Ethics Forum: Aesthetics

Showing posts with label Aesthetics. Show all posts

Saturday, November 18, 2023

Beauty as Spiritual Therapy

Aesthetics is a branch of philosophy concerned with the nature of beauty, art, and taste, and the creation and appreciation of beauty.

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

In this series on aesthetics, we have been exploring impressions of beauty. Is it true that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" or is it possible to speak of an absolute, universal perception of beauty? Clearly, the perception of beauty is subjective and grounded in the individual's sentiments, personal history, and values. Yet the very fact that aesthetics is effectively used instrumentally suggests that humans recognize beauty has value in itself. That may be the truest statement to touch on the universal appreciation of aesthetics.

Arthur Schopenhauer believed that exposure to beauty can help humans overcome misery. It is an antidote to the depression we face as mortals. In his book The Beginning of Wisdom, Leon Kass offers this insight: "Death is the mother of the love of glory, of a beautiful name for splendid deeds. Death is also - and similarly - the mother of beauty, of a concern with the beautification of an ugly world, fated to decay, rife with death." (p. 155)

Clinical psychologists use beauty therapy to elevate mood. Children struggling with difficult life issues often find an emotional outlet through art. In this instrumental view, beauty, art and music are a means to an end. They are tools for building a better future, moral improvement, or bringing a greater measure of health.

St. Paul urged the early Christians to dwell on the good and the lovely. He wrote, "whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things." (Philippians 4:8) Thoughts are elevated when we ponder the good and the lovely.

In the great world religions, we find beauty is associated with spiritual elevation. Hinduism urges its adherents to "think of all beautiful things" and God is recognized as the source of goodness, truth, and beauty. (Rig Veda 5.82.5-7)

In Judaism, beauty is a fleeting reminder of God's goodness.

Islam asserts "God is beautiful and loves beauty." (Hadith of Muslim)

In Confucianism, we find the instrumental claim that a neighborhood is made beautiful by Goodness (Analects 4:1).

The arts can never be a replacement for religion. In his book What Good are the Arts?, John Carey writes, “Turning art into a religion often carries with it the assumption that there is a higher morality of art, distinct from conventional morality.” (p.136) That is the position of Aestheticism, the opposite of aesthetic instrumentalism. Aestheticism asserts that art belongs autonomously to the realm of the aesthetic. It has no interest in the application of the arts to religion or emotional or spiritual elevation.

Sunday, September 24, 2023

Symbols of Beauty

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

Judging beauty is likely to stir controversy. It is difficult to escape the impression that the discernment of beauty is highly subjective. Many philosophers and poets agree on that point. The Irish poet Oscar Wilde wrote, "Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world."

Likewise, David Hume believed that beauty is a matter of one's mental disposition. He wrote, "Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others." (Hume 1757, 136)

Immanuel Kant believed that beauty is known by the pleasure it gives to the viewer. He wrote, "The judgment of taste is therefore not a judgment of cognition, and is consequently not logical but aesthetical, by which we understand that whose determining ground can be no other than subjective. Every reference of representations, even that of sensations, may be objective (and then it signifies the real [element] of an empirical representation), save only the reference to the feeling of pleasure and pain, by which nothing in the object is signified, but through which there is a feeling in the subject as it is affected by the representation." (Kant 1790, The Critique of Judgment, Third Critique, section 1)

Hume and Kant perceived that when beauty is treated as a subjective state, it is no longer recognizable as a universal value. Beauty cannot hold a place among the universal forms of Truth, Goodness, and Order. Beauty subjectively judged is fleeting. Such beauty cannot be an eternal form.

In the East, beauty has been recognized through the contemplation of icons. Icons give pleasure and spiritual attunement. They speak of luminosity and numinosity at the same time. They are designed to mediate the presence of God through beauty. Eastern Orthodox churches are adorned with icons usually on every wall and the ceiling. The colors are vibrant, and the gold reflects light so that one seems to be standing inside a jewel box.

Following the thought of Plato, perfect beauty exists only in the eternal Form of beauty (Platonic epistemology). He believed that the love of beauty in the material sphere can lead to the love of the Ultimate Beauty. Icons are vehicles for apprehending the Ultimate Beauty of God. They are like windows through which something of the eternal can be seen. In this sense, icons are symbols of beauty.

Friday, February 17, 2023

Beauty as the Good

Bellinzona, Switzerland is a place of extraordinary beauty.

Alice C. Linsley

What follows is a general consideration of beauty as the Good. The topic is addressed from different cultural perspectives and time periods. Doubtless, the reader will decide whether the concept of “beauty as the Good” is important, substantial, and valuable. Richard Hooker, a bright light of the English Renaissance, holds our human reasoning in high regard. He wrote, "Of things created, the noblest and most resembling God, are creatures indued with the admirable guifte of understanding." (The Dublin Fragments; V: The creation and governance of the world not yet considered as being evill. And touching the first beginning of evill in the World.) It is hoped that the reader will employ that admirable gift.

Is beauty simply a physical attribute? Or is there a spiritual dimension to beauty that is perceived as good? Can the arts: poetry, painting, sculpture, etc. fully capture the essence of beauty?

Around 600 B.C., the Greek poet Sappho asserted that “what is beautiful is good” but Plato argued that poetry is inferior to Beauty as a Form. The German poet Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) wrote that “physical beauty is the sign of an interior beauty, a spiritual and moral beauty.” Yet as history proves many physically attractive people have shown themselves to be quite evil.

When Plato speaks of beauty, he is not referring to that which is physically appealing or attractive. He is speaking of an Ideal or a Form. The Form is eternal and unchanging. Therefore, beauty is not subjective or dependent upon cultural norms. It is something other, and a testimony to eternal realities.

Plato conceives of rational inquiry into the truth and the good as superior to the arts. Sculpture and poetry are good in a much as they have the potential to point to eternal realities. Plato encourages consideration of beautiful things because such contemplation can point to the soul’s eternal nature, a very Greek concept. For Plato, there is pleasure in such contemplation of the eternal.

The Hebrew mindset also finds pleasure in the contemplation of beauty. In the Hebrew Scriptures beauty is equated with glory, purity, honor, and pleasantness. In the Bible, beauty has a direct reference to God. The Hebrew delight in the “beauty of holiness”.

Clearly, there is a cultural difference between the Greek and the Hebrew understandings of beauty. For the Greek, beauty is the preoccupation of the soul. For the Hebrew, beauty is righteousness. Both conceptions are well defined within their immediate cultural contexts. Both generally agree that beauty has certain qualities: balance, symmetry, harmony, luminosity, etc.; qualities which are also ascribed to Goodness.

Christian theology contributes to this discussion by asserting that all truth is God's truth; all goodness is God's goodness, and all beauty is God's beauty. In this view, truth, goodness, and beauty have God as the point of reference. This cannot be proven by empirical observation. Further, there is the danger of slipping into pantheism or panentheism.

For the modern person there is no aesthetic value in the soul or in righteousness. Instead, aesthetic value is linked to what gives the individual pleasure or satisfaction and therefore is highly subjective. It becomes freedom from moral constraints and duty, as Friedrich Schiller claimed. Or in the thinking of Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860) the value lays in art as an instrument for improvement of the self or society.

Sunday, February 5, 2023

A First Look at Aesthetics

Dr. Alice C. Linsley

This is the first in a series on Aesthetics, the branch of philosophy that deals with the principles of beauty and artistic taste. It necessarily touches on Truth also. "Beauty is an effect of Truth that manifests when the object closer to the Truth is perceived by the subject." This is why Aesthetics cannot be set apart from ethics.

Beauty is recognized where one is closer to Truth. Thus, Truth is fundamental and beyond subject-object duality. This approaches Plato's understanding of beauty as transcendent eternal Forms. In Plato's philosophy beauty is not about art or nature. Were we to ask Plato: what is beauty? he would answer: “Forms are beautiful, the perfect being is beautiful, and among these forms, the form of Good is the most beautiful.”

For the Ancient Greeks, beauty was not a matter of personal taste. According to Aristotle, beauty could be measured. Literally. “The chief forms of beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which the mathematical sciences demonstrate in a special degree,” he says in Metaphysics.

An expert on Greek and Roman art, Dr. Dietrich von Bothmer (1918-2009) explained, "Beauty was considered an excellence, like honesty or bravery. Physical beauty was important, but it had to be coupled with goodness of spirit as well."

The Neo-Platonist, Plotinus, insisted that beauty inspires an enquiry into its own source (ontology), and that this world is beautiful because it reflects the beauty of a supreme, undivided, transcendent "One". This One "is prior to all existents" and identified with the concept of Good and the principle of Beauty.

Plotinus has influenced those whose discontent with things as they are has led them to seek the realities behind the appearances of the senses. One of those persons is the German philosopher Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860).

Schopenhauer believed that art and aesthetic experience provide escape from an otherwise miserable existence, and that these allow one to attain greater objectivity than science or empirical knowledge. The more a person's mind is concerned with the world as representation, the less it feels the suffering of the world as will. Schopenhauer analyzed art from its effects, both on the personality of the artist, and the personality of the viewer.

When it comes beauty, either as Truth or as an antidote to misery, it is difficult to escape the impression that discernment of beauty is highly subjective. The Irish poet, Oscar Wilde, wrote, "Beauty has as many meanings as man has moods. Beauty is the symbol of symbols. Beauty reveals everything, because it expresses nothing. When it shows us itself, it shows us the whole fiery-coloured world."

In this series on Aesthetics, we will consider three topics:

1. Beauty as a Form of the Good

2. Symbols of Beauty

3. Beauty as Spiritual Therapy