An Argument On Beauty Is Subjective

An argument on “Beauty is Subjective”

GUO, Jiongji (Lyndon) Just as Plato has written in Hippias Major, for which sustained inquiry into beauty is seen as central to Platonic aesthetics: “Nevertheless beauty is not just any form.” From his aesthetic theory, we can come across that Beauty behaves as canonical Platonic Forms do. It possesses the reality that Forms have and is discovered through the same dialectic that brings other Forms to light. Simply saying, the quality of beauty always stands prior to beauty. Based on his theory, it is of vital importance to find out the way you exert the Form into the item, subjectively or objectively. In this approach, I hold the view that beauty is subjective instead of objective.

As the old saying

They may stick to the objectivity of beauty, based on this concept supported by most of the philosophers before the eighteenth century, who located beauty in the beautiful object itself or in the qualities of that object. During the explanation of beauty, some philosophers also perceived that something important was lost when beauty was treated merely as a subjective state(Hume,1755). However, one thing should be reminded when discussing the property of beauty is that it is undeniable that beauty also requires the solid foundation of substance. To define beauty in other words: “Beauty is a kind of spiritual delight emerged from the sentimental activity”. It strongly requires the feeling of existence and it is gathered in the soul consequently. Otherwise, we can make such assumption: for the sake of the objectiveness of beauty, everyone in the world should share the same cognition and the same aesthetic criterion of beauty. Then here comes the question: how come can we contradict or even debate on our aesthetic feeling of those masterpiece or calligraphy works? From this aspect, the objectivity of beauty cannot be verified. Hume, in his book, “A Treatise of Human Nature”, defines beauty as an expression of a subjective order that reflects our nature, customs, or capricious inclinations (Hume, 1740). The research from experimental psychology also verified that it is the taste and imagination we enlightened on the object that enables

It suggests that the feasibility of rational examination on science cannot be applied analogously in the field of beauty. The dependence of beauty lies in the basis of our moods, which indicates the absence of uniform assessment of what is beautiful. Based on the idea of those postmodernists, to truly appreciate beauty, we need to cast aside the assumed certainty in science and adopt a kind of doctrine that is not uniform in all cultures and throughout the world. In conclusion, from the evolution process of the cognition to beauty can we find that it actually corresponds to the advance of the human society and consequently, to the integrity of people’s recognition of the subjectivity of beauty.

References

[1] Sartwell, C. (2012, September 04). Beauty. Retrieved March 15, 2017, from https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/#Oth

[2] Hume, D. (2016). A treatise of human nature. Doud Publishing.

[3] Hume. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http://www.rowan.edu/open/philosop/clowney/Aesthetics/philos_artists_onart/hume.htm

[4] Is Beauty Subjective? » Café Philosophy. (n.d.). Retrieved March 16, 2017, from http://cafephilosophy.co.nz/articles/is-beauty-subjective/

[5] Eva, ~. A. (2014, December 23). Beauty: Subjective or Objective. Retrieved March 16, 2017, from