Beauty
There are beautiful things and then there is beauty. They
are not the same.
Beauty and beautiful things are different. You can have,
let’s say, a beautiful woman. But what is that beauty if you subtract the
woman? There can be a beautiful sunset. What is that beauty if you remove the
sunset? Beauty is, and is of itself. But what is it? Many philosophers call it
a form.
Beautiful is used as an adjective to describe something. Is beauty
opinion? Margaret Wolfe Hungerford is famous for her phrase, “Beauty is in the
eye of the beholder”.
According to Aristotle, opinion is below knowledge but above
ignorance. Is beauty to be found between knowing and not knowing? This may
explain residency, but not definition.
Beautiful by definition is, “pleasing the senses or mind
aesthetically”. This describes what beauty does, not what beauty is.
Merriam-Webster defines beauty as, “The quality or aggregate
of qualities in a person or thing that gives pleasure to the senses or
pleasurably exalts the mind or spirit”.
Here we have beauty being described in terms of cause and
effect. Beauty is a quality that effects the senses. But again, we are not
instructed as to what beauty is.
Beauty is appealing. We are attracted to it. We prefer
it. We try to achieve it and possess it. Beauty can motivate us to wonderful or
atrocious things.
But what is it?
Bill Hitchcock
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