cosmology were fused into naturalism. Beauty is understood as a natural part of the cosmos and the norm of human behavior.
Theories of beauty in this tradition were not a general theory of beauty but particular theories in each form of arts. Practical orientation of Chinese tradition probably led studies of beauty not into speculative metaphysics but into practical theories in each genre.
