THE PROBLEM OF BEAUTY

STATEMENT OF PROBLEM.
What is Beauty?
The problem of beauty is the problem of the nature of beauty. This is the main problem investigated by that branch of philosophy called aesthetics. The term comes from the Greek word, aisthesis, which means "sensation". The term was introduced by the German philosopher, Alexander G. Baumgarden (1714-1762), who defined the term broadly to deal with sense-knowledge or sensible knowledge in contrast with Logic which deals with intellectual knowledge. He introduced the term "aesthetics" for first time in 1735 into philosophy and is the considered the founder of that branch of philosophy. He wrote a two volume work called Aesthetics that was published 1750-1758. Baumgarden divided philosophy into three main branches:
(a) Theory of Knowledge, which is subdivided into Logic and Aesthetics,
(b) Theoretical Philosophy, which is subdivided into Physics and Metaphysics,
(c) Practical Philosophy, which is subdivided into Ethics, Philosophy of Law, Theory of Conduct, and Theory of Expression.
While intending to deal with the study of perception in general, Baumgarden own work in Aesthetics centered on the beautiful, thus establishing the modern use of the term. Johann Friedrich Herbert (1776-1841) also used the term in the broad sense to refer to the study of valuation or judgments of pleasure and pain; he considered ethics as chief division of Aesthetics. It was Hegel who limited the term to the problem of beauty by his use of Aesthetics to refer to his writings on art.
ANALYSIS OF THE PROBLEM.
But philosophers did not wait until the 18th century to discuss the nature of beauty, the function of art, and the role of the artist. The following are the major historical solutions to the problem. Historically the theories of the nature of beauty are concerned with whether beauty is in art or in art and nature.
1. Plato.
  Plato (427?-347 B.C.) held to an imitation theory of art that art is an imitation of some aspects of the world of sense, which is an imitation of the world of Ideas. Art then is a imitation of an imitation. Beauty itself refers to the symmetry and proportion of form, which are to be found primarily in the abstract and general Ideas, after which the world of sense is patterned. The eternal Ideas, which are the sole reality, are invisible and are accessible only to reason; they cannot be apprehended by the senses, except for one of them, the Idea of Beauty. Only this immutable essence can be apprehend, at least partially, by the senses. Plato writes in dialogue Phaedrus:
  "And the essence of beauty, as I have explained, was revealed to us along with the other essences, but in this world it is beauty that we apprehend the most clearly shining through the clearest of our senses. For sight is the sharpest of all our bodily senses. Wisdom cannot be seen, for if wisdom could have afforded any such lively and visible image of herself, we should have been mad with love of her, or any other of the essences that are lovely. But, as it is, beauty alone has this privilege, so that it is the most manifest and loveable of all things."
  The lover, says Plato, is inflamed by the beauty of the beloved. He too, like the poet, is visited by a sort of divine madness, not an irrational madness. If physical beauty is followed it will lead us up a ladder by which we can mount step by step with the indispensable aid of the reason. At each stage of our ascent we come nearer and nearer to the world of Ideas, until at last the soul, irradiated with a divine light, not only knows but sees in an all but blinding illumination, the Idea of Beauty itself.
  The sight of the beautiful, which comes to man through the senses, has the function to awaken Eros-love in the soul, not that his love may be fixed on the beautiful object, but rather that the soul may go beyond it in a continual ascent to the Absolute Beauty, in which the beautiful object participates and from which it derives its beauty. Absolute Beauty does not participate in beautiful things, but beautiful things participate in the Absolute Beauty. When man glimpses the Absolute Beautiful in things, he seized by Eros, which is the longing for the pure world of Ideas. This Eros is the upward tendency of the human soul in the direction of the world of Ideas.
  Thus, even though Eros-love is kindle by the sensible beauty thing, it shows itself to be the "heavenly Eros" by the fact that it seeks to rise above the senses to the super-sensible, heavenly beautiful. In his dialogue Phaedrus, Plato starts from the assumption common to the Oriental religion that the human soul has a supernatural, divine origin and worth. In a pre-existent state the soul has had a vision of the Ideas, of that which is in itself true, beautiful and good. This vision of the pre-existent soul has made such a deep impression on it that even after the soul has fallen and become bound and fettered in the body, it still has a memory (anamnesis) of the glory of that super-sensible world, and it feels an upward attraction which it often cannot itself understand. This upward attraction of the soul is Eros-love. It prevents the soul from settling down in the temporal world, and reminds it that it is a stranger and pilgrim here. Since the word Eros is used for the love of the sensual beautiful, Plato distinguishes between two different kinds of Eros. This is such an elementary distinction that Plato in his dialogue Symposium does not have Socrates or Diotima speak about it, but gives Pausanias the task of explaining the difference between what he calls "vulgar [pandemos] Eros" and "heavenly [ouraniso] Eros". [Symposium 180 D.] This heavenly Eros is a love for the bright world of Ideas, a longing to participate in the Divine world of the Ideas. When the soul perceives the radiance of the beautiful, it gains wings and is enabled to fly away to the super-sensible. Now the reason the beautiful has this effect is because the Idea of beauty is the brightest and most radiant of all the Ideas. "Beauty once shone for us in brightness, when in the train of Zeus or of some other god we saw the glorious sight and were initiated into that which is rightly called the most blessed of mysteries." [Phaedrus 250]. This recollection of what the soul beheld in its pre-temporal existence is initiated and nourished through the sight of beautiful things. Sensuous beauty is merely the starting point of the soul's ascent to reach the super-sensible, heavenly beauty. Plato in the Symposium uses the image of the "Heavenly ladder" on which the soul has to climb to the world above. Starting from the sensible beautiful, the soul ascends as it were on a ladder to ever higher forms of beauty, till at last it comes to the Idea of beauty itself. Plato says,
  "When anyone under the right kind of Eros mounts up from these earthly things and begins to see this beauty, he is not far from the final goal. For the right way to the things of Eros, whether one goes alone or is led by another, is to begin with the beautiful things that are here, and mount ever upwards in order to reach the beauty that is above, as if one were ascending a ladder from one beautiful body to two, and from two to all the others, and from beautiful bodies to beautiful actions, and from beautiful actions to beautiful forms of knowledge, till at length one reaches that knowledge which is the knowledge of nothing other than Absolute Beauty, and so knows at last what Beauty really is. It is then, if ever, that life is worth living for man, when he beholds Beauty itself." [Symposium 211; cf. Republic 514ff.]
  The soul who reaches this stage has attained to the highest thing of all, the contemplation of the Idea of beauty, the Beauty that is "eternal, which has had no beginning and does not pass away, which undergoes neither growth nor decay." [Symposium 211.] The soul attained the vision of Absolute Beauty, which is at the same time Absolute Being.
2. Aristotle.
  Aristotle (384-322 B.C.) modified Plato's imitation theory of art so that art became an imitation not of just the actual, but also of the possible or probable. Thus beauty depends on the organic unity of form and matter, a unity in which every part contributes to the quality of the whole.
3. Neoplatonism.
  Plotinus (A.D. 205-270) considered beauty to be associated with a radiance or splendor, resulting from the unity of the whole. According to Plotinus the One is radiated into and diffused into the world of our sense experience. The beauty of anything whatever depends upon the unity of the parts; and this unity comes from the One, its only source. Thus Plotinus analysis of beauty in the Enneads was in a sense an aesthetic argument for God.
4. Thomas Aquinas.
  Thomas Aquinas (1225-1274) tries to combine the views of his predecessors and to go beyond them. He defines beauty as that which gives pleasure when perceived, and hence is related to the cognitive faculties. Beautiful objects must have integrity or unity of the whole, harmony or balance of the parts, and brightness and clarity. Thus there are three factors that are associated with the beautiful: integritas or unity; consonantia or harmony; claritas or clarity. The unity factor as well as the harmony or balance factor is reminiscent of Aristotle, but what is the claritas or radiance factor? Aquinas believed that if we knew ultimate reality (God), we would know it, not by conceptual knowledge, but directly and intuitively. Now when we encounter what is beautiful, we are able to grasp it in an act of immediate apprehension. This intuitive knowledge of sensible beauty is analogous to the intuitive knowledge of ultimate reality. This is reminiscent of Plato and Plotinus. In addition to physical beauty there is a spiritual beauty which is derived from the true ordering of spiritual goods by reason. Accordingly Aquinas defines art as "right reason in making things".
  
  In the 20th century the French philosopher, Jacques Maritan (1882-1973), followed this tradition that there is a transcendental beauty and a eternal source of beauty. He held that art is a concrete embodiment of beauty that is pleasing to the intellect, and a sign of something more divine. In his 1952 Mellon lectures, Maritan presented a complex theology of artistic and transcendental beauty in which he confessed "that all great poetry awaken in us one way or another, the sense of our mysterious identity, and draws us toward the source of being." [1]
5. Calvin.
  The Protestant Reformer John Calvin (1509-1564) understood that the visible beauty of creation reflects the Glory of God and art then is God's gift to mankind to help men and women recognize beauty as a kind of general revelation of God. In 1898 the Dutch theologian Abraham Kuyper in his Princeton lectures [2] followed through on Calvin's concept and formulated somewhat idealistically what has almost become the mainline tradition among evangelical Protestant thinkers: art has the mystical task of reminding those who are homesick for heaven of the beauty that was lost in the fall and would be restored in the new heavens and earth.
6. Kant.
  Immanuel Kant (1724-1804) turned aesthetic theory in a new direction. Kant, who had studied Baumgarten, offered one of the first influential formal treatment of aesthetics in his Critique of Judgment. He starts with an analysis of aesthetical judgment; these judgments give no information, are not connected with desires, and possess no more than subjective universality. According to Kant, aesthetic judgments are derived from a harmonizing of the aesthetic object with our faculties of will and understanding; that is, in this cognition (judgment) our faculties are harmonizing with each other. Beauty is whatever that produces a sense of harmony in the relation between the faculties of will and understanding. This interadaptation is pleasing; when the form of the object is adapted to our faculties, we experience the beautiful. And when our faculties are adapted to the object because of its force or greatness, we experience the sublime.
7. Hegel.
  Georg Wilhelm Freidrich Hegel (1770-1831) found beauty to be the presentation of truth in sensuous form. That is, beauty is the Absolute shining through appearance; and this shining of the Absolute through the veils of the sense world as apprehended by Mind or Spirit is Beauty. Beauty is truth seen in sensuous form. There is beauty in nature, but it is often of a low grade; and the proper subject of aesthetics is Beauty in Art. A work of art has form and content, a spiritual content and material form. In a perfect work of art these are in harmony. Hegel distinguished kinds of art: in Symbolic Art form dominates; in Classical Art the accord of form and content is achieved. In Romantic Art spirit predominates over material form, leaving its sensuous embodiment behind. Art provides an inadequate embodiment of spirit. Religion, in general, is a more adequate embodiment of spirit.
8. Schopenhauer.
  According to the German philosopher, Arthur Schopenhauer (1788-1860), we know the world under two aspects: ideas and will. Known as ideas, the world is what Kant said it was, that is, phenomena (appearance), ordered by the forms of understanding, space, time and causality. But behind this world of appearance there is a world in itself, the noumena. Schopenhauer held that this world is will. This real world is one eternally striving will, blind and amoral, immanent in all individual things. The everywhere present indwelling will is revealed to us directly in our own restlessness, passion, and unquenched desire. This will, which is the only reality, is one. But from our point of view under the forms of space and time, ordered by causality, the will becomes multiple; it is divided into many things. The infinite will thus objectifies itself in numberless finite things, each of which is this will itself seen from the level human understanding. Thus there are two realms of reality: the one cosmic will and the many of finite things into which the will seems to divide. Between these two realms is the Platonic Ideas. These are universal type of things, the models which Nature seems to strive to copy. These Forms have a kind of semi-existence outside human knowledge, unaffected by the many in time and space. These Platonic Forms, existing apart from the categories of mind, are located outside the struggle and compulsion of things, detached from the blind striving of the will. These are the objects of the artist's vision. The artist is a genius, a special kind of man, not like common mortals; he alone is capable to contemplate these timeless Forms behind the particular objects. He alone is able to grasp and understand what Nature in all its multiplicity is trying unsuccessfully to express.
  From this metaphysical view of art, Schopenhauer draws psychological and moral conclusions concerning the function of art. Art is escape. Escape from what? Escape from the relentless striving of the will within us. In art we find a real escape, if temporary, from the unsatisfied striving and desire. Art provides peace from the torment from the infinite demands of the will and from the hunger of a thousand desires. When we behold the beautiful, we escape from that will for a blessed moment of time, and behold the universal in things in pure, objective, will-less, contemplation.
9. Art as Expression.
  The Italian philosopher Benedetto Croce (1866-1952) followed the idealistic tradition, holding that everything which exists is mental or spirit; he called his view the philosophy of the spirit. He divided it into four spheres: aesthetics, logic, economics, and ethics. The heart of aesthetics is individuality, and this individuality is engendered within the imagination of the artist. This intuition is expressed, if successfully, in the work of art, and that work of art engenders in the imagination of the viewer a similar aesthetic response. Croce defined art as expression. When asked, "Is it an expression of emotion?", Croce answers: "No, just expression." But expression of what? Croce answers, "Of intuitions." Croce affirms that art is expression of intuition. "Intuition and expression are correlative. To intuit is to express, and nothing else." So art is also intuition. This intuition is imaginative, non-conceptual knowledge, which comes from our feelings. By intuition Croce means imagination. Since everything is mental or spiritual, there are no such things as physical facts. Thus a work of art has no formal properties; a work of art is expression of the spirit and what we find in it is our own spirit smiling back at us. Are there other intuitions besides aesthetic intuitions? Croce answers "No, all intuitions are beautiful." This is why sensitive people finds beauty in everything. If there is any difference between ordinary and aesthetic intuitions, it is quantitative only, not qualitative. In art, intuition (or, imagination) expresses itself in images, and these take form in words, lines, colors, tones. They are neither good nor bad, real nor unreal, useful nor useless. They are just beautiful.
10. Art as Expression of Emotion.
  The Russian writer and social philosopher Leo Tolstoy (1828-1910) related art both to morality and to the communication of emotion. Tolstoy held that art is significant insofar as it communicates the best and higher feelings of mankind. These are the moral and religious feelings that give meaning to human life. Tolstoy says that the artist hands on to others the feelings he has lived through, and that these others experience these same feelings.
11. Art as Pleasure.
  "Beauty is pleasure," said the American-European philosopher George Santayana (1863-1952). But it is pleasure objectified, that is, pleasure as the quality of a thing. It is the pleasure that we take in certain sense objects; the aesthetic experience differs from other pleasant experience in that we regard the aesthetic pleasure as a quality belonging to the object. Some have criticized Santayana for stressing the subjectivity of beauty neglecting its formal qualities. But he reminds us that all art is, in some way, an entertainment and a finding pleasure in the artistic object. Other philosophers had noted this aspect of aesthetic experience. Thomas Aquinas said that the beautiful is that which, when beheld, pleases. (Pulchra sunt quae visa placent.) Of course not everything that pleases is beautiful. But if a work of art does not please, it has failed as a work of art. And this does not mean that a work of art must please everyone; not everyone is able to appreciate beauty. Plato speaks of "unmixed" pleasures, such as the smell of a rose, and says that the pleasures of art are "pure" pleasure. Kant tells us that the pleasure we take in the beautiful is disinterested pleasure. In the satisfaction we derive from the beautiful there is no suggestion of utility or profit. The art object pleases us as an end in itself, not as a means or instrument for some other purpose. Kant says that aesthetic pleasure is pleasure "without interest" (interesselos Wohlgefallen).
12. Art as Play.
  Kant also suggested that art is play. Play is an activity agreeable in itself. Thus art is more closely related to play than to work; work is activity for an end. The English philosopher Herbert Spencer (1820-1903) claims to find the origin of aesthetic activity in animal play, which he interprets as the expression of superfluous energy. This activity awakens all kinds of agreeable feelings. In aesthetic experience the faculties of the organism are exercised in such a way that a maximum of activity is combined with a minimum of strain.
13. Art as Wish Fulfillment.
  The Austrian medical psychologist and founder of psychoanalysis, Sigmund Freud (1856-1940) held that art is the projection in fantasy of the artist's heart's desire. The artist (an introverted, almost neurotic individual) is motivated, like all men, by deep-seated instinctive drives. All men want power, fame, honor, riches, and women. When he cannot gratify these wants, he projects his desires into fantasy. Ultimately, this can lead to neurosis. But not so for the artist. He finds his way back to reality by the products of his fantasy that express his desires. The artist by his ability to project his fantasies in such a way that other men find pleasure and consolation in them; thus the artist reaps his reward in gratitude and love. That is, art is the wish fulfillment of the artist.
14. Art and Morality.
  The German poet, dramatist, and philosopher Friedrich Schiller (1759-1805) believed that the aesthetic to be the basic harmonizing category of life, allowing morality and feeling to coexist. There cannot be one without the other. The aesthetic is that broader category allowing the conciliation of morality and feeling, and made possible man's development toward a more perfect being. Tolstoy says in his What is Art? that the purpose of art is promote the brotherhood of man. If a work of art does not have the power to lift up the hearts of men, uniting them in feeling of brotherly love, then art has lost its value. Santayana says, "Beauty, being a good is a moral good; and the practice and enjoyment of art ... fall within the sphere of morals - at least if by morals we understand moral economy and not moral superstition."
15. Art for Art's Sake.
  Using the word "morality" in a broad sense, it has become almost classic thesis in aesthetics that art and morality occupy different spheres. Croce says that the realm of the moral is the practical; morality is an affair of the will. But aesthetic activity is essentially contemplative and, as such, has nothing to do with practical activity. "The good will which makes a good man does not make an artist." But, Croce adds, if art is outside the sphere of morality, the artist is not. This emphasis on the separation of art and morality has been exaggerated in the latter part of the 20th century by certain critics and literary men. The French author of the erotic novel Mlle de Maupin, Theophile Gautier, coined the slogan "L'art pour l'art" [Art for Art's sake] to confound the Philistine bourgeoisie. The American writer, Oscar Wilde in the preface to his novel, The Picture of Drian Gray, "All art is quite useless. ... There is no such thing as a moral or immoral book. Books are well written or badly written. That is all. ... No artist has ethical sympathies. An ethical sympathy in an artist is an unpardonable mannerism of style." The critics of the "art for art's sake" doctrine, while admitting that the artist should not be expected to concern himself in his work to promote moral and ethical views, find implicit in l'art pour l'art an erroneous belief that aesthetic values are somehow set apart from human values in general. Art is an intensely human activity and, as such, cannot be completely separated from human good in general.
THE CLUE TO THE SOLUTION.
The Bible say very little about beauty. The New Testament says nothing about beauty and only uses the adjective "beautiful" (Matt. 23:27; Acts 3:2, 10; Rom. 10:15,
"And how can men preach unless they are sent?
As it is written,
'How beautiful are the feet of those who preach good news!'",
quoting Isa. 52:7,
"How beautiful upon the mountains are the feet of him
who brings good tidings, who publishes peace,
who brings good tidings of good, who publishes salvation,
who says, 'Your God reigns.'").
The Old Testament uses the noun "beauty" (Ex. 28:2, 40; II Sam. 1:19; 14:25; I Chron. 16:29; II Chron. 3:6; 20:21; Esth. 1:11; Job 40:10; Psa. 27:4; 29:2; 39:11; 45:11; 49:14; 50:2; 90:17; 96:6, 9; Prov. 6:25; 20:29; 31:30; Isa. 3:24; 13:19; 28:1, 4, 5; 33:17; 44:13; 53:2; 61:3; Lam. 1:6; 2:1, 15; Ezek. 7:20; 16:14, 15, 25; 27:3, 4, 11; 28:7, 12, 17; 31:8; 32:19; Hosea 14:6; Zech. 9:17; 11:7, 10 - 49 times) and the adjective "beautiful" (Gen. 29:17; Deut. 21:11; I Sam. 16:12; 25:3; II Sam. 11:2; Esth. 2:7; Psa. 48:2; Eccl. 3:11; Song of S. 6:4; 7:1; Isa. 4:2; 52:1, 7; 64:11; Jer. 13:20; 48:17; Eze. 16:12, 13; 23:42 - 19 times) and the verb "beautify" (Ezra 7:27; Psa. 149:4; Isa. 60:13). Nowhere in the Bible is the problem of "What is beauty?" discussed. Christian philsophers and theologians -- except for Aquinas, Maritan, Calvin and Abraham Kuyper -- very seldom discuss this problem or even mention it. Their views are reminiscent of Plato and Plotinus. Christian thinkers who consider aestheics are concerned with the problems of natural theology and theodices: How radically has the reality of sin disfigured creation and made necessary Christ's redemption? Is beauty in nature and in art evil? And, if human art is beautiful, is it not naturally good? This raises the problem of beauty: What is beauty? Is beauty to be taken as an elemental harmony in the world, or as a fitting and satisfying quality of a human work? Are the concepts of balanced harmony, order, and delight the best analogues for understanding aesthetic reality? That is, is beauty a property of the object or is it a quality of the subject? Thus the problem of beauty is treated from within the subject-object antithesis. The modern debate in aesthetic theory has largely converted beauty into a problem of taste of the subject and then argues about the kind and reliablity of "aesthetic" judgments.

ENDNOTES

[1] quoted in Calvin G. Seerveld's article
"Aesthetics, Christain View of", p. 17 in
Evangelical Dictionary of Theology,
Walter A Elwell, Editor
(Grand Rapids, Michigan: Baker Book House, 1984)

[2] A. Kuyper, "Calvinism and Art,"
Lectures on Calvinism