A not so very short introduction: A reflection
If you are asked to imagine the word 'beautiful' chances are that you will visualise a breathtaking landscape, seascape, building or some precious object with some emotional attachment associated with it. I might suggest that most people have a different image suspended in their imagination. Most of us have an intuitive notion of what appeals to sensibility and we actually do make judgements about beauty based on comparisons using words like: 'charming', 'elegant', and 'attractive'. Order, harmony, meaning, and fittedness are examples of typical criteria that people often use to make aesthetic judgements. Most likely would think of something regarded as being good or noble.
Avant-guarde
However, the philosopher, Nietzsche pointed out that beauty and goodness sometimes diverge. For example, Duchamp, a French Dada artist, exhibited a urinal as a work of art at a major exhibition in France earlier last century and the artefact became a valued icon of the avant-guarde. Dada was an anti-art movement that would have disapproved of what became a much sort after and highly prized museum treasure. So then what is beauty? If a common and normally repulsive object can become esteemed then what can we say about an individual's judgement of what classifies as a thing of beauty? In her forward to this edition, Sperryville commented, "Hence the current 'crisis in the humanities': is there any point in studying our artistic and cultural inheritance, when the judgment of its beauty has no rational grounds?"
In a recent blog, Zombies in Western Culture, I wrote about the attraction of the Zombie myth exemplified by its ghoulish ugliness and human degradation. You would have to ask the question, "What makes us attracted to what is normally regarded as inherently ugly?" To answer this question Scruton delves into what we actually mean when we ascribe something as being beautiful. Philosophers first grappled with this question before the birth of Christ. The Greek philosophers imputed beauty to a thing's innate nature, to its 'telos', because they believed that all objets have an inherent purpose. They believed then that truth, beauty, and goodness were attributes of the deity and in some sense these divine virtues have been revealed to the human soul. Later, St Thomas Aquinas adapted the ancient virtues as transcendental attributes, but considered truth and beauty as being inseparable.
Enlightenment
In contrast, some Enlightened thinkers tended to see beauty as an appreciation of an object for its own sake. In other words, desiring the thing for its inherent attractiveness rather than for its utility. Likewise, the Enlightenment philosopher, Kant postulated, to ... "be interested in beauty is to set all interests aside, so as to attend to the thing itself." Kant also made a distinction between aesthetic interest in a thing from the position of desire or from a position of 'disinterested interest'; from the point of view of a judge using 'pure reason'. During this Enlightenment period (which extends to the present) there has always been this tension between desire and reason.
Steven Pinker, an Enlightenment thinker and a cognitive scientist postulated in his book, 'How the Mind Works', the notion that the human sense of beauty has evolved purely by a natural biological means. Scruton reflected on Pinker's idea with the following comment, "According to this theory the sense of beauty has emerged through a process of sexual selection - a suggestion originally made by Charles Darwin in his book, 'The Descent of Man'. Pinker uses the Darwinian illustration of female birds being attracted by the colourful male bird's plumage in order to mate and reproduce." As an 'Enlightened' rationalist, Pinker understands the mind merely as a soft electro-chemical machine and, as such, cannot possibly explain how the displays of birds and sexual attraction evolved randomly into the intricacies of human aesthetics.
Triadic structure of Cognition
The ancient philosopher, Plato, on the other hand, thought that platonic love bore no relation to eros (sexual desire). He did, however, separate mind from embodied experience by valuing contemplation more highly over physical desire. In fact, Plato was disgusted by physical lust just as many moderns are disgusted by obscenity, which is euphemistically described as an 'eclipse of the soul by the body'. Maybe the answer is somewhere else. "The love of beauty is really a signal to free ourselves from that sensory attachment, and to begin the ascent of the soul towards the world of ideas." From this statement I tend to think that Scruton is not discussing beauty in terms of a Platonic or Cartesian separation of mind and body. Scruton asserts that the human condition involves a triadic structure of cognition. Whether by desire or reason we take pleasure in listening, viewing or taking part in art happenings, scenes, or artefacts we can take pleasure: 'from,' pleasure 'in', and pleasure 'that.' When we take pleasure 'from' something we derive enjoyment directly from our senses. When we have pleasure 'in' something we have enjoyment in the actual thinking activity inspired by the appreciation of that object, performance, or activity. When we have pleasure 'that', we enjoy reflecting about our own appreciation in a responsive mental act. In essence, the 'that' is a transcendent reality, it is a stepping out of ourselves and thinking about our own thinking. In other words, it is a stepping out of embodied experiential thought.
Transcendence
Many people attest to art and beauty as being a very transcendent spiritual experience. In other words, a transcendent process that seeks a meditational and relationship orientation to spirituality and to that which is beyond the mind and sensorial experience. Thus, aesthetic meditation can be a spiritual state that seeks connection with the sacred. Sacred things are not normally of this world; they are set apart from ordinary reality through meditation and affect. Human beauty, nature, art, or symbolic ritual can evoke transcendence and ontological meaning. Thus, art has been an important transformative element of traditional Christian worship that encompasses a union of body, soul, and spirit. Moreover, this triadic appreciation encapsulates sacred art has the propensity to move one in the direction of transcendence, or contemplation on a relationship responsive to God's spirit.
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| Click on picture to go to Video |
Johnathan Pageau is a Canadian Christian artist who specialises in traditional Eastern Orthodox iconic sacred carvings and painting. In the YouTube video 'A call to Christian Artists' (link in the picture on the left) he gives a very articulate outline of the current state of art and spirituality in contemporary Western culture. He makes a plea to Christians, in particular, to use art to portray narrative. We are all involved in story, myths, legends, movies and literacy, it is when our own story is responsive to art that we can respond to what is meaningful and transcendent.
The book:
Scruton, R. (2009). Beauty: A very Short Introduction. New York: Oxford University Press.
Links:
A Call to Christian Artists: Jonathan Pageau: YouTube
Why is there so much Beauty in the World?: YouTube: Rupert Sheldrake
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