For me Beauty has no identity, except to each individual.
Nothing mysterious in that. Beauty occupies the same space
as ugly, But only individuals or groups can separate them.
mando
On Dec 22, 2008, at 2:23 PM, Michael Brady wrote:
On Dec 22, 2008, at 4:33 PM, William Conger wrote:
Living according to our elastic and ever-evolving beliefs is a
form of satisfying our desires which is the experience of the
beautiful. In this little plan, any and all experiences can be
beautiful. Since we know that is not the case then either our
beliefs are faulty or the beautiful is left undefined.
In moral philosophy, the will is understood to be directed toward
the good (for the individual), whereas the intellect is directed
toward the true.
Desire is an impulse toward a thing, an urge to acquire or attain
it, and thus is a manifestation or expression of the will. It is
active.
Beauty, on the other hand, is passive. It is an analytical
formulation of sensory experience, and thus beauty is a virtue of
the intellect. Nothing in nature is beautiful. Or ugly. No natural
event is good or bad. Spiders and slugs and shit are all alike in
being neither beautiful or ugly. A lion eating a gazelle, a fire
consuming animals in the trees, crustaceans crushed by the waves,
all of these events are neither good or bad. And because beauty is
a perception that occurs at a distance, it is not a quality that
inheres in things in the world but a human (moral) conclusion about
their appearances.
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Michael Brady
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