| author | title |
|---|---|
Bharathi Ramana Joshi |
Notes on Beauty : A Very Short Introduction |
- Crisis in the humanities : is there any point in studying our artistic and cultural inheritance, when the judgement of its beauty has no rational grounds
- Philosophical approach to beauty
- Judge beauty in : objects, abstract ideas, people, qualities, actions, proofs etc; every ontological category
- Metaphors make connections not present in the fabric of reality but created by human associative powers. Ask not what it stands for, but what experience it suggests
- Is beautiful a metaphor?
- Trio of values which need to further arguments to be pursued : true, good, beauty
- Beauty may oppose goodness (committing vices in romantic pursuits) and truth (myths)
- Aquinas's claim : goodness, truth and unity are transcendentals possessed by all things as they are aspects of being
- Axioms of beauty
- Beauty pleases us
- One thing can be more beautiful than another
- Beauty is always a reason for attending to the thing that possesses it
- Beauty is the subject-matter of a judgement : the judgement of taste
- The judgement of taste is about the beautiful object, not about the subject's state of mind
- There are no second-hand judgements of beauty
- If an object claims to stand out, it must truly be worthy of its claim - the goal is to usually fit in.
- Judgement of beauty as a justification of taste
- 17th/18th century Enlightenment thinkers' approach : art has an aspect beyond utility
- Architect Louis Sullivan : beauty is observed by seeing how function of a thing is expressed in its observable features - form follows function
- Something is beautiful if we gain pleasure from contemplating it as an individual object, for its own sake, and in its presented form.
- Kant : aesthetic theory of disinterest. Also see categorical imperative.
- Disinterested pleasure : not from or that, but in. It is contemplative, feeding upon the presented form of its object, and constantly renewing itself from that source
- Is beauty perrogative : need language, self-consciousness, reason, moral judgement
- Controversy in evolutionary psychologists : group selection vs individual
selection
- Group selection
- Aura around functions necessary for group survival - marriage, festivals, weapons etc to protect from emotional erosion
- Collective group need to make special
- Falls short to explain what is distinctive of the aesthetic
- Group selection
- Plato's seventh platitude
Beauty, in a person, prompts desire
- Hume : beauty spreads itself upon objects
- Eros : origin of both love of beauty and sexual desire
- Plato's argument
- Soul longs for immortality
- Eros seeks to unify with its object and make copies
- Base manifestation of eros is erotic love, sexual reproduction
- Higher/Abstract manifestation of eros is contemplation and replication in forms world
- Beauty achieves immortality through this replication
- What prompts sexual attraction can be contemplated but never possessed, consummation may temporarily quench it, but what inspires it is always beyond our reach
- Sexual drives vs Eros choice
- Obscenity : deliberate eclipse of a person's embodiment by their body, eclipse of the soul by the body
- Attract contemplation vs prompt desire
- Human beauty : face, eyes, mouth and hands
- Parallels & relations between the sacred and the beautiful
- Beauty is both an invitation to desire and a call to renounce it
- Moral objection to the
$7^{th}$ platitude : babies and children are also beautiful -
$7^{th}$ platitude rewritten
It is a non-accidental feature of human beauty that it prompts desire