The Philosophy of Beauty

Discussion in 'General Philosophy' started by Cellar_Door, Jul 11, 2011.

  1. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    Hello everyone, hope you're all well

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    I've finally had the time to start posting again now that exams are over and summer's here.

    I found an interesting essay/video that I thought might be a good point of discussion:

    http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hjhVaLbBglQ

    It's in several parts, but you needn't watch them all to be able to comment. If you're interested, Roger Scruton has written extensively on the subject of aesthetics and a youtube video search of his name will bring up lots of interviews and other similar documentaries.

    Personally I find his views very refreshing and I'm inclined to agree with almost everything he says. I particularly liked his discussions with the curator of modern art, I think that's in part 2.

    Any thoughts?
     
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  3. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    “The sexual parts are not only vivid examples of the body's dominion; they are also apertures whose damp emissions and ammoniac smells testify to the mysterious putrefaction of the body.”

    “[In] An Intelligent Person's Guide to Modern Culture, ... Sometimes, as with the Spice Girls or the Pet Shop Boys, serious doubts arise as to whether the performers made more than a minimal contribution to the recording, which owes its trademark to subsequent sound engineering, designed precisely to make it unrepeatable.”


    “Architecture, like dress, is an exercise in good manners, and good manners involve the habit of skillful insincerity-the habit of saying "good morning" to those whose mornings you would rather blight, and of passing the butter to those you would rather starve.”

    Roger Scruton



    Scruton's new book, The Uses of Pessimism, is intended as a warning. It is a defence of a world in which freedom is not the "freedom to believe anything at all, provided you feel better for it", but "a precious achievement that human communities have arrived at through many sacrifices, and it requires institutions, laws – it requires a habit of obedience, as much as anything else."

    At the same time he believes the state must take up as little of civic life as possible. "All of us have social instincts which prompt us. When we see somebody in trouble, we help. And the great question is, when the state steps in, do they still go on doing this? And actually, they don't – and you find when you look to eastern Europe"

    http://www.guardian.co.uk/theguardian/2010/jun/05/roger-scruton-interview

    I do not know much about him but from the little that I have read it seems that he is against the liberal way of thinking which being a writter of philosophy makes him an outscast in many ways.
     
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  5. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    I liked some of the things you quoted from him there - wish I could be that articulate!

    What did you think of the video though? I've paraphrased Roger Scruton's voice-over below to sum up some key points:

    "If you had asked anyone from the 1700s to the 1930s what the point of art, music and poetry was, they would have replied 'beauty'. If you had asked them what the point of that was, you would have learnt that beauty is a value, as important as truth and goodness.

    Then, in the 20th Century, beauty stopped being important. Art increasingly aimed to disturb, break moral taboos. It was not beauty, but originality - however achieved, and at whatever moral cost - that won the prizes. Not only has art made a culture of ugliness, architecture too has become soulless and sterile. And its not just our physical surroundings that have become ugly: our language and our music are increasingly raucous, self-centred and offensive. It is as if beauty and good taste have no real place in our lives.

    ...

    I think we are losing beauty. And with it, there is a danger that we are losing the meaning of life.

    ...

    Philosophers have argued, that through the pursuit of beauty, we shape the world as a home. We've also come to understand our own nature as spiritual beings. But our world has turned its back on beauty, and because of that we find ourselves surrounded by ugliness and alienation.

    I want to persuade you that beauty does matter, and that it is not subjective, but a universal need of all human beings.

    The greatest artists of the past were aware that human life was full of chaos and suffering. The remedy for this was beauty. The beautiful work of art brings consolation in sorrow, and affirmation in joy. It shows human life to be worthwhile. Many modern artists have become wearied by this task: the randomness of life, they think, can not be redeemed by art. Instead, it should be displayed.

    The pattern was started with the French artist Marcel DuChamp. He signed a urinal with a fictitious signature, and entered it for a competition. This gesture was satirical, designed to mock the world of art and the snobberies that go with it. Burt it has been interpreted in another way: showing that anything can be art.

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    Like a light going on and off. A can of excrement. Or even a pile of bricks.

    No longer does art have a sacred status. No longer does it raise us to a higher moral or spiritual plane.

    Now it seems that since the world is disturbing, art should be disturbing too. Those who look for beauty in art, are just 'out of touch' with modern realities. Sometimes the intention is to shock us, but what is shocking first time round is boring and vacuous when repeated. This makes art into an elaborate joke, that by now is no longer funny. Yet the critics go on endorsing it, afraid to say that the emperor has no clothes.

    The art of today shows us the world as it is, with all its imperfections, but is the result really art? Something isn't art just because it offers a slice of reality and calls itself art. "
     
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  7. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    I understand your point but disagree with you. I'd think that , as with everything, "beauty is in the eye of the beholder". That said it is you that sees what you want to see around you, not what everyone sees. I look at a painting by the 20th centuries Salvador Dali:

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    And I see beauty but perhaps you cannot due to your own way of thinking.

    I see nature today as also something majastic and wonderful, but then again you don't because of your way of seeing what nature is all about.

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  8. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    Firstly, although I agree with much of what Roger Scruton is saying, if you'd have read my post properly you would realise that what you are quoting is his words and not mine.

    We can talk about Salvador Dali if you like, but actually Scruton is referring to later movements in the world of art. Take, as a more relevant example, the Young British Artists of the 90s.

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    Beauty is not entirely subjective. Are you honestly telling me that this is beautiful?

    Not only is it ugly and vacuous, it's not creative or original either. You could tell someone - there's half a pig in formaldehyde over there - and you would have completely summed up what it is. There's no mystery, no depth, no creative skill or great endeavour by the artist himself.

    On the other hand,

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    You could tell someone - there's a painting of a girl floating in the water over there - and you would not have even scratched the surface of the haunting beauty of the image and its story.

    As for your comment about me not finding beauty in nature, I'm lost for words. When did I say that?
     
  9. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    It's not what I might think but what the artist thinks about what they are trying to convey. Perhaps, as with some artists, they are trying to tell us something with their works about how gullible some people are in thinking something is "artful" when they were only being sarcastic. So I'd think that any art could be beautiful if its seen in a certain way by certain people.

    Well there were artists that also showed that pain and suffering in the past as well. Here's just one Example by an artist named Hieronymus Bosch who painted in the 1400's.

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  10. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    I don't quite understand what you mean here, could you clarify? So you believe that these artists are seeking to mock the very people keeping them in business? That there is no real point to it all, it's just one big joke? Where's the beauty in that? And moreover, what does that achieve except to cheapen the very term 'art'?

    I disagree again on this point of the 'subjectivity of beauty'. We may have individual tastes and desires but humans have far more in common than they have differences. For example, there are people who are almost universally considered beautiful and desirable by others. They can walk down a street in any city and turn heads. Almost anyone would look at scenes of torture and decay with horror, yet would regard a clear view of the countryside on a summer's day as something beautiful.
    These similarly-held preferences and ideas of beauty are due in part to our basic survival instincts: these are behavioural mechanisms which serve to move us away from unfavourable and dangerous environments and make us seek out places in which we can prosper.
    The same principle holds true for art. Beauty in art allows us to reach out for ideals and help give meaning to our short and brutish existence. Without this we can only spiral downwards back to the level of apes.
     
  11. cosmictraveler Be kind to yourself always. Valued Senior Member

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    Yes, that's what I think might be happening in certain cases, not all. Some are also being sarcastic as I said. I'm not saying that all artists are trying to do this but some of them are trying to evoke controversy and even uproar with their works. As I pointed out that in the 1400's there were some artists that showed very horrifying paintings just to get attention drawn to them. Not to get the public not to like them but to stir controversy with what they did. It is better to have some attention rather than none if you aren't a known artist. Then again some artists just enjoy painting very horrific things and there are, as you well know, certain people who will buy their works. It really doesn't matter if the artist paints a beautiful painting only to please the public but paints what they feel inside themselves as what they feel about their surroundings for people will buy their works or they won't.



    That's your opinion and I respect it but there are others who want to paint things that they want to express and those things just might be grotesque and brutish. Perhaps those types of paintings will not sell well but they are being painted today as they were since art was invented. I'd think that it is rather good to be able to see many differing ways that artists depict what they see around themselves whether or not it pleases you. While you and I agree that that type of artwork isn't beautiful and won't sell to the general public, it does have people who will buy it and do. What you expect to be painted can't always be done by all artists and like I said some will only do grotesque paintings just to get a rise out of people like you and some who do it to poke fun at people that want only beauty to be expressed.

    I do enjoy seeing paintings that depict , to me, very beautiful images. I also like to be poked fun at and made to vomit at times when an artist paints something that really is undesirable to me and many others as well. We must know what's bad to understand what's good sometimes.
     
  12. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    I'm not familiar with Bosch's work, but the mere fact that artists like him existed further back in history doesn't disprove that there has been a marked decline in the standard of art and architecture throughout the 20th Century.

    Conceptual artists like Tracey Emin, Damien Hirst et al are taking what they do seriously. I agree, however, that often their principle aim is to shock and titillate. The dead animals in formaldehyde generated considerable media attention, which in itself served to rocket Hirst to stardom.
     
  13. Fuse26 011 Banned

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    As my name is fuse I will offer a theory. Following a progression of time one may conclude that the older you are, the less beauty you have. However the ultimate conclusion of time results in death: here I will write how death in itself may be a thing of beauty; someone suffering with an illness may find death beautiful.

    Death itself (the end of time (each person generates time)) may also be a thing of beauty. A strict definition of beauty is to BE-AUTI-FUL (to be full of 'auti'.)

    If you can define autumn then you may be able to find that beauty is...
     
  14. Me-Ki-Gal Banned Banned

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    Jinx , Me and the Captain were talking about that and how fall is metaphorically connected to abundance and prosperity. The time of the harvest
     
  15. Fuse26 011 Banned

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    Aut-umn is either the end of summer, or the beginning of winter...
     
  16. chimpkin C'mon, get happy! Registered Senior Member

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    Autumn is when the spirits of Morrigan and Herne come together to make prosperous the coming year, and on Samhein, they dead will come to visit you around the fire.

    Man, you people don't know anything!

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    Life has no meaning. Meaning we ascribe to it is BS
     
  17. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    No objective meaning, no. But that doesn't mean we need to waste it.
     
  18. Cellar_Door Whose Worth's unknown Registered Senior Member

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    Enmos! How's life?
     
  19. Enmos Valued Senior Member

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    Eh.. getting by.
    Or did you want to hear: "Beautiful!"?

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  20. Telemachus Rex Protesting Mod Stupidity Registered Senior Member

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    Seeing as the sensation of finding something "beautiful" can be traced directly to the brain as being as innate and automatically generated as the feeling "pleasure", I doubt we are in any danger of losing our sense of what beauty is. It would be like losing the ability see the color blue, just because society stopped using that color for a few decades.

    There is interesting new research on beauty: http://blogs.discovermagazine.com/n...07/06/beauty-is-in-the-brain-of-the-beholder/

    Here is the original paper that blog references: Towards a Brain Based Theory of Beauty: http://www.plosone.org/article/info:doi/10.1371/journal.pone.0021852
     
    Last edited: Jul 18, 2011
  21. Fuse26 011 Banned

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    I disagree. I think beauty and pleasure are two separate entitities.
     
  22. Telemachus Rex Protesting Mod Stupidity Registered Senior Member

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    Science, or at least active scans of the brain, disagrees. Do you really believe there is such a thing and "unpleasant beauty"?

    Humans are not endlessly complex. It something brings us joy, that is the same chemical reaction we get in a thousand different contexts. The surge we get in seeing something that is beautiful is the same surge we get when we see someone act truly heroically, or have an orgasm or when we do meth (save that the meth reaction is measurably far more intense).

    There's no denying that there are differences in the sensations of, say, orgasm and beauty, but they all relay at their core on the few pleasure related centers of the brain, and especially the orbitofrontal cortex, the anterior cingulate cortex, the ventral pallidum and the nucleus accumbens.

    This is an important study in part because it shows a common neurological feature to multiple forms of beauty across media in a specific section of the orbitofrontal cortex, rather than separate reactions in other pleasure centers.
     

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