Does beauty truly lie in the eyes of the beholder?
Or is this a lie perpetuated by ugly folk?
Introduction
If you look up the definition of “beauty” in a dictionary, you’d most likely find a very objective version of it. Something along the lines of…
The quality or aggregate of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or pleasurably exalts the mind
Now, dictionaries usually hold singular, sometimes oversimplified definitions of things and it is acceptable by the general public, because everyone wants the entry barrier to the language to be as low as possible.
However, in a philosophical context, a singular idea of beauty does not find such universal acceptance.
Beauty, as part of the Aesthetics discussion of Philosophy, has been thoroughly argued and several trains of thought have led the way through time.
These theories of beauty can essentially be pigeonholed under two primary views:
- The objectivist view: Beauty is attributed to certain qualities or characteristics of the phenomenon/object/person. For instance, “the blue sky is beautiful” implies that the distinction of beauty is conferred upon the sky due to its “blue-ness”.
- The subjectivist view: Beauty is attributed to a subject’s experience of it. Basically, the idea of “you’re beautiful…to me”.
Popular objectivist views
The quote “beauty lies in the eyes of the beholder” is fundamentally misattributed to Plato; he probably never said it because he actually believed in quite the opposite — beauty is objective. Plato hypothesized The Theory of Forms which proposed the existence of two levels of reality: one is the tangible world that we inhabit which is replete with sights and sounds, and the other is an intelligible, invisible world of Forms that gives our tangible world meaning. According to Plato, beauty resides in the realm of Forms. What this means is that when you see a beautiful sunset or a beautiful person, you find the sunset or the person beautiful because you have an understanding of Beauty in the abstract already. This understanding of Beauty is unchanging, and since it is defined in the world of Forms, it is objective.
Calm down there, Plato.
Another popular objectivist view on beauty came through Plato’s disciple Aristotle, but it was vastly different. Aristotle proposed that Beauty resides in the phenomenon/object/person being observed and the characteristics held by that entity such as symmetry, order, balance and proportion. This seems to be a much purer version of the objectivist view because it depends solely on the entity being observed, regardless of whether it is natural or man-made.
For instance, you must have heard about the controversial Golden Ratio faces, where a beautiful face is said to be one which is about 1.6 times longer than it is wide. The closer you are to this ratio, the more beautiful you are.
While both Aristotle and Plato have differing ideas on what Beauty is, they both believed that it was dependent on the entity/phenomenon rather than the mind of the beholder.
Popular subjectivist views
David Hume argued that beauty is not dependent on the entity/phenomenon. Rather, it was a matter of feelings and emotion of the beholder, making the concept of beauty entirely subjective. What is beautiful to one person may not be so for the other. Our current world supports this narrative too, because it gives everyone and everything an opportunity to be beautiful to someone. It is all-inclusive, no trouble here right?
Another popular subjectivist view came from Immanuel Kant who believed that any aesthetic judgment is made based on feelings, especially the feeling of pleasure. What brings each person pleasure is entirely dependent on taste and since taste varies, so does the idea of what is beautiful. These judgements are not based on logic, rather there are “judgement processes” in the mind of the beholder which decide on the beauty of an entity/phenomenon. Therefore, beauty is not a “feature” of the entity/phenomenon.
Perspective
The nature of beauty has been a topic of debate over several generations. The pure versions of the objectivist and the subjectivist views have issues to contend with.
When you say beauty is entirely subjective, the idea of beauty becomes meaningless. The essence is lost because everything becomes a matter of preference and everything becomes beautiful. It’s almost like saying everyone can be extraordinary. If this were true, no one would truly be so because that would be the new “ordinary”.
So, are we okay with Person A calling Shakira beautiful and Person B calling murder beautiful, and for both of it to essentially hold the same value, which is nil?
When you say beauty is entirely objective, it creates filtered subsets of our very universe. Only certain entities/phenomenon would qualify as beautiful, and while this creates value for beauty as a concept, it also means that this is not all-inclusive: there are objectively ugly people and things in the world?
The major issue would be similar to the “Grounding problem” of morality, which I’ve discussed in a previous post, where questions are raised on who or what defines the basis of beauty. Who decides the necessary characteristics for something/someone to be deemed beautiful? Do we all agree with this basis? Where does this basis come from and how do we know it’s a “truth” to be accepted? These are all questions that the objectivist view has to contend with.
Well, we’re at quite an impasse here, aren’t we? Welcome to Philosophy 101.
Denis Dutton, a modern American philosopher looked for answers as well, and the best answer he could come up with was interestingly based on evolution. In a TED talk, Dutton provided us with his idea of beauty. You can check it out here.
The video ends with the words:
“Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? No, it’s deep in our minds. It’s a gift handed down from the intelligent skills and rich emotional lives of our most ancient ancestors. Our powerful reaction to images, to the expression of emotion in art, to the beauty of music, to the night sky, will be with us and our descendants for as long as the human race exists.”
As the excerpt suggests, beauty can manifest itself as a powerful reaction/experience of a subject but this reaction might be a deep-rooted implication of our genetics. Essentially, we have defined the beauty in things/phenomena/people for ourselves over time and this objective definition has been passed on over generations for us to experience. This seems like an objectivist view using the basis of genetics and ancestry. What do you think about it?
More importantly, what do you think beauty means to you now? Give it a thought!
