Philosophy Discussion Forums | A Humans-Only Club for Open-Minded Discussion & Debate

[A.VanVleet]

What is beauty?
I would define beauty as being a quality about something, or someone, that brings warmth, peace, amazement, ect. to a persons perspective.
You?
Please, refrain from sending me dictionary responses. I want opinions, personal ideas. Not stereotypical dictionary gibberish (that is never quite the same from dictionary to dictionary )

To me, beauty is a connection to myself. Some times it's perfection, sometimes it's the flaw, but it always seems to be relevent to what I have and what I desire.

[Belinda]

'A connection to myself' write A.VanFleet,and I agree. Beauty is, like goodness and like truth, not absolutely available but is forever aspired to . It is like the reaching out to God, something never reached but prayed to and longed for.

[Basichelp]

hi Belinda,

i'm very sorry i ditched the discussion i started, that you were kind enough to contribute to. circumstances WELL beyond my control...

on my topic you mentioned linguistics, so i'm fairly confident you're aware of the distinction between signifier and signified.

beauty is a word - a signifier. the signified is a quality - rather than an object, a quality an object may be thought to possess, but whether it does or not is a matter of subjective judgment.

is this too dictionary for you?

what's beauty to me?

...truth!

bh.

[Belinda]

A lie is never beautiful although it may well attract because of superficial appeals to reactive desires and needs. For instance, pornography attracts when it causes sexual arousal which it does often enough to gain good livings for pornographers. Similarly advertising attracts us to the various products because we react to the part truths and superimposaed images invented by advertisers.Some of these advertisements and some pornography look beautiful in their forms of expression, but when messages, i.e. meanings conveyed by images are part truths and outright lies, they ultimately fail the beauty test so that all the clever aesthetic techniques they use are not serving goodness and truth.
One of the gains that education should give us is the judgement that reveals what is fools' treasure and what is real.Unfortunately our society is materialistic to the extent that educators are doing hard and often impossible work to stem the tides of lies.

[Basichelp]

Lies are often beautiful - and beauty is often a lie. Religion is a magical falsity able to capture the soul with awesome superlatives. Similarly, the cosmetics industry invents pseudo-scientific names for whale blubber, and women believe it because they want it to work. Faith is a lie you tell yourself. It's unusual to think truth beautiful. People recoil from the real in horror. It takes courage to look reality in the eye - naked and unashamed, for to know the existence of real beauty.

bh.

[Brettbeasley]

and art is everything. The fact a tree gives life and yet the same force can cause fire to kill it to nothing in seconds flat. Beauty is not in just the good but in the bad. There is an old law to reality and every reality that exists, if you must come suddenly into this world, you must go out painlessly, but if you come into reality slowly you must go out painfully. The Universe rules by Opposition and Structure. Opposition simply governs what we call art or the ancient term beauty. Beauty is in everything, from the way a a martial artist can kill his opponent to the way a volcano allows life to spring back where it ran down life. An equal and opposite reaction for any choice made. And if you kill someone you must lose something quite dear to you, and if you have nothing left to lose, you lose your life. But reality marrs the lines. and always claims it's prize. Even if you would distant yourself form others it will take it regardless. It is entirely random what or even who it picks. That is what we call the "celestial Law". The Unbreakable Law of Randomness. No one is even powerful enough to break t...no one we know anyway.

[Chadwhat]

I find it misleading to declare so frequently that Beauty is subjective, because it is more appropriate to say that beauty is Subjective. Little b, big s. Human beings are products of the power of assumption over evolutionary time. They lived, the ones that did, because they guessed correctly and quickly about the environment. Beauty is a pleasurable holdover from guessing well and getting along that way. It's reinforced by survival, it gains psychological import, it becomes complex and eventually establishes humanity as the Personification of Assumption, as it were. If the scenario were reversed, and Guessing and Getting Lucky were the beings on earth, when writing fiction they would personify themselves at their height as a fictional species called Man. Beauty is a better aspect of intuition, which also includes the dread of guessing well about death. Intuition is emotive assumption as an evolved quality, to risk in order to live, reinforced by success. Intuition is not an objective measure of reality, nor is assumption, nor is beauty. If there is an objective quality in beauty, it's the slippery trait of subjectivity. It can't be objective. In a universe where uncertainty has crept even into matter, experiences like that of beauty make sense, at least in my mind, and to think of it as this living intuitive quality that is Subjective, is exciting. When it's just labeled, you know, 'subjective', it just seems to be sterile, thinking of it like that, when in reality it is so virile.

[Legallyinsane21]

"Beauty is the visual representation of superiority."
That seems like a rather weak definition to me. I do not consider something to be superior to something else because it is more beautiful. Beauty may be an characteristic that superiority can hold but It does not automatically mean something is superior.

I love how you say that something that is MORE beautiful than something else isn't superior. Doesn't more mean greater amount, therefore superior? I surely do. And to answer the question: Beauty is defined in many ways. It's perceived differently from person to person. I don't think we can define it for you.

[stormy phillips]

Beauty? A form of attraction. There are many forms and many reasons as to why it is beautiful, or to whom. Whether it be an outcome, a thought, a smell or anything else, in the end, it attracts attention in a luring way. What it attracts though, could change all that. When I look at nature, I see beauty, yet I know full well, it's hell.

[Hypedupturtle]

Beauty is that which presents an impression so original that the emotional satisfaction it causes needs to be held, hence why we continue to look and search for it, or that like it when lost.

[Socratimus]

What good is beauty to the visually impaired? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

[Icarus]

Nice

What good is beauty to the visually impaired? Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.

Nice definition. It is both clear and true, and, to me, beautiful.

Still, wise men follow their own counsel, so, I'll make my own. Beauty is the subjective characteristic of an object (abstract (for instance, a feeling) or concrete (for instance, a face)), which brings happiness to the soul.

[Invictus_88]

What good is beauty to the visually impaired? [...]

Same good it is to everyone else. Obv.

[Zatoichi]

I would say that beauty is definitely depends on the eye of beholder...

[Cyanse]

Beauty is not the physical appearance; it is about tantalizing eyes or sexy body. Beauty is something that not only eyes can see, it is found within.