Well there's something to be said about deeper appreciation of what's good in life being had by experiencing what's not...

Is it not foolhardy just to seek vein pleasures and not swim the depths of sorrow that seem so much deeper and more important?

She shoots up her "vein pleasures" by the shot. She silently dances to her sadness, oblivious to the rest of the world. A negative pleasure.

My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
My wounded rhymes make silent cries tonight
And I'll keep it like a burning
Longing from a distance

Indeed, after not feeling my emotions for so long i am relieved to finally feel something and at times am glad I feel melancholic — intrapersona

I think for this the best reference is Aristotle and his ethics. Happiness means that all faculties of the human soul function perfectly. The more the function appoaches perfection, the more happiness there is. This perfect functioning is achieved through virtues and each virtue has it's extremes. For instance bravery is a virtue and its extremes are acting reckless and acting cowardly. The key is to not be reckless or cowardly, but somewhere in the middle. Now, feeling melancholic is not part of a virtue or something like that, but I do think that there exists some system in which feeling a certain kind of way plays a part in happiness. So it is not good to feel very happy all the time, as it is equally bad to feel sad all the time. We have to balance everything out so melancholy is part of life and being happy.

Yes, it is our conditioning by society that leads us to interpret things/people/events as good/bad (which is still entirely subjective), while the deeper truth is devoid of any such interpretation.

Without knowing sadness/melancholy/pain, you can never truly experience the highest highs of happiness/joy. You can never experience only one pole of a polarity.

Sadness and pain can absolutely be beautiful ... they open your eyes to what you didn't notice or think about before. They give you a better vantage point whence to look at life and the world.

That said, when you come to the realization that ultimately, nothing is good/bad ... that it is, as you so eloquently put, all part of a big movie ... a movie that we mostly watch, and only infinitesimally influence ... then, we can go beyond the superficial lows and highs of happiness/sadness ... to a deeper place of peace and tranquility.

Eckhart Tolle says, "The function of suffering is to awaken you. Suffering is necessary till you realize that it isn't."

If by adversity you have in mind the Greek agon, then to my way of thinking adversity as agon is a necessary cause (not a sufficient cause) of beauty .

That leaves questions: beauty is arguably a product of struggle. But the struggle itself is not product; it's producer. Can the production be beautiful? Clearly it can be.

No less a philosopher than William Fenton Russell makes the point: if basketball is ever beautiful, that beauty comes out of the struggle, the contest. If instead of competing (he argues) the athletes carefully rehearsed pas de deux with supporting corps de ballet, the results would not be beautiful.

Of course ballet is among the beautiful things, a beauty from its own distinct struggle.

This leaves only beauty itself to be defined/undestood. Anyone?

That leaves questions: beauty is arguably a product of struggle. But the struggle itself is not product; it's producer. Can the production be beautiful? Clearly it can be.

No less a philosopher than William Fenton Russell makes the point: if basketball is ever beautiful, that beauty comes out of the struggle, the contest. If instead of competing (he argues) the athletes carefully rehearsed pas de deux with supporting corps de ballet, the results would not be beautiful.

The artist's production of a work of art is a struggle for a) the artist, b)the viewer c) and for society. The artist struggle is with the paint, the basketball, all of the matter and instruments used in the production of the work, shaping them to his will in with the creation of form making the invisible visible. The style of the work is like the flow in team sports. All goes well when the viewer's mimics the artist's creative struggle because the work, if beautiful, give us pleasure which enables us to move beyond our determinate concepts, in pleasure and pain, in the aesthetic effect, we move beyond the visible. Maybe like 'hang time'



Beautiful art pushes against norms, declares itself against the preconception of our normative ideas, like Michael's hang time. Art that is merely political is kitsch. The artist pushes against norms and the beauty of the work is its battering ram and its siren.

All goes well when the viewer's mimics the artist's creative struggle because the work, if beautiful, give us pleasure which enables us to move beyond our determinate concepts, in pleasure and pain, in the aesthetic effect, we move beyond the visible. — Cavacava

I think "mimics the artist's struggle" is a shaft of light into the darkness of what the beautiful is. Counterpart to the beautiful is perceiving it. Hence the truth of "beauty lies in the eye of the beholder." It seems, then, that beauty must be a kind of ordering that creates an effect. What beauty is it, though, that can subsist in mere ordering? It can only be an ordering that is somehow meaningful/evocative.

Resonance. The beautiful (is that which) causes resonates. This allows for the beautiful to be either created or natural - the effect is the measure! The beautiful, then, is within us and nowhere else, or so it must seem.

This leads to the beautiful being a capacity for a kind of reaction, the word itself being applied to the external cause of the reaction. Looking way down the road, it seems that the beautiful boils down to brain chemistry, a conclusion foreshadowed in the phrase, "casting pearls before swine."

As affect, the beautiful seems to be that which gives the moment its greatest presence, its greatest fulfillment with that which we always want more of (even if it inspires awe, even a kind of terror!)

The beautiful, then, seems to be a kind of communication or encounter with an other, whether inter- or intrapersonal, that, being perceived, causes a momentary (for however long the moment lasts) peak experience. What there is in the communication that stands as the cause (aka the beautiful) depends both on the recipient as individual (I'm a swine, you're not), as member of a culture (they're swine, we're not), and as a member of humanity (no swine here).

My thoughts seem to be close to what you have outlined.

"Beauty is in the eye of the beholder", reminds me of Protagoras "Man is the measure of all things", subjective yes, it is a form of relativism and perhaps pragmatism is the only way around relativism. The only pragmatic aspect to beauty as I see it, is the qualification of the beholder's ability to recognize Beauty, be able to distinguish creativity from that which is derivative. The combination of history, natural talent and education which enables a sense of Taste in the beholder.

Resonance. The beautiful (is that which) causes resonates. This allows for the beautiful to be either created or natural - the effect is the measure! The beautiful, then, is within us and nowhere else, or so it must seem.

If it is a measure, then it is a measure of affective intensity, and not signification or meaning. When I view a great work of art, it announces itself, and yes the effect is within me, but at the same time these works differentiate themselves from all other objects. If I recall correctly, Hanna Ardent called art works thought-objects.

As affect, the beautiful seems to be that which gives the moment its greatest presence, its greatest fulfillment with that which we always want more of (even if it inspires awe, even a kind of terror!)

There are different aspects to beauty, so yes beauty gives "moment its greatest presence" but the immediate beauty in a complex line of poetry may be paralleled by a less immediate, more contemplative beauty embedded in our imagination. (I think terror is in the provenance of The Sublime.)

The beautiful, then, seems to be a kind of communication or encounter with an other, whether inter- or intrapersonal, that, being perceived, causes a momentary (for however long the moment lasts) peak experience. What there is in the communication that stands as the cause (aka the beautiful) depends both on the recipient as individual (I'm a swine, you're not), as member of a culture (they're swine, we're not), and as a member of humanity (no swine here).

We live in a world full of narratives, they enable us to communicate with each other. The beautiful suggests its own narrative, which when successful gets incorporated into this world of narratives. The creativity of a beautiful narrative enables us to expand our concepts. It opens up space in our imagination by struggling against existing narratives, in this strife the work's truth either prevails or it is still born,

We've made two long posts. After some further thought, it struck me I could have written that the beautiful causes peak experiences - and left it at that, the rest being details - and you have pretty much nailed those. I regret not having the thought earlier; it would have saved me time and effort. Maybe you, too.