Understanding Beauty: Philosophical Perspectives and Artistic Expression
Understanding Beauty: A Philosophical Journey
Beauty: Humans seek to understand the world through knowledge and feelings. Key themes include love, logic, and other aspects of beauty. Emotions and admiration are often triggered by beautiful things. Examples of beauty include a flower, a dog, or the beach. Beauty can be found in nature and in artificial creations like the Alhambra or a painting.
Attitudes Towards Aesthetics
- Creator: Geniuses and artists.
- Contemplator: Society and the way we perceive things, influenced by culture and prejudice.
- Critical-Philosophical Reflection: Philosophers who have shared their reflections on beauty.
Philosophical Critiques of Beauty
The Greeks: Plato and Aristotle
Plato, an idealist philosopher, believed in two worlds, with the higher world containing the true essence of beauty. He thought the world of the senses deceives us. Art, according to Plato, is a mere imitation of the ideal beauty found in this higher realm. Achieving this ideal is possible through knowledge and culture. Beauty, in our world, mimics or copies the higher concept of beauty and is perceived through our senses and thoughts. Our idea of beauty strives for the superior beauty of the ideal world. The ideal of beauty represents a perfect world, justice, truth, and pure essence, all attainable through knowledge. Art is sometimes a copy of a copy, twice removed from the world of ideas, and thus an imitation of true beauty.
Aristotle, a realist, believed that everything exists in this world and that there is no higher world. Beauty, for Aristotle, is a set of qualities that make things pleasing and unique, creating a sense of well-being. It is a balance, a set of qualities without disproportion. An example of Greek beauty is Michelangelo’s David.
Nietzsche
Nietzsche: At the beginning of the twentieth century, Nietzsche admired the Greeks and sought to recover something he felt had been forgotten. He valued the Greeks, both philosophers and philologists. Nietzsche used two Greek gods as metaphors to explain the idea of beauty.
Apollo and Dionysus
- Apollo: Represents order, reason, perfection, clarity, work, and light. Michelangelo’s David exemplifies Apollonian beauty, something perfectly structured.
- Dionysus: Represents life, festivity, enjoyment, feelings, chaos, imbalance, human imperfection, darkness, and gloom. Tragedies, which express feelings and emotions, are Dionysian.
Nietzsche argued that we have forgotten important values and must remember to honor life, questioning whether evil is truly evil and good truly good. He sought the source of morality in Greek thought.
Kant
Kant: In the Enlightenment of the eighteenth century (1790), Kant wrote “Critique of Judgement.” He argued that art is perceived through the senses, making it special and subjective, while reason makes it universal. For example, a flower may be beautiful to one person but not to another. Reason, however, deepens our understanding of reality and unites us all. The statement “This flower is beautiful” becomes universal because we share a common sense, an aesthetic sense, that allows us to appreciate an idea of beauty.
Hermeneutics
Hermeneutics: This involves the interpretation of texts and works of art. Within a work, such as Klimt’s “The Kiss” (1907-1908), lies the author’s life and the context in which it was created. The viewer provides a second life to the artwork through interpretation. A dialogue emerges between the author’s intent and the viewer’s understanding. Art expresses the world, and through it, we discover many things. The most beautiful aspects of life are expressed in art. For philosophers, art is something beautiful for life, a reflection on life that can be utopian or critical.