Beauty

Beauty is a word we use to compliment things that we like to contemplate.

When we say that something is beautiful we are saying that it gives pleasure to our senses or to our mind. It is something that we like to see, hear, feel, or think about. It is a joy to contemplate.

It could be a natural scene, a human body, a sound, music, a painting, a scene in a movie, a poem, a particularly elegant and well done action, a design, even a mathematical theorem.

It is difficult to understand what is in common among all these things that we think of as beautiful. Maybe it is a particular symmetry, each part fitting well with the others, everything coming together just right. There is also an element of it being desirable for its own sake, independent of its utility. We think it is beautiful independent of what use we could put it to. Maybe it is because it invites us to suspend striving for a moment so that it can bring a certain order and peace to our mind.

A strange twist on beauty is how the same thing can be beautiful from one point of view and ugly from another. Something can be so ugly that it invites contemplation and becomes something beautiful. Or it may normally be rather unremarkable but in a certain setting it becomes beautiful.

Consider the human body. What is it that makes a body beautiful? Symmetry, how each part flows into the other, with no part overpowering or clashing with the other, how all the parts function together in harmony, how the whole moves together with grace and ease. Still, different cultures and times have had different ideals of physical beauty.  Also, our perception of beauty can get mixed up with different things. It is a commonplace that a parent may think their baby is beautiful when others have to hide their smiles. The person you love may seem beautiful to you independent of what others think. A treasured grandmother can look beautiful even if they would not appear so to anyone else. It is because contemplating them gives you pleasure because of past associations or future hopes. It is the peace and pleasure you get in contemplating them.

Appreciation of beauty also varies according to background and taste. For example, a mathematician may get great pleasure contemplating a simple and elegant proof to a complex theorem while others just see a bunch of boring and confusing symbols. An art lover might find an abstract painting or a disturbing surrealist image beautiful while someone without a similar background would just shake their head and look for the seascapes and covered bridges.

Take the example of disturbing works of art. You may be repelled by them and never want to see them again, or there may be something about a particular work that compels your attention. It captures something that you feel a need to contemplate. It gives form to something that you know is there on the fringes of your awareness. The artist’s ability to capture it makes it a beautiful.

The pleasure of contemplating beautiful things is very powerful and even though the beauty itself may be independent of utility, beauty is often put to use. For example, associating beautiful bodies with products helps make the products desirable, or so the advertisers hope. If we ourselves are not beautiful, we may somehow hope that associating with the things that the beautiful associate with may make us more beautiful. But why do we want to be beautiful? Because beauty invites attention and appreciation. It grants a certain status. It also gets mixed up with sexual attractiveness. It is ironic that someone with a beautiful body may be a terrible lover and a very annoying person to be around. But we still want to give them the benefit of the doubt because we want the status of being associated with beauty.

But beauty is associated with more elevated things as well. Some philosophers and mystics have considered the intellectual, dispassionate contemplation of beauty as the greatest good. One reason could be the peace that comes with contemplating beauty. And if beauty comes from symmetry and order of design, what is more beautiful than the universe itself? Are not all things striving toward their most perfect form? And what could be more beautiful than the mind that created it all? What greater bliss could there be than the beatific vision of the divine mind?

Others of us though can’t quite see it. Even the contemplation of beauty can go to an extreme, loose its balance and harmony. As we can abstract truth and good far outside of normal human experience until we consider them divine, the same can be done with beauty. But ultimately, it is still just us, down here with our language, experience, and desire.