Philosophers in the Kantian tradition identify the experience of beauty with disinterested pleasure, psychical distance, and the like, and contrast the aesthetic with the practical. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cTaste is the faculty of judging an object or mode of representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
The object of such satisfaction is called beautiful\u201d (Kant 1790, 45). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Edward Bullough distinguishes the beautiful from the merely agreeable on the grounds that the former requires a distance from practical concerns: <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cDistance is produced in the first instance by putting the phenomenon, so to speak, out of gear with our practical, actual self; by allowing it to stand outside the context of our personal needs and ends\u201d (Bullough 1912, 244).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On the other hand, many philosophers have gone in the opposite direction and have identified beauty with suitedness to use. \u2018Beauty\u2019 is perhaps one of the few terms that could plausibly sustain such entirely opposed interpretations.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
According to Diogenes Laertius, the ancient hedonist Aristippus of Cyrene took a rather direct approach.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Is not then, also, a beautiful woman useful in proportion as she is beautiful; and a boy and a youth useful in proportion to their beauty? Well then, a handsome boy and a handsome youth must be useful exactly in proportion as they are handsome. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Now the use of beauty is, to be embraced. If then a man embraces a woman just as it is useful that he should, he does not do wrong; nor, again, will he be doing wrong in employing beauty for the purposes for which it is useful. (Diogenes Laertius, 94)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
In some ways, Aristippus is portrayed parodically: as the very worst of the sophists, though supposedly a follower of Socrates. And yet the idea of beauty as suitedness to use finds expression in a number of thinkers. Xenophon\u2019s Memorabilia puts the view in the mouth of Socrates, with Aristippus as interlocutor:<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Socrates: In short everything which we use is considered both good and beautiful from the same point of view, namely its use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Aristippus: Why then, is a dung-basket a beautiful thing?<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Socrates: Of course it is, and a golden shield is ugly, if the one be beautifully fitted to its purpose and the other ill. (Xenophon, Book III, viii)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Berkeley expresses a similar view in his dialogue Alciphron, though he begins with the hedonist conception: \u201cEvery one knows that beauty is what pleases\u201d (Berkeley 1732, 174; see Carritt 1931, 75).<\/p>\n\n\n\n
But it pleases for reasons of usefulness. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Thus, as Xenophon suggests, on this view, things are beautiful only in relation to the uses for which they are intended or to which they are properly applied.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The proper proportions of an object depend on what kind of object it is and, again, a beautiful car might make an ugly tractor. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cThe parts, therefore, in true proportions, must be so related, and adjusted to one another, as they may best conspire to the use and operation of the whole\u201d (Berkeley 1732, 174\u201375; see Carritt 1931, 76). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
One result of this is that, though beauty remains tied to pleasure, it is not an immediate sensible experience. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
It essentially requires intelligence and practical activity: one has to know the use of a thing and assess its suitedness to that use.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
This treatment of beauty is often used, for example, to criticise the distinction between fine art and craft, and it avoids sheer philistinism by enriching the concept of \u2018use,\u2019 so that it might encompass not only performing a practical task, but performing it especially well or with an especial satisfaction. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Ananda Coomaraswamy, the Ceylonese-British scholar of Indian and European mediaeval arts, adds that a beautiful work of art or craft expresses as well as serves its purpose.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
A cathedral is not as such more beautiful than an aeroplane, \u2026 a hymn than a mathematical equation. \u2026 <\/p>\n\n\n\n
A well-made sword is not less beautiful than a well-made scalpel, though one is used to slay, the other to heal. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Works of art are only good or bad, beautiful or ugly in themselves, to the extent that they are or are not well and truly made, that is, do or do not express, or do or do not serve their purpose. (Coomaraswamy 1977, 75)<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Roger Scruton, in his book Beauty (2009) returns to a modified Kantianism with regard to both beauty and sublimity, enriched by many and varied examples. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
\u201cWe call something beautiful,\u201d writes Scruton, \u201cwhen we gain pleasure from contemplating it as an individual object, for its own sake, and in its presented form\u201d (Scruton 2009, 26). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Despite the Kantian framework, Scruton, like Sartwell and Nehamas, throws the subjective\/objective distinction into question. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
He compares experiencing a beautiful thing to a kiss. To kiss someone that one loves is not merely to place one body part on another, \u201cbut to touch the other person in his very self. <\/p>\n\n\n\n
Hence the kiss is compromising \u2013 it is a move from one self toward another, and a summoning of the other into the surface of his being\u201d (Scruton 2009, 48). <\/p>\n\n\n\n
This, Scruton says, is a profound pleasure.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
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