Beauty
...aesthetics Understanding the nature and meaning of beauty is one of the key themes in the philosophical discipline known as aesthetics. The composer and critic Robert Schumann distinguished between two kinds of beauty, natural beauty and poetic beauty: the former being found in the contemplation of nature, the latter in man's conscious, creative intervention into nature. Schumann indicated that in music, or other art, both kinds of beauty appear, but the former is only sensual delight, while the latter begins where the former leaves off. Poet Craig MacKenzie, first used his earlier works to portray beauty as an external feature of one's character. He used the example of one of his estranged family members, Shona MacKenzie, who considered herself to be beautiful, but MacKenzie considered her ugly both inside, and out, "like a wilted rose, so often in autumn, dies a death, ugly and rotten"[citation needed] A common theory says that beauty is the appearance of things and people that are good. This has many supporting examples. Most people judge physically attractive human beings to be good, both physically and on deeper levels. The phrase "beauty is in the eye of the beholder," however, suggests that beauty is wholly subjective. "Beauty as goodness" has many significant counterexamples with no agreed solution. These include such things as a glacier, or a ruggedly dry desert mountain range. Most people find beauty in nature, despite it sometimes being "red in tooth and claw" (Tennyson). Another type of counterexample are comic or sarcastic works of art, which can be good, but are rarely beautiful. It is well known that people's skills develop and change their sense of beauty. Carpenters may view an out-of-true building as ugly, and many master carpenters can see out-of-true angles as small as half a degree. Many musicians can likewise hear as dissonant a tone that's high or low by as little as two percent of the distance to the next note. Most people have similar aesthetics about the work or hobbies they've mastered. Beauty as a quantifiable and measurable attribute places upon the trained and educated viewer a great deal of responsibility to tolerate defect. Thus, beauty is in the eye of the beholder only so far as the beholder tolerates defect. It is indeed subjective but in relation to one's intelligence and understanding. Theories of beauty A nymph with morning glory flowers by Lefebvre. The image of the young woman is a classical symbol of human beauty, and a dominant theme in art. The earliest theory of beauty can be found in the works of ancient Greek philosophers from the pre-Socratic period, such as Pythagoras. The extant writings attributed to Pythagoras reveal that the Pythagorean school, if not Pythagoras himself, saw a strong connection between mathematics and beauty. In particular, they noted that objects proportioned according to the golden ratio seemed more attractive. Some modern research seems to confirm this, in that people whose facial features are symmetric and proportioned according the golden ratio are consistently ranked as more attractive than those whose faces are not. Thomas Aquinas, following the philosophy of Aristotle, had the simple statement that "beautiful things are those which please when seen" (Summa Theologiae, I, 5, 4, ad 1]. Under his system, the perception of beauty has three components: the Objective, which includes the unity, order, and harmony of the beautiful; the Relative, or particular situation in which the thing is seen; and the Subjective, or interior mental state of the viewer. According to Aquinas, beauty is an attribute of goodness, and that true beauty derives from health, vigor, virtue, wisdom, natural order, etc. According to an ancient Indian definition, the beautiful is that which from moment to moment is always new. That is to say, it removes the mind from the worl...