1.0.6 Existence of Beauty: Aesthetics Overview

Version 1.4 December 2015                                         (Previous Version)

What is beauty?  Is anything intrinsically beautiful?  Is it just a matter of personal taste?

Here we consider how various people have attempted to approach these issues.

●      Some say that a materialistic universe can't be beautiful without God.  But this is another circular argument.  If beauty only came from God we would simply be reflecting God’s taste, not ours.  How could we know if God has good taste, if we have none of our own?

●      Some consider beauty to be in some other way ‘transcendent’ – above normal mortal humans.

●      Some use the majesty and beauty of the universe as reasons for believing in God.  But as actors in this universal play we can’t make independent judgments, just as a dancer can't see her own dance, and a violinist doesn’t have a balanced perception of the whole orchestra.

●      Some consider beauty as a cultural artifact or a social construct: each culture ends up passing on local ideas of what is beautiful, so there is nothing universal or transcendental about it.

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder, just as goodness comes from within.  Most of the beauty we see is in the natural environment around us but we also find it in artificial works made by humans.

Science can provide some insight into the origins of this sense of beauty.  History tells us how art and culture have evolved from primitive times to the ‘postmodern’. 

●      Singing, music and dance may have arisen in humans (as it has in birds and some monkeys) as a pre-linguistic form of communication.  This is why it is often wordless or feels mystical.

●      Narratives (in oral stories, plays, poems, novels, comics, movies, TV serials) began with the development of language.  We all interpret both daily and life critical events as narratives.

●      Initially, from the time of cave paintings and prehistoric sculpture, through to the ancient civilizations, art represented things: animals or people or scenes from the natural world. 

●      Many modern artists have moved beyond the representation of physical objects to attempt to represent abstract ideas, an underlying truth or to invoke an emotion in the audience.

●      Even music (without singing) has moved away from tunes we can hum.

●      Many artist try to overcome the limits of their medium, to express ideas more directly.

●      What artists try to achieve changes over time, reflecting their history and cultural context.

Literature is often deemed to be high art – and pulp fiction and movies deemed to be low art.

●      These notions are anachronistic, generally older people imposing the tastes of their youth.

●      As technology develops media and techniques become available which are more expressive.

There does end up being a lot we can agree on about art, provided we keep an open mind.

●      Art is an attempt at self-expression or communication, which we can judge for its effectiveness.

●      Art that moves us is art to us, perhaps regardless of the artist’s skill or an art critic’s opinion.

We work through the next level of detail on each of the above issues (more).  After considering this evidence, we’ve looked for a way to state our conclusions briefly, and we come to the following summary.

Is this the best way to state our conclusions in this area?  Click on feedback, or add a comment below, if you can improve the substance or the phrasing.

   more                                                             Statement 6

Multiple daily choices that are more than simply utilitarian reflect that we value beauty, accepting that we can endlessly debate which artistic works or natural wonders are actually beautiful.