In Honor of “Plato: On Beauty and Virtue.”
Seminars Begin at Halkyon Academy, July 27th, with Thomas Jockin
What do we talk about when we talk about beauty? If Wittgenstein is correct that ‘the limits of my language mean the limits of my world,’ then it would seem to follow that “the expressions of my language are the expressions of my world.” Hence, if we can pin down a clear way a word is used and separate it from how other words are used, we might also be able to isolate a distinct experience and/or “use,” and thus arrive at a distinct meaning. From Wittgenstein, we can then move into phenomenology, which is to say the effort to define a word becomes the effort to define an experience.
At the same time, beauty should not be formalized — a “recipe” or “formula” should not be created that suggests “if x has these attributes, it will thus be beautiful,” per se — for the transcendence of beauty and individual “takes” on it should be preserved. Yet without any attempts to describe beauty and the experience of it, beauty is vulnerable to being reduced to mere preference and taste, thus robbing it of its power. The desire to avoid formalizing beauty can be an effort to preserve its transcendence, but taken too far, beauty lacks defenses to keep it from being reduced to something arbitrary and simply relative. A definition threatens to restrict, but a word without a definition could be meaningless. By appealing to Wittgenstein and phenomenology, we attempt to strike the right balance.
I
If when I say “that is beautiful,” I mean “that stands out,” there is little difference between the words “beauty” and “uniqueness,” and furthermore everything that is “one of one” would be beautiful, when something like a dead cow, even though the only dead cow in the world that will ever be that dead cow, isn’t necessarily beautiful (though that isn’t to say it couldn’t be under any circumstance). As love often entails acknowledging uniqueness but isn’t uniqueness itself, so the same might be said of beauty. If I were to see the same rock a hundred times, though I might have found it beautiful the first time, after a while, it can become boring. Hence, when I say, “that is beautiful,” I must mean to some degree “that is rare” and/or “that is un-repetitive,” but it doesn’t follow that everything that is rare is necessarily beautiful or that the goal of beauty is to be unique. Beauty entails uniqueness, but the beautiful isn’t merely unique.
Beauty surprises. When I step out of my house and see a sunset I didn’t know was there, I am more taken by the beauty: the surprise enhances the experience. This isn’t to say that everything that is surprising is beautiful, and if when I say, “that is beautiful,” I mean “that is surprising,” there is no difference between the words “beauty” and “surprising.” Yet beauty does seem to be surprising or at least enhanced when it is surprising, for it seems to better “get past” our preset ideas, expectations, thoughts, and the like (in that we experience it before we have an idea of it). Yes, our ideas then quickly race in and “cover” it, but initially what is beautiful strikes us more so “as itself,” freer of our concepts than just moments later. Considering this, because there is a connection between “surprise” and “beauty,” “originality” is often an element of beautiful artwork, because for something to be original is to be precisely something that the observer has not experienced before. Originality surprises.
To borrow from Walker Percy, imagine that we never heard of the Grand Canyon — never seen a picture of it, never heard the phrase “Grand Canyon,” etc. — and imagine that we walked out of a forest — And there it was. The surprise, the uniqueness, the sublimity — it is likely impossible for people like us in a photo-filled-world to imagine what this experience would be like. For Percy, a world full of photographs and images is a world where “original experiences” are increasingly hard to come by, and in that respect, so is beauty. For Percy, we now more so visit the Grand Canyon to confirm pictures we’ve seen of it, and now it’s seemingly impossible for us to experience the Eifel Tower without already having some ideas and images of it in mind. It is increasingly difficult to be “entirely open” to things and to “let them speak to us as themselves.” This isn’t because we will to “color over” things with our thoughts, preset ideas, and the like, but because the mind naturally does so (especially when trained by technology). Despite these obstacles, when we experience something beautiful, the thing still manages to “get past” our thoughts, and in this way, it is surprising. By extension, it is also unique, for that which isn’t unique is that which we’ve already experienced, formulated preconceptions about, stuffed into mental categories, and so on. To expand on this, let us discuss “the strike of beauty,” as Jockin and I discussed.
Imagine we hear a rumor that someone is coming to town to perform a “symphony” — we hardly know how to say the word. We work in the fields all the time back in 1824, but our uncle has a little money and buys a ticket so that we can attend — a gift. We almost never hear music except in church, and when we do it is mostly hymnals and not accompanied by instruments. The day arrives.
And we listen to Beethoven’s 9th before it is “Beethoven’s 9th.”
And we never again hear it.
As we age, we tell people about what happened. They nod.
Is beauty objective?
After Beethoven’s 9th, the very place the world “is” forever changes. What is possible in it is not the same. The event forever shifts how we act in the world and has a very real causal impact on how we live. That change is undeniable and observable. Can something that is merely a preference casually change how we behave in the world? Can it radically change what we believe is possible?
When we hear Beethoven’s 9th under these circumstances, it can feel like a radical unveiling of what is possible in the world versus a concealing of what the world can do behind a pleasant experience that helps us escape the drudgery of life. And indeed, the world is entirely new, and it is new in beauty. This “change” itself is objective and an undeniable occurrence, and thus beauty is objective. This is paramount: the objectivity of beauty is not primarily found in the aesthetics of the object or thing itself, but in the “surprise” of a holistic experience that changes our horizon in the world. Unfortunately, this experience is now very hard for us to undergo regarding aesthetic goods like music, paintings, and the like, precisely because works of art are mass-produced and always ready for us to access, and since we also mostly look to ask questions about beauty in works of art, it seems like beauty is mere taste. And so we end up confused…
Walter Benjamin famously warned that the mass-production of art removed “the aura” of works, which is to say they cannot “strike us” like they once did (this “strike” is another expression of why beauty is objective). To allude to Walker Percy, we see photographs of Paris before we visit it, and thus the ability of Paris to “strike us” is lessened (to some degree), because we already have a preset idea of what it is like before we arrive. We cannot experience it like the person hearing Beethoven for the first time, and though that doesn’t mean we can’t “find it beautiful,” the critical “surprise” and “feeling of wonder” is lessened and hard to experience. And since that experience is the foundation for objectivity of beauty, where the experience is lessened, it is harder to believe “beauty is objective.” And so we “rationally” come to believe it isn’t…
Today, we today listen to music all the time, and we can listen to Beethoven’s 9th on repeat for hours. We do not have to wait until a concert a month from now; we do not have to enter a concert hall and undergo a “full body experience”; we don’t have to listen to it only once in our entire life. And all of these matters of convenience bring with them certain benefits, but they also make it much harder for works of art to “strike us” and change our entire horizon of the world. And since that “strike” and “surprise” is the very objectivity of beauty, if we exist in a world where works of art cannot so “strike” us, then relative to our scope, it is not wrong for us to say that “beauty is just preference,” for that is indeed all we experience. It is rational, and so the notion of “beauty as objective” fades (a loss which political-economy should help stop).
If we could only see a cathedral when we were in the full-body experience of it, if we could only see Cezanne in person, if we could only hear great music once in our entire life — it would be far easier to believe that “beauty was objective.” We would diligently seek to remember what we experienced, to have our minds “cling on” to what occurred, and this very desperate effort to have our minds “cling to” the memory would strongly suggest that beauty was not mere preference. If it was, we’d likely let it go (we don’t cling on to every memory of every meal, precisely because it was just something we digest and move on from). Here, we see another basis for “the objectivity of beauty” is precisely the reality of the mind’s effort to cling to the memory of the experience and not let it escape. This effort is not a matter of opinion; it is happening and real. It is occurring.
What’s critical to note is that the objectivity of beauty arises in “the full experience” of something: it is not just Beethoven’s 9th that “strikes us” and brings about a radical change in our life, but also in 1824 the fact itself that we rarely hear music, that we will likely only hear Beethoven once in our life, that life is not full of art — all of these factors are part of what make Beethoven’s 9th “strike us,” not merely the particular arrangement of the instruments, and so on. When we ask “Is Beethoven’s 9th beautiful?” and only look at the music itself, we cannot readily answer the question properly, for we cannot reduce the question to just the work of music; rather, the “beauty” of the music is thanks to “the irreducible whole” of the moment in history when it is heard, how often it is heard, and the like. A role of communities today is to somehow recreate these conditions so that we can experience similar “strikes.” Those “strikes” can be sources of authority and metrics by which we can confirm “right operations” of a community and authority.
I today can listen to Beethoven’s 9th on my computer, but I cannot hear it like the person in our thought experiment from 1824 — that is not possible for me (it is not “in my horizon”), and thus it is not possible for me to readily experience the beauty of Beethoven in the same way. And since I need that “strike” to experience the objectivity of beauty, it follows that I would then not be sure how to prove “Beethoven’s 9th is objectively beautiful.” Indeed, it isn’t in of itself: it is objectively beautiful only when situated in a full context which can “strike us” in a way that changes our life. Yes, perhaps some pieces of music are more likely to so “strike” a person than others, and that argument can be made in comparative art, but the point is that the “strike” itself is not guaranteed. I think a mistake we have made is conflating “objectively beautiful” with “a guarantee of experiencing beauty,” when these are different inquires. I cannot guarantee that anyone will find Beethoven “objectively beautiful,” because I cannot guarantee that they will experience conditions which make it “strike them” (as discussed in “Conditionalism” by O.G. Rose). However, a lack of guarantee of a “strike” does not mean the strike itself isn’t “objective” when it occurs. After all, it causes us to change our lives, and that change happens. In this way, we should consider that “communities of care” will have to train members to be comfortable with a lack of guarantee and understand that is part of the process, which will be hard in this world that habituates us to think in terms of plans, certainties, guarantees, and results. Logics of “transaction” and “power” tend to be “guarantee-based,” but that is precisely why they can prove to be so problematically forceful…
II
Thomas Jockin asks the question on if beauty is primary in Plato for education, which is to suggest that unless we believe the world is a place which can “disclose itself,” a place where there is a profound break between what we experience in our everyday life and what is possible in the world, then we will not really engage in education (especially once we understand there is a difference between “modern certification” and “a life-longer seeking of truth”). Once we experience beauty, that radical “surprise” that changes our entire horizon of what is possible in the world, the world becomes an entirely different place, and we can suddenly motivate ourselves to seek further experiences of the world not being what we thought it was but something deeper. This is “intrinsic motivation,” and for me it suggests that us becoming “intrinsically motivated” to seek education is tied profoundly to the experience of beauty. Indeed, the fate of beauty seems to be the fate of motivation, which I believe is the fate of us.
A world where we are not educated to experience “strikes of beauty” and to increase the probability of their occurrence is a world in which it is questionable if we are educated at all. In my conversation with Matthew Allison in “Topics VII,” weconsidered the possibility that the highest manifestation of existence is in the “surprise” (which beauty seems like it must be to be (“strikingly”) beautiful). We spoke in the context of Christianity, noting that Eternity always has the quality of a surprise and hence never becomes boring, and we could say authority is given to those who can condition us to experience life “more like Eternity” with that quality and “strike” of surprise. Mr. Allison and I discussed how things that surprise us fully and deeply “stand out,” as if nothing else is “there,” suggesting that “surprise” and “existence” are deeply connected. Through a Christian lens but speaking of David Hume, we considered how “Natural Law” is more like “Natural Habit,” which is to say a ball falls whenever we drop it not because of a transcendent superstructure which forces the ball to always fall, but because a ball “is” a thing in this universe which falls when dropped (the ball does what it does because of what it “is,” not because there is a “Law of Nature” which is transcendent of the ball, even if that is “practically” what it seems like, for we could discuss the universe as if there are “practically Laws of Nature”). This means because it means the universe contains as part of itself everything that is itself, which means we cannot talk meaningfully of “Transcendent Laws” which phenomena must follow under all circumstances and in all possible universes (a sentiment shared by Alexander Bard in his work).
Why does the distinction between “Natural Law” and “Natural Habit” matter? It is important because if we believe in “Transcendent Laws” or the like, then it can seem like a good use of time and intelligence is learning those laws so that we might understand the “real universe,” which is to say we understand its depths. We can then leave phenomena behind and just focus on the laws, which means we take a step into disembodiment and abstraction. Furthermore, to believe in Natural Laws suggests that the universe should be predictable, and so the emphasize on learning how to be “prepared” and “attuned” to reality is greatly diminished, hurting our openness to “The Beautiful.” In fact, it can seem irrational to stay in the phenomenal, which is what a mode of “care” would have us do, while “power” and “transaction” treat things more like numbers which can be quantified and thus predicted beyond their immediacy. Also, if the universe is more so a place of “Natural Habits,” then we cannot be quick to associate “the consistency of nature” with what is “most real” while the surprises and unexpected are exceptions which we shouldn’t worry so much about. Instead, it might be the case that the consistency of nature is simply the precondition necessary so that we can recognize a surprise, which is to say so that surprises are intelligible to us. If there was no consistency in nature, there would be no “surprise,” only randomness, because nothing would repeat to be recognized intelligibility as “repeating in a new way.” This would mean that intelligibility in general would be impossible, because thinking requires categories and consistency or else no thoughts can be built or advanced. In this way, Natural Laws create the impression that the universe operates without thought and that thus thought is secondary, when really Natural Habits suggest a consistency which are there for thought’s possibility. The universe becomes grace-full versus cold, as it also becomes “miraculous.”
In David Hume suggesting there are no Natural Laws, he addresses his own argument against miracles by suggesting everything is a miracle and that we cannot assume miracles are impossible. Consistency in nature is a gift so that the subject can recognize and care for miracles, which suggests that we should focus on conditioning ourselves to nature in order for us to experience miracles more then try to learn the Laws of Nature so that we might understand the universe without in a profound relationship with it. Our focus should be on preparation to experience and handle “surprise” and “the miraculous,” not learn how we can predict everything that is going to happen in the universe as if it is a machine more than a garden. We have placed our hope in prediction versus hope in what we are prepared to “encounter,” as is possible for us to do for the universe is consistent enough so that effort to be prepared can be intelligible to us. And so “Natural Law” is more like “Natural Grace”
As discussed in “Deconstructing Common Life” by O.G. Rose, considering Hume’s “Philosophical Journey” which moves from “common life” to “philosophy” and then must “(re)turn to common life” (“re-participate in life”) we could say that we start in “sameness,” move into “difference,” and must “(re)turn” into “surprise,” as realized in Beauty. “Surprise” versus “difference” seems like it requires a “return” and “repetition,” for only something we are familiar with can surprise us versus be something “different.” “Surprise” is the quality of a being of something we already know, which suggests that “what we know” is not necessarily all there is or ever can be. “Surprise” is a revelation of the limit of our knowledge not beyond what we are experiencing but in what we are experiencing, which is remarkably humbling but also encouraging, for it suggests there is always hope for “something more” in whatever constitutes our immediacy. This in mind, we can associate “surprise” with “love,” for love is not possible without a return, and to love someone is to create the condition of always returning to someone so that we might experience the change in quality and experience of something with which we are familiar. To love is to position ourselves to experience that “existence is surprise.”
If the “surprise” is primary and what “exists,” then we see the consistency of nature as simply the precondition necessary so that surprise/existence could be intelligible to us (as Beauty), and then the role of community and authority is to help condition us to experience surprise/existence versus just live according to some consistency or regularity. Yes, humans require degrees of consistency or else surprise/existence cannot be intelligibility, but that consistency is “for” something, not merely an expression of the universe as its deepest and truest expression. We have perhaps sought consistency believing we have sought existence, when really we have only sought what is necessary to make existence intelligible. It is as if we have sought the drawing by seeking the piece of paper, and when we found the paper blank (because we have done the work of coloring on it), we decide the world is empty and meaningless. Indeed, in a way, it is: we have drawn nothing. We have not conditioned ourselves to experience existence.
Still, that all said, when I say “that is beautiful,” I must mean “that is surprising and unique,” but if the word “beauty” is to have distinct meaning, it must mean something else than “surprising” and/or “unique.” Additionally, if when I say, “that is beautiful,” I mean “that is pretty,” there is no difference between “beautiful” and “pretty”: the word “beauty” lacks distinction. Clearly what is beautiful entails aesthetic pleasure, but not everything that is aesthetically pleasing is necessarily beautiful. Yes, as people may use the words “like” and “love” interchangeably though the words don’t mean the same thing (as discussed in “On Love” by O.G. Rose), so people may use “beautiful” and “pretty” interchangeably even though they are distinct.
The well-made cover of a book might be pleasing to my eyes, but it is not “beautiful” in the same way as is a well-crafted dance. Yes, both are arguably crafts and art-forms, but a well-made book cover, table, or house almost feels to be in an entirely different category from the Grand Canyon or a masterful performance of Swan Lake. Perhaps “beauty” means “a great aesthetic pleasure” while “pretty” refers to a lesser one? Perhaps, but then “beauty” and “pleasure” are both points on the same scale of “aesthetic pleasure,’” and the two words lack distinct meaning, as using the word “love” to refer to something I “really like” ultimately renders “love” a mere simile for “like,” different only in (relative) intensity.
When it comes to aesthetic pleasure, there are lots of words that can be used — “lovely,” “picturesque,” “scenic,” “gorgeous,” “stunning,” “attractive” — and “beautiful” is often used as another word like these, one among many. And yet “beauty” entails a long history of supposedly meaning “something more” that these other words don’t capture (though perhaps these words can “point to” it). Perhaps the history of philosophy is misguided, but if “beauty” does in fact have some distinct meaning from “aesthetic pleasure,” it mustn’t only mean “pretty.” Indeed, beauty can entail a high level of aesthetic pleasure, but if “beauty” is uniquely meaningful, it isn’t merely aesthetically pleasing: there’s something more to it.
III
If when I say, “that is beautiful,” I mean “that is subjective,” the word “beautiful” will struggle to have distinct meaning from “subjective.” “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a common phrase, but does it mean that beauty is relative in a manner that renders it meaningless beyond arbitrary taste? Indeed, what is aesthetically pleasing is relative: one person may dislike the works of Picasso, while another may find them gorgeous. What is aesthetically pleasing is subjective, but is it the case that what is subjective lacks any “common core?” Are there no universal characteristics of things that are beautiful that “summon out” subjective admiration (though that’s not to say all subjectivities respond to the summoning)? If not, the effort to define beauty might be hopeless, for all definitions will be too easily deconstructed.
“Subjective” is a troublesome word, and it should be noted that we often use it as if “I alone think x.” Though I may subjectively believe a given painting is beautiful, that doesn’t necessarily mean I am the only person in the world who thinks this way: there may be others, if not many others, who from within their subjectivities, share the same view, and agree that the painting is beautiful (a fact that could suggest “something more” than mere subjectivity is at play). To say “that is subjective” is to say “that is relative,” which is to say “that is conditional” more so than something solpistic. In other words, in order to find x beautiful, there are certain conditions that must be met by the observer, conditions which not everyone may meet.
In order to find Shakespeare beautiful, I must learn how to read; in order to be amazed by Mozart, I mustn’t be on my cellphone during a concert; and so on. Professors teach their classes that if they really want to appreciate a work of art, they must learn to cultivate their capacities to absorb work (take a book like Ulysses by James Joyce or The Sound and the Fury by William Faulkner), that there are conditions that must be met if the beauty of a work is to be fully experienced. This doesn’t mean the work isn’t beautiful, but that experiencing beauty requires “something to happen within” the person experiencing it. This applies to nature just as much as it does to books: if as a child my best friend drowned in a lake, it will be more difficult for me to find lakes beautiful than someone who didn’t suffer such a trauma; if as a child I played in the woods, it might be easier for me to find trees beautiful than those who lived in cities all of their lives (on the other hand, it might be harder for me, being so used to trees, while the city-dweller might be “open” to the forest, having no preset ideas). In other words, my internal life impacts what strikes me as beautiful, not because what is beautiful is “all in the head,” but because there are conditions that must be met in order for a person to “receive” (the experience of) beauty. Beauty is conditional, not illusionary.
To say “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” is a valid statement if it means “there are conditions the eye must meet if it is to grasp the beauty of what it beholds,” but if the phrase is used to mean “beauty is merely subjective,” the phrase is invalid. Indeed, there is something individual and particular to beauty: it speaks to me (though that doesn’t mean it speaks to no one else), and perhaps for reasons I might not ever be able to put into words (it perhaps being a matter of the subconscious and/or “high order complexity,” to use language from “Experiencing Thinking” by O.G. Rose). That said, that which is “beautiful” as opposed to simply “pretty” is that which actually (more so) transcends subjectivity, “standing over it, calling it up,” per se, even though it is the case that I must cultivate my subjectivity to be able to hear its calling. Beauty calls something out of us while also asking us to develop the capacities to hear its summoning, though we paradoxically are often deaf to its calls. We often simply have to know we need to develop these capacities, but the more we experience beauty, the more we learn to have faith in what we cannot hear and to work on developing our internal life until the music reaches us.
Though beauty might be an experience everyone can have, it isn’t the case that everyone will necessarily experience a given thing as beautiful. Everyone experiences beauty generally (perhaps some more than others), but not a given thing as beautiful (and why one experiences this as beautiful and not that is a matter of “high order complexity”), similar to how everyone agrees murder is wrong, but not on what exactly constitutes murder. Beauty is something perhaps everyone experiences (at least to some limited degree) either through music, a sunset, a touch of dawn light, or what have you, but not everyone experiences James Joyce as beautiful (and perhaps they don’t meet the conditions for experiencing such for reasons in their control or perhaps outside their control — hard to say). And yet this isn’t because Joyce isn’t necessarily beautiful, but because we have to “raise ourselves up” to grasp Joyce, yet the very experience of Joyce, even in our ignorance, “calls us” to understand it. Arguably, the fact it so “calls” is a sign of its beauty, even though we might find Ulysses nonsense. Perhaps the book only calls because experts tell us it is a great book, but the very fact that experts find it a great book means there is reason to believe there is beauty there that can be experienced if certain conditions are met. The question is only whether we will choose to meet them…
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