Beauty is worth defending
Roger Scruton performed a wonderful service to aspiring aesthetes and lovers of beauty when he wrote his short book, “Beauty.” In this article, we’ll briefly review three of the most important points made in the book.
What is Beauty?
Beauty is an infamously hard thing to define, much like truth. For example, we could attempt to define truth as the following: “Proposition X is true because it corresponds to reality.” But then, can we not rewrite “corresponds to reality” as “true”? We end up assuming the very thing we are trying to prove. Beauty encounters similar difficulties.
Scruton knows this and follows certain philosophers of truth in using platitudes to guide us in forming a theory of beauty. They are:
Beauty pleases us.
One thing can be more beautiful than another.
Beauty is always a reason for attending to the thing that possesses it.
Beauty is the subject matter of a judgement: the judgment of taste.
The judgment of taste is about the beautiful object, not about the subject’s state of mind. In describing an object as beautiful, I am describing it, not me.
Nevertheless, there are no second-hand judgments of beauty. There is no way that you can argue me into a judgment that I have not made for myself, nor can I become an expert in beauty simply by studying what others have said about beautiful objects and without experiencing and judging for myself.
A few consequences follow from our platitudes. From ii) we get that the judgement of beauty tends to be comparative. Beauty involves immediate experience, vi), and yet it involves reasons. Beauty is not directly connected to utility, iii), as it calls our attention to an object without giving consideration as to how useful it can be to us.
Yet, beauty is not entirely divorced from function. Consider that you see a striking kitchen knife. Compliment the owner of said knife on his beautiful possession and his fine taste, where he then informs you that it is not a knife but a teaspoon. How ungainly and clumsy the object now appears!
Despite how ridiculous the above example may appear; it helps us understand that beautiful things are beautiful as the thing which they are. The Santa Saria Della Salute is beautiful as a church and not as a house or an office building. This means that beauty is not a matter of pure deduction. It requires an experience of it to form a judgment. This does not mean that the expert critic has no use, but that he shifts or outlines reasons for you to align your perspective with his when you experience the object of his critique.
Objective Standards
If one takes seriously all that I have said thus far, we are left with a paradox. If beauty resides in the object, per platitude v), then why must I experience it to truly know it? After all, after accepting a few basic premises from classical mechanics, I can understand how a whole host of machinery functions even if I never use them. What is beauty about beauty?
Scruton provides a two-fold answer. Firstly, when we discuss beauty, we are presenting an experience of an object and presenting it as appropriate or right. Secondly, when we say beauty is objective, we are not saying that it is universal.
It may be wise to now quote Scruton at length on the matter:
"… any argument that
did not aim at a changed perception could not be considered
as a critical argument: it would not be a relevant reflection
on its object, as an object of aesthetic judgement. You can
confirm this by considering how you might answer questions
like the following: is the Grand Canyon breathtaking or
corny? Is Bambi moving or kitsch? Is Madame Bovary tragic
or cruel? Is The Magic Flute childish or sublime? These are real
questions, and hotly disputed too. But to argue them is to
present an experience and to present it as appropriate or right."
"… in the matter of aesthetic judgement, objectivity and
universality come apart. In science and morality, the search
for objectivity is the search for universally valid results—results
that must be accepted by every rational being. In the
judgement of beauty the search for objectivity is for valid and
heightened forms of human experience—forms in which
human life can flower according to its inner need and achieve
the kind of fruition that we witness in the Sistine Chapel
ceiling, in Parsifal or in Hamlet. Criticism is not aiming to
show that you must like Hamlet, for example: it is aiming to
expose the vision of human life which the play contains, and
the forms of belonging which it endorses, and to persuade you
of their value. It is not claiming that this vision of human life
is universally available. This does not mean that no crosscultural
comparisons can be made: it is certainly possible to
compare a play like Hamlet with a puppet play by Chikamatsu,
for example: indeed, it has been done. There are works of
Japanese theatre that satirize human life (the Kabuki comedy
Hokaibo, for example), and works which exalt it, and the
question whether Beaumarchais’s Le Mariage de Figaro is a
profounder treatment of human sexuality than Hokaibo is
a perfectly meaningful one.
The objection that aesthetic reasons are purely persuasive
simply reiterates the point, that aesthetic judgement is rooted
in subjective experience. So is the judgement of colour. And is
it not an objective fact that red things are red, blue things
blue?"
Erotic Art
Our final topic under review is Scruton’s defense of erotic art and his condemnation of pornography. Scruton presents his case by analyzing various paintings, we will analyze just two.
Let us first turn our attention to Manet’s Olympia. Manet’s is not attempting to present his subject as an object of sexual fantasy, instead, he wishes to invite the reader into a “more hardened kind of subjectivity.” Her face is entirely hers, not replaceable, and lays claim to her body, asserting it as wholly hers, looking at the viewer with a gaze that is anything but sexual. Her hand is one that “grips far more readily than it strokes,” a hand which is used to “fend off cheats, nerds and perverts.” The servant’s bouquet and her lack of attention to it show how romantic gestures hold no sway with her.
Olympia is a painting of intense individualization. It invites the audience to view Olympia as she views herself. As Scruton put it, “we are presented with this woman’s body through the lens of her own self-awareness… this is a beautiful painting, but its beauty is not the beauty of the woman is dandling her slippers on the sheet.”
Our second painting is Boucher’s The Triumph of Venus. If you pay attention to this painting, you’ll notice that all of the women in it have the exact same face. “Boucher’s painting is a picture of repose, an adoration of the female body… Yet there is no one there! These bodies are unowned, dis-souled, not even the bodies of animals, since they contain the universal template of a human face, voided of the self that animates and redeems it.”
Boucher’s painting does not invite you to into the world of another subject, presented through a depiction of their flesh, as Manet so brilliantly does. It simply depicts, with astounding technical skill, bodies that would be found attractive in 18th century France. Perhaps then we can say that is a charming painting, and an interesting piece of furniture, but beautiful? We are not so sure.
Though The Triumph of Venus, is obviously not pornography, it is far closer to it than Olympia. An erotic interest is an interest in the person as embodied, a pornographic interest is interested solely in the body. The purpose of pornography is to arouse desire in the audience; the purpose of erotic art is to portray the sexual desire or nature of the people pictured within it. If erotic art ever arouses the viewer, then this is an aesthetic defect, for it diverts the interest of viewer into one of his own sexual satisfaction than an interest which has beauty as its target.
Though we have barely scratched the subject of beauty, and what we have examined here is further developed by Scruton in Beauty and in other works, we hope that the reader is now better informed on the subject and is encouraged to read more, and experience, beautiful things.
Bulgakov's Behemoth