How do you know what is beautiful?

De gustibus non disputandem est.

By years of study of those who have sought it.There are no easy methods I'm afraid however tempting they may be.

"Beauty walks a razor'e edge,
Someday I'll make it mine."

Bob Dylan.

Beauty is, to a large degree, culturally defined. But there are some universals or near universals. There's the Golden Mean, for example. In terms of human beauty (physical attractiveness), the only universals (or near universals) seem to be symmetry (primarily facial) and bodily parasite/bacteria level.

I never realized how difficult it was to define beauty until I tried. I'm wondering if it can be done?

Well Foxy-if you would rather sit there wondering if it can be done than going off and looking at those who tried hardest (Flaubert say) to find out why are you able to cook or even cross the road.

Why would you follow a different process learning to cook than you would learning what beauty is?

Well Spendius, I have read Gustave Flaubert and he was an interesting guy. He wrote some stuff about beauty--so have I--but I don't recall anywhere that he adequately defined it.

I had to learn to cook, and cooking is based on a specific formula of ingredients, temperature, time, and method. I know of no such formula for beauty but I have always known beauty when I see it. Nobody had to teach me or explain it to me.

Even the foods I prepare, I attempt to serve so that they are appetizing and pleasing to the eye. I know how to make them look that way. I can't explain why they are appetizing and pleasing to the eye, however.

(edited to correct spelling error and syntax)

Mills writes


I suppose if protruding lower lips or a bone through the nose or bound feet as practiced (at least at one time) by certain indigenous peoples was considered beautiful, that would indeed be a cultural thing.

I wonder if any people anywhere, other than the mentally distorted, would not see the blossoms up there as beautiful?

I think, mentally disorted have generally a better idea of what is beuatiful than 'normal' people. (I managed a couple of exhibitions of art work by those.)

Regarding those blossoms ... well, they are nice, but personally, I wouldn't call that beautiful.
You may call me now mentally distorted - not referring to my above observation - but I have some reasons:
- I don't consider it as a very good photo,
- I think, there are lots of other varieties of blossoms, which are 'more beautiful', and I don't like to inflate terms in generally, especially those, who point to something high above average.


Having said so, I think, beaty really is a cultural thing, which we all learnt.

.

Well-if the blossoms are beautiful then so by definition is every other organic thing.Why would a thistle or a weed not be just as beautiful as the blossoms.Or a rat?

And once everything is beautiful then the word becomes meaningless except as an expression of somebody's prejudices.

Taken that way only man made things can be said to be beautiful such as Mozart's compositions or a real Campbell's soup can.But deciding on those two is as fraught with difficulty as the organic example.

What the picture presumably means is that it represents Foxy's idea of beauty.Or one of them at one particular time.One can easily refer to anyone who disagrees with that as "mentally distorted" but that doesn't mean anything either except that the user of such a phrase is not up for discussion but more for imposing a view by the cheapest method known in the playground.

The problem with beauty is that we know it when we see it, but we don't always agree with one another.

If this "we" is seen as a bundle of conditioned reflexes then a definition of beauty would be a function of the those reflexes and thus you are correct.

However,that takes us nowhere.We remain at square one.If the idea that only man made things can be said to be beautiful then we may be able to make some progress.

But it can be useful to have the word "beautiful" meaning nothing.It saves effort for a start.And Sancho Panchez for one would have said that that's beautiful.As a self serving definition I mean.

I did not mean to imply that anyone who does not agree on my perception of beauty is mentally distorted. I have known people so twisted within themselves that they were incapable of seeing beauty in anything and it was to them that I referred. The mentally challenged generally seem to see beauty in the same things people of normal intelligence do.

So Walter, you did not see the blossoms as beautiful. Purely because of the quality of the photography? Or can you explain another reason?

I've thought about this just now, Foxfyre, and had responded even without your question. :wink:

My first idea really was that the my 'judgement' was led by my ideas of good photography.
It certainly is so.
On the other hand, I'm as well led by socialisation and e.g. what I've learnt to consider as kitsch :wink:


Thanks for clearing up re mentally distorted.

Were the blossoms grown in horticultural conditions and possibly bred by experts with the specific intention of serving a need of a market?Are they "distorted" by man's skills from the species they belong to?

Beauty is entirely subjective and as such, is most definitely affected by cultural and environmental factors.

You asked earlier about how you could describe it to someone who can't see. I think maybe, those who can't see can probably hear beauty. There is beauty in music.

As to the blossoms, I find them pretty but not sure they would stop me in my tracks.

Sometimes I think it's beautiful to watch someone enamored with something they find beautiful. How's that for meta-beauty.

There is, of course, no general consensus on this point.

And is everything we know of beauty merely learned or conditioned responses? If so, who taught me that my grandmother's old wrinkled face was beautiful so long before I came to understand and appreciate the life and trials that had caused those wrinkles? Who taught me to regard so many of the models in print and television ads, society's traditional conception of physical human beauty, as false, unnatural, and not beautiful long before I had ever heard of feminist theory or knew any feminists. Is it possible that these are learned or conditioned prejudices? Yes, but I doubt it.

Have you ever seen anything so beautiful it really moved you? Can you explain what that something did when other things, such as the blossoms, don't?

In his book "On Beauty" [Umberto Eco, editor, Secker & Warburg, 2004,ISBN 0-436-20517-3] Eco seeks 'to identify those cases in which a certain culture or ... epoch has recognised that there are things pleasing to contemplate independently of the desire we may feel for them'.

The images and textual selections in this book work together to show that there is no absolute concept of beauty in things or men but criteria shaped by different eras and places.

As said, I agree with this conception.
(Book reviews:
- The Guardian: The ugly truth
- The Wallstreet Journal: No, It's Not Only In the Eye of the Beholder)

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Yes, Foxfyre, I did: sunsets on the seasite move me, and sunrises even more. I think, they are beautiful.

You know, I could go into how beauty is not just physical, but also attributed to a woman's heart, charm, wit, and sparking personality...but I'm just going to go with hot tits and ass.