Beauty is Objective, Aesthetics is Moral
“The beautiful is the symbol of the morally good.” — Immanuel Kant
There is a common conflation between beauty and superficial attractiveness, a casual allure that pleases the physical senses. Although beauty can be assigned to more abstract artworks and its substance reflected upon more seriously, it is still considered philosophically inconsequential in comparison to its sibling topics of truth and morality. Perhaps, it is because beauty is so smoothly perceived that it is taken for granted by our contemplative faculties.
When we’re asked to judge beauty, or even just to think about it, the immediate axiom that comes to mind is typically, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder”. The easy misinterpretation of this quote is to argue that the judgement of beauty is purely personal, that what one finds beautiful might not be so for another. This one-size-fits-all answer is appealing because it democratises the ability to judge, giving us the happy illusion that each and every one of us is licensed to determine the absolute aesthetic value of the perceivable world in spite of dissent. “In all judgements by which we describe anything as beautiful, we allow no one to be of another opinion” (Kant). But the biggest mistake of this shallow verdict is that it completely neglects the mysterious internal processes that dictate how we form our opinions on what is beautiful.
Describing Beauty
It is possible to describe why or how something might be beautiful by reducing it down to its geometric composition; the pragmatist proposes that beauty can be understood and engineered using mathematical recipes and biological explanations. And this is all true, considering how symmetry, the golden ratio, and particular patterns are found in both our natural surroundings and in the art and architecture of varying cultures since the very beginning. There are practical reasons as to why some of these elements are preferred. For example, symmetry typically denotes fertility in potential mates and infrastructural sturdiness in sheltering places — certain ratios elicit more delight in us simply because they were evolutionarily useful. This is true in music as well: most naturally occurring sounds are complex tones, meaning they are produced with multilayers of varying frequencies. The relationship between these separate sound waves form chords and can be either consonant (pleasant sounding) or dissonant (unpleasant sounding): consonant chords signify safety and causes the body to relax, while dissonant sounds such as crying, screaming, or scratching makes us physiologically distressed and alert. This is only one of the reasons why beauty is beyond taste; even when we can not put our fingers on why exactly something is beautiful, we know it when we see it. Bottom-line: there must be a common denominator in the human evaluation of beauty.
Beauty, as a characteristic, can be a qualitative description of an object, person, artwork, or idea. But more importantly, beauty is an experience. Beauty is an internal response to an external stimulus, and we recognise when we are in the presence of the beautiful because such passive psychological response is not under our conscious control. So while it is found in the headspace of the perceiver, beauty must be attached to a source that is external, communal, and sovereign in relation to our reception of it. If you have ever been awestruck or had your attention stolen, then you know that the experience of the beautiful is undeniably and imperiously gestalt: stepping inside of a gold-gilded cathedral, observing a setting sun in a burning sky, immersed in the harmonics of a live orchestra, or marvelling at a renaissance painting. These are the experiences that take your breath away, its beauty so staggeringly paramount that it stares back at you. The subjective deeming of beauty is immediate, automatic, uncalculated, unreasoned, and unreason-able. We know when we are charmed, and this delightful infliction happens before our ad-hoc reasoning of it.
Beauty & Religion
The Notre-Dame attracts 10 million visitors every year. The Hagia Sophia, 3.8 million. Vatican City, 3.9 million. The religious and non-religious alike make pilgrimages to ancient places of worship that are designed and decorated as if they were the house of God...because they were. It is not a coincidence that beauty has been traditionally accumulated around religious icons and buildings; because God, or the superlative nature of God as a secular placeholder of value, represents the ultimate ideal (i.e., perfection), and it only makes sense to contribute the best of what we have towards such entity of absolute excellence.
The experience of beauty often comes accompanied by the feeling of hair standing up on your arms or the back of your neck. This phenomenon is known as piloerection, a reflex to emotional stimulation that causes the muscles around individual hair follicles to force the hair upright. This reflex is often seen in other animals, meaning that phylogenetically, our reaction to beauty is anciently engraved in our genetic composition. Our humanly instinct to detect and succumb to beauty, that is, moral perfection, is as primitive as cats puffing themselves up to look bigger when feeling threatened. Even in a society that is losing its religion fast, we as a people remain deeply aware of our conscience. Psychologist Jordan Peterson says, “We have become atheistic in description but we remain deeply religious — that is, moral — in disposition.”
Why Beauty Matters
In reality, we do not judge beauty, rather, beauty judges us. We do not get to decide what is beautiful, rather, beauty straightforwardly and uninvitingly occurs. The beautiful is an amalgamation of everything that is ideal, it is what things could be if they turned out perfectly in the best possible outcome. In this way, beauty highlights the ugly because once we recognise what is beautiful we also become painfully conscious of everything that is not. The beautiful is intimidating because encountering something that is ideal reflects back to us our lack of it — beauty says to us, ‘I am everything you are not.’ Beauty is a by-product of realised perfection, it lends the mind a glimpse at the divine, at the supreme, at what things could be at its very best, and what you could be if you were better. The experience of beauty is therefore an involuntary confrontation with truth. Because we are imperfect beings with a conscience that condemns us to ruminate on our own morality, the occurrence of the beautiful is a moment of self-evaluation, and by virtue, judgement.
So while beauty is a subjective experience, it takes a collective recognition to truly define it — the interpretation of perfection is not a solipsistic exercise. Even when isolated from its religious and mystical implications, the psychological significance of being struck by beauty is still valid. This may be what Kant meant by ‘beauty is the symbol of the morally good’: if beauty is the dwelling place for enlightened consciousness, then experiencing the beautiful is an indication that you must be in the presence of the supremely righteous.
“The beautiful is the symbol of the morally good.” —Immanuel Kant
Fundamentally, to create things with beauty is an attempt to search for and communicate truth. As beings who are ill-fated to the perpetual contemplation of morality, creativity may perhaps be obliged to behave honestly with the human conscience, that is, to be morally good.
And if aesthetics and virtue are so deeply intertwined, then it is always worth it, and can even be our duty, to actively add beauty to the world whenever we get a chance to.
wow this was a complex read.