The subjectivity of beauty, as the whole story, appears counter-intuitive from quite a few angles as we have seen. But there are equally some reasons to think objective beauty might have its own problems as well. I'll offer a few of those briefly. However in the end I hope to show these problems are less formidable than they might initially appear. And that the subjective component to beauty should really be limited to the applicational context of the experience of beauty, not the foundational (or ontological) component of what beauty is.
When it comes to beauty it seems obtuse to think one person's perspective must be right and the other must be wrong. Imagine two siblings walking out of the movie theatre and the older sister exclaims "That movie was fantastic!" The little brother is unconvinced: "It was okay. There were a lot cheesy scenes..." he says. But who is right? The subjectivist wants to say why does someone have to be wrong? The sister sees it as beautiful and the brother doesn't see it that way. It is beautiful for her. It is not beautiful for him. And that's it. No one is right, no one is wrong. Along these lines the subjectivist could give even more stronger examples. Say a young man thinks a particular woman is beautiful and another man disagrees, it seems a bit crass to say that one of them must be mistaken (especially if the woman is the man's wife!).
This seems like a hard bullet to bite for the objectivist. But is it? Remember when your family brought out your grandmother's old wedding album. What did they all say when they saw the photo of her in her bridal dress? "Wow you look so beautiful!" In that moment, your family is observing how dramatic the physical appearance has changed such that they are stunned by the beauty she once had. Of course we are careful how we talk about a woman's changing beauty, but notice we can only make sense of situations like these by seeing it within the framework of an objectivist understanding of beauty.
Our intuitions about human beauty are difficult to adjudicate naturally, since we don't talk in certain ways about people's beauty often because it is rude, rather than because it is incorrect per se. That said, looking at less complicated examples will be much more instructive for us. So we can ask the question: Is a 7-year old banging on a piano on equal footing with the majestic works of Bach or Mozart? Is my dog rubbing off mud onto onto a white canvas on equal footing with a famous portrait from Van Gogh or Rembrandt? The subjectivist is strangely forced to say there is nothing intrinsically different about the beauty of each of these. The resources of their view do not allow for that sort of distinction. But the subjectivist does have a possible back door. There could be an extrinsic (not intrinsic) way of grounding beauty which might salvage their view against these counter-intuitive examples. How?
Cultural norms could seem to play a quasi-grounding role in settling obvious disagreements about beauty. Since nothing is intrinsically beautiful in their view, some things can be said to be beautiful by general collective agreement (and to be not beautiful vise versa). So the reason why a 7 year-old banging on a piano is not beautiful is because we as a culture do not see that as beautiful music (notice it has nothing to do with the quality of the sound itself). Or the reason why Van Gogh produces masterful art is because the majority of people think so, not because of any sort of intrinsic qualities that are a part of his paintings. Do you see the move here? It is subjectivism on a community level, not on an individual level. The community ultimately decides subjectively what is or is not beautiful.
But this maneuver suffers from quite a few major problems. First, this position still would not be able to escape some of the problems already mentioned in the first article. Particularly the third argument about beauty actually changing if perceptions of beauty change. Again it is a bit confounding to have a view that might force one to say a painting was ugly in 1786, but the same painting somehow became beautiful in 1986, for example. Second, it seems to give no room for artistic reformers. A reformer by definition cuts against the grain of cultural traditions and perceptions. But if cultural perceptions are the very definition of what beauty really is, any artistic reformer will always be producing works of art that are -by definition- not beautiful! Third, attempts at defining what is a 'community' or 'culture' has proven to be admittedly quite arbitrary according to many anthropologists. Lastly, art on this understanding seems to become something only meant to ultimately amuse and entertain. If artistic beauty is being defined as the sort of thing that people just happen to 'like', it seems to rip away some very powerful features regarding the essence and function of what art really is. Art is supposed to give meaning and power in some of the ideas it presents. It is often intended to challenge people, to give new perspectives, to stimulate thought and reflection. All these intrinsic categories are reduced away on this view. There is no meta-narrative. And what is left is a field that is strangely just a function of the entertainment industry.
But if beauty is an objective property, according to what standards or according to who's standards can we come to know whether something is actually beautiful? It seems like it might be inevitably biased. Who gets to decide what is beautiful? And even if it is not biased, it would seem even the search for some objective standard would be a bit unwieldy. What sort of standard could explain all the things we think are beautiful?
It is a good question, but notice this is an epistemological question. It is a separate question entirely than the question of what beauty ultimately is. Whether someone can tell you the aesthetic reasons why a piece of music is beautiful or not, has no bearing on whether its beauty is an objective reality. Just because I can't define love doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Likewise, whether a satisfactory definition of beauty can be given or not, doesn't directly address the question of the existence of objective beauty. Nevertheless, I will try to give a possible direction that could start to answer this question.
Beauty is a sort of meta-property. Its a property of a property. That said, it comes at a certain level of abstraction (in the epistemological sense) that makes an intuitive definition difficult. My first attempt at a definition might say: Something is beautiful in so far as it reflects the order, proportionality, harmony, and/or grandeur of what is good, true, and real. There is a lot that might be said here to try and clarify or defend, but I think I'll just let you chew on it for a while. Is the definition too narrow? Is it too vague? I'd be intrigued to hear your thoughts, especially from some of you artists and musicians!
So if subjectivity is not at the center of how we think about beauty, what role does it play? I'll try to unpack that in a final post.
When it comes to beauty it seems obtuse to think one person's perspective must be right and the other must be wrong. Imagine two siblings walking out of the movie theatre and the older sister exclaims "That movie was fantastic!" The little brother is unconvinced: "It was okay. There were a lot cheesy scenes..." he says. But who is right? The subjectivist wants to say why does someone have to be wrong? The sister sees it as beautiful and the brother doesn't see it that way. It is beautiful for her. It is not beautiful for him. And that's it. No one is right, no one is wrong. Along these lines the subjectivist could give even more stronger examples. Say a young man thinks a particular woman is beautiful and another man disagrees, it seems a bit crass to say that one of them must be mistaken (especially if the woman is the man's wife!).
Our intuitions about human beauty are difficult to adjudicate naturally, since we don't talk in certain ways about people's beauty often because it is rude, rather than because it is incorrect per se. That said, looking at less complicated examples will be much more instructive for us. So we can ask the question: Is a 7-year old banging on a piano on equal footing with the majestic works of Bach or Mozart? Is my dog rubbing off mud onto onto a white canvas on equal footing with a famous portrait from Van Gogh or Rembrandt? The subjectivist is strangely forced to say there is nothing intrinsically different about the beauty of each of these. The resources of their view do not allow for that sort of distinction. But the subjectivist does have a possible back door. There could be an extrinsic (not intrinsic) way of grounding beauty which might salvage their view against these counter-intuitive examples. How?
Cultural norms could seem to play a quasi-grounding role in settling obvious disagreements about beauty. Since nothing is intrinsically beautiful in their view, some things can be said to be beautiful by general collective agreement (and to be not beautiful vise versa). So the reason why a 7 year-old banging on a piano is not beautiful is because we as a culture do not see that as beautiful music (notice it has nothing to do with the quality of the sound itself). Or the reason why Van Gogh produces masterful art is because the majority of people think so, not because of any sort of intrinsic qualities that are a part of his paintings. Do you see the move here? It is subjectivism on a community level, not on an individual level. The community ultimately decides subjectively what is or is not beautiful.
But this maneuver suffers from quite a few major problems. First, this position still would not be able to escape some of the problems already mentioned in the first article. Particularly the third argument about beauty actually changing if perceptions of beauty change. Again it is a bit confounding to have a view that might force one to say a painting was ugly in 1786, but the same painting somehow became beautiful in 1986, for example. Second, it seems to give no room for artistic reformers. A reformer by definition cuts against the grain of cultural traditions and perceptions. But if cultural perceptions are the very definition of what beauty really is, any artistic reformer will always be producing works of art that are -by definition- not beautiful! Third, attempts at defining what is a 'community' or 'culture' has proven to be admittedly quite arbitrary according to many anthropologists. Lastly, art on this understanding seems to become something only meant to ultimately amuse and entertain. If artistic beauty is being defined as the sort of thing that people just happen to 'like', it seems to rip away some very powerful features regarding the essence and function of what art really is. Art is supposed to give meaning and power in some of the ideas it presents. It is often intended to challenge people, to give new perspectives, to stimulate thought and reflection. All these intrinsic categories are reduced away on this view. There is no meta-narrative. And what is left is a field that is strangely just a function of the entertainment industry.
But if beauty is an objective property, according to what standards or according to who's standards can we come to know whether something is actually beautiful? It seems like it might be inevitably biased. Who gets to decide what is beautiful? And even if it is not biased, it would seem even the search for some objective standard would be a bit unwieldy. What sort of standard could explain all the things we think are beautiful?
It is a good question, but notice this is an epistemological question. It is a separate question entirely than the question of what beauty ultimately is. Whether someone can tell you the aesthetic reasons why a piece of music is beautiful or not, has no bearing on whether its beauty is an objective reality. Just because I can't define love doesn't mean it doesn't exist. Likewise, whether a satisfactory definition of beauty can be given or not, doesn't directly address the question of the existence of objective beauty. Nevertheless, I will try to give a possible direction that could start to answer this question.
Beauty is a sort of meta-property. Its a property of a property. That said, it comes at a certain level of abstraction (in the epistemological sense) that makes an intuitive definition difficult. My first attempt at a definition might say: Something is beautiful in so far as it reflects the order, proportionality, harmony, and/or grandeur of what is good, true, and real. There is a lot that might be said here to try and clarify or defend, but I think I'll just let you chew on it for a while. Is the definition too narrow? Is it too vague? I'd be intrigued to hear your thoughts, especially from some of you artists and musicians!
So if subjectivity is not at the center of how we think about beauty, what role does it play? I'll try to unpack that in a final post.
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