Post on 05-Apr-2018
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
1/13
rediscov
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
2/13
He emerged rom the metro
LEnant Plaza stat ion and po
himsel against a wall beside
basket. By most measures, h
nondescript: a youngish whit
jeans, a long-sleeved T-shirt a
Washington Nationals baseb
From a small case, he remov
violin. Placing the open case
eet, he shrewdly threw in a
dollars and pocket change as
money, swiveled it to ace pe
trac, and began to play.
It was 7:51 a.m. on Friday, Ja
the middle o the morning ru
In the next 43 minutes, as th
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
3/13
pythagorean beautybeauty as a dened constant
beauty in the eye o the behHume and the Greeks denebeauty as fuid and changing500 BC
17th century
part athe struggle for beauty
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
4/13
At the close o one o those
nature documentaries the ca
lingers over the sight o a mo
gorilla seemingly lost in conte
tion o a spectacular sunset.
to avoid the conclusion how
anthropomorphic it may be
gorilla is starring long and ha
sunset because he nds it be
There would seem to be no
purpose in this contemplatio
gorilla is (likely) not going to u
sunset or landscape. Philoso
such as Kant have argued tha
pragmatic disinterest is a de
eature o aesthetic experien
untouchable beauty
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
5/13
Beauty isnt xedIts fuid.
beauty is in the eyeo the beholder.
However, in ancient Greece there was
also a popular proverb:
While Pythagoras argument
provides, to this day, a justication or
all those elitist snobs who proclaim
that they and not the rest o us plebs
know what beauty is and what it
isnt (because they alone are capable
o discovering its objective rules), it
was actually this humble yet sensible
proverb which has come to the ore
in more recent Western philosophy.
Centuries o attempts to calculate the
undamental, unalterable equations o
beauty having ailed to reduce beauty
to a universal ormula, the Scottish
philosopher David Hume, writing in
1772, proclaimed, Beauty in things
exists only in the mind which
contemplates them. So instead o
residing out there and being universal
and orever, Hume (like the Greek
proverb) was suggesting that what
is and what isnt beautiul
depends on us.
We, not nature, create (and can
thereore recreate, reinvent and
rediscover) beauty.
The Age o Exploration and then
the more systematic endeavours o
anthropologists have demonstrated
the truth o Humes argument, with
each and every culture encountered
throughout the world proving to have
its own views on what is and what
isnt beautiul. O course, in the early
days we in the West dismissed these
other views o beauty as heathen,
primitive nonsense, but as our
respect has grown or the leg
and the sophistication o non
cultures we have been orce
conclude that beauty is indee
eye o the beholder and ur
more, that dierent beholder
have remarkably dierent eye
beauty.
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
6/13
the dictatorship of beauty
Why should this interest us h
Because i beauty is in the ey
beholder, then it raises the q
o whose eye is doing the be
To promote and energize a
rediscovery o beauty in ou
era it is essential that we
appreciate that it is our ow
not some ancient and eliti
o beauty which we are
rediscovering.
To really rediscover beauty w
to also reinvent it and that is
possible once we begin to qu
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
7/13
Leonardo da Vinci painted The Last Supper in the 15th century. Failing to recognize the essence of the painting, a door was built in
of it by the Milan churche / Santa Maria delle Grazie churche.
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
8/13
This thing about not only
rediscovering beauty but rein
ing our own personal ideals o
timely issue. It is o our time
because we have recently se
an extraordinary fowering o
independence o matters o
when it comes, or example,
and appearance style. Not th
ago most people like sheep
passively accepted the dictat
ashion designers and gurus
however, most o us reuse t
dictated to in this way. But w
have extended our independ
part bchallenges to rediscovering beauty in our tim
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
9/13
pop beauty is not beauty
I we put it to a vote Do yo
beauty is a good thing? the
armative response might w
unanimous. A rare unanimity
increasingly complex and conworld. Yet in practice, typicall
lives in the 21st century seem
to be graced with signicant
encounters with true beauty.
There is to be sure plenty in
contemporary world, which i
downright ugly. But this is on
part o the problem. For a lot
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
10/13
The problem (as Breton was
aware) is that opening oursel
to encounter ull on the posublime beauty can be an
whelming experience invo
loss o control over oursel
emotions, our decorum.
For centuries within the Wes
potentially destabilizing enco
with sublime beauty was cas
appreciating beauty means losing control
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
11/13
you cant work beauty
In act, time-travellers rom any
previous era o history or visitors
rom any non-western culture would
be shocked and stunned by the
astonishing ast pace o the rhythm
o our lives. Ever since the Industrial
Revolution we have taken it not only
as given but as benecial that lie
will be raced through at ever greater
speed.
First it was work and transport but
inevitably this same drive or upping
the RPMs o lie has penetrated and
now structures our leisure and private
lives as well. Fast ood is not only
cooked quickly, it is also cons
haste. In the evening, to rela
play a computer game which
against not only our opponen
also the clock. To simply sit a
nothing goes against the gra
new kind o Puritanism whic
at us that we are bad slack
wasting time.
But the contemplation o b
cannot be rushed. It needs
to gradually seep into our s
There is no such thing as
beauty.
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
12/13
to see speed as a virtue, so, too, have
we multi-tasking. We pride ourselves
on our capacity to split our brains into
ever smaller but still (or so we be-
lieve) ully unction systems
dealing with an innity o separate
tasks simultaneously. O course, in
truth the result is that no part o our
brains and most certainly not our
souls is ully unctioning in such a
chaotic situation. Again, as with our
addiction to the ast lie, such
multi-tasking is precisely the opposite
o what is required or the contem-plation o beauty which demands
ocused as well as sustained
concentration.
No, lets not say concentration. This
sounds too much like it is work and
that isnt what we need at all. Indeed,
Yet even when we travel (oten, so
we say, specically in pursuit o
beauty) we race rom one scenic
location to the next, snapping our
cameras at every photo opportu-
nity, telling ourselves that when we
return home we will give the images
the time they deserve. O course, in
truth, when we get home there isnt
time or anything but a quick, hurried
glance and all these beautiul mega
pixels just clog up our hard drives. So,
ironically, our addiction to photogra-
phy has become yet anothertechnique by which we insulate
ourselves rom the whirlwind o
sublime beauty staring into a view-
nder rather than encountering the
world directly.
And not only do we do everything too
quickly, we also try to do too many
things at once. Just as we have come
7/31/2019 Rediscovering Beauty
13/13
part csome prerequisities for rediscovering beauty
Slow down. A orm o medit
the contemplation o sublime
marvellous beauty takes time
Stop multi-tasking. We are no
computers not, at any rate,
comes to the really importan
in lie. Focus.
True beauty shouldnt be con
with the simply attractive. B
Beauty-Lite. As Breton said,
marvellous is beautiul. I it d
bowl you over, then its not th
thing.
1
23