Better to start not with what beauty is, but instead with what you say beauty is. I say beauty is in the mind of the beholder, and that which brings him or her to a stand(still) in appreciation, even awe. I notice pretty girls in passing. I stop for beautiful ones. And the girl not pretty but beautiful, inspires in me awe.

E.g., Robert Herrick

"“Upon Julia’s Clothes”:

"When as in silks my Julia goes,
Then, then (me thinks) how sweetly flowes
That liquefaction of her clothes.

"Next, when I cast mine eyes and see
That brave Vibration each way free;
O how that glittering taketh me!"

If you hadn’t guess by now this post is about beauty. What is it? — Benj96

No it isn't. We tend to think that anything and everything we are 'attracted' to is beauty. So a generic term is beauty, I give you that.

And if not what then why is there beauty? What is the difference between something that is beautiful only to a few and something that is beautiful to the vast majority? — Benj96

Often we are conditioned to prefer one thing over another by people around us. We don't, of course, notice it, since it's in our inner being now that we are conscious adults. Beauty is the term we give for just about anything that we are attracted to. Because of this conditioning, no effort on our part to examine why we are drawn to something. We just say cause it's beautiful.

We should always try to cultivate that eccentricity in us by analyzing deeply why we are attracted to a particular music artist, to a painting, to the color of autumn leaves, etc. And yes, I do. I tell myself the way he, and not the other, sings and plays the guitar is beautiful and mesmerizing because such and such. I disdain superficial attraction. I also give up on a lot of things I call attractive, after much thought.

Our senses can be in a fooled mode our entire life, not knowing what we truly value. A saying goes 'open' your eyes when you're already wide awake and conscious. This is cause you could actually see things you haven't seen or noticed before.

You walk into an art gallery and are struck speechless as you pass an artwork on display. You can’t articulate what it is you feel in you but i this piece simply draws you in, it’s mesmerising — Benj96

I have to say I have never had that experience. I have been struck by extraordinary visual works but never like that. The closest I've come to this is listening to some classical music. Beautiful people... not something that I have ever paid much attention to. I'll be interested to hear what others think.

Whatever gives a happy feeling inside you. That's beauty for me.

There is a certain freedom in beauty, freedom from logic and obligations and costs. Freedom from anything else really. It comes as a gift, often as a surprise if not an incongruity.

André Gide noted that in contrast with Rodin, whose work “quivers, is restless and expressive; cries out with moving pathos, ... Maillol’s Seated Woman [below in bronze] is simply beautiful. She has no meaning. It is a silent work. Maillol does not proceed from an idea that he then tries to explain in marble. I believe we must go back in history -- we must go way back in history -- to find such complete neglect of everything that is foreign to this simple celebration of beauty.”

I agree with Gide. That's beholding.

That which either detracts from, balances, dissolves, or perhaps even adjudicates or "makes right" what we call ugly in this life. For most people this is an elegant painting, a well-sculpted statute, or I suppose more relevant today a nice designer phone case or hot chick I guess. For some this is not any of these traditional things. Beauty could be found in a discarded meal tray crawling with maggots and flies, for this shows that all things have purpose and the destruction of the old and no longer usable only helps make room for the new and fresh. Something like that. Right? Somebody help me out here.

Empirical psychological aesthetics is confronted with an initial logical difficulty analogous to that which confronts empirical objective aesthetics. The latter is unable to decide, among conflicting beauty judgments, what particular things are ‘really’ beautiful, and empirical psychology is unable to decide empirically what are instances of ‘real’ appreciation.

One man gazes with wonder and delight upon the pottery figures offered as prizes of marksmanship at the village fair and is bored in the National Gallery. Another is thrilled by a Titian and revolted by the pottery prizes.

Are the delight of one man in the pottery figure and the other man in the Titian both instances of appreciation of the beautiful? Or is one genuine appreciation and the other spurious? And if so, why?

confronted with an initial logical difficulty — Natherton

If you're quite sure logic has anything to do with it, please demonstrate. If not, try bracketing it and see what you're left with.

I say beauty as causation is subjective. Your Pottery Barn v. my raku. But as well there seem universal aspects too. E.g., balance, symmetry, lacks thereof. In the way that 2+2=4 is for me, but also and at the same time for everyone - but that with math the universal is primary. And with the beautiful there is a contingent, speculative aspect. The X in, "If X, then beautiful." And there does not seem a universal particular specification for the X. But on the other hand, because the experience itself of the beautiful seems to be universal, there must be something behind the specifiable particular. I can live without knowing what that exactly is, and that because of my role in producing it.

It would amount to our reconciling our tastes in pottery, and how would that be possible?

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Some people perceive to be beautiful things that are not, and some fail to perceive the beauty of things that are. That is incompatible with beauty being in the eye of the beholder. Thus the beauty of an object or experience is not in the eye of the beholder anymore than, say, the shape of an object is. (That the object appears square to me, but circular to you, does not mean that the object 'is' square and circular, but merely that at least one of us is getting a false impression).

What if you are in a bad mood when you see a masterpiece such that it elicits no special feelings in you - is it not beautiful at that time? No, you would not say that: you would say that you failed to appreciate its beauty at the time due to the bad mood.

And consider the unappreciated artist, of which the most famous example is Van Gogh. Virtually no one thought Van Gogh's paintings were brilliant masterpieces when he produced them. Did that mean his paintings were rubbish back then, but gradually became brilliant? In that case he was not an underappreciated genius - for at the time he received the appreciation he deserved, namely none as his paintings were awful in most people's eyes. (But they weren't actually awful, were they?)

And what of the artists themselves: do they think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder? No, Van Gogh and the few other artists who recognized that his paintings were great, were perceiving something that others were not. That is certainly how they themselves understood matters. They did not think that Van Gogh paintings were poor to most, but good for them - they thought they were good and that most people were just too dumb to notice.

Beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. — Bartricks

Great! You seem to know what beauty is, then. What is it?

An attitudinal relation that an object stands in to God. Ask me another.

Now try and address something I argued.

An attitudinal relation that an object stands in to God. — Bartricks

Either what does that mean, or how do you know?

I know it - if it is true, that is - by means of ratiocination.

And it means that beauty is subjective - that is, that it is made of certain feelings a person (God) has towards something - but not individually or collectively subjective.

So, beauty is like moral goodness in this respect.

But you're not addressing anything I have argued. I have made a destructive case: I have argued that beauty is 'not' individually or collectively subjective. Do you agree with the arguments I made in support of that claim?

Note, someone could agree with my destructive case, yet disagree with my positive claim about what beauty itself consists of. (A Platonist, for instance, would agree with my negative case, but would argue that beauty is a form that the objects we call beautiful are somehow reminding us of).

I know it - if it is true, that is - by means of ratiocination.
And it means that beauty is subjective - that is, that it is made of certain feelings a person (God) has towards something - but not individually or collectively subjective.
So, beauty is like moral goodness in this respect. — Bartricks

Most briefly, then, that beauty is based in/on something other than itself. Not the object itself. That leaves God, which is a very problematic notion. Or what you call ratiocination. And that leaves just that aspect of God that exists in us jointly and severally - which I claim is the only God possible - which makes it subjective in its realization and universal in its potential. As to "attitudinal," I'd say that too, mutatis mutandis, lies in the beholder.

Seems to me we're in essential agreement. Yes? No?

I don't know what you mean. Beauty does not lie in any old beholder - not in you or me. Beauty lies in one beholder: God.

The feelings by means of which we are aware of the beauty of things, are not themselves constitutive of the beauty of those things.

And beauty is not constituted by the beautiful things themselves - they 'have' beauty, but do not constitute it (which is why 'what is beauty?' is not answered by simply listing all the things that are beautiful).

Though our sensations of beauty are not themselves constitutive of the beauty they give us an awareness of, they could only give us an awareness of beauty if they in some way resembled it. Or so I would argue. And as a sensation resembles another sensation - that is, sensations are like sensations and nothing else - then the beauty of a thing must reside in it standing in a sensational relation to something else. And as minds and only minds can bear sensations, the beauty of a thing must consist in it standing in a sensational relation to a mind.

And as aesthetic reasons conflict with other reasons, that mind must be the mind who is the source of all reasons. And as that mind will be God, beauty consists of a thing standing in a sensational relation to God.

I suspect that we are not in agreement as I would be astonished if that was your view too.

Beauty lies in one beholder: God. — Bartricks

Great! Again you seem to know. What or if you must, who, is God? Apparently not any old anybody, but a particular one, presumably. So, blonde and blue-eyed, a he, or what? And where is he when he's at home? Where's home?

André Gide noted that in contrast with Rodin, whose work “quivers, is restless and expressive; cries out with moving pathos, ... Maillol’s Seated Woman [below in bronze] is simply beautiful. — Olivier5

Not having a go at you, Oliver, but I don't like the Seated Woman statue at all. I find it ugly. Rodin I prefer but not the way Gide does.

These are not criticisms of anything I've said, but just expressions of scorn. Try engaging with the arguments I have made.

Were Van Gogh's paintings shit when he painted them and good now? Or were they good - indeed, quite brilliant - the whole time?

Were Van Gogh's paintings shit when he painted them and good now? Or were they good - indeed, quite brilliant - the whole time? — Bartricks

One answer to this is that they are neither good nor bad. They are whatever the art market a critical consensus decides which varies over time.

That's a contradiction: if the art market critical consensus is what constitutively determines what is or isn't good or bad art-wise, then Van Gogh's were rubbish when he painted them and are stupendously good now. Which is clearly false: they were stupendously good when he painted them and they are stupendously good now, it is just that now they are being recognized to be.

if the art market critical consensus is what constitutively determines what is or isn't good or bad art-wise, then Van Gogh's were rubbish when he painted them and are stupendously good now. — Bartricks

The art market doesn't really hold coherent ideas (In the 1980's I worked for a dealer who traded with Christies and Sotheby's). Things come in and out of fashion without good reason. And ironically those who purchase the works (Warhol or Van Gogh doesn't matter) often have no aesthetic interest in them. They are investment pieces which also drives the market up.

The art market doesn't really hold coherent ideas (In the 1980's I worked for a dealer who traded with Christies and Sotheby's). Things come in and out of fashion without good reason. And ironically those who purchase the works (Warhol or Van Gogh doesn't matter) often have no aesthetic interest in them. They are investment pieces which also drives the market up. — Tom Storm

Yes, I am sure that's correct about some collectors. There are, I am sure, all manner of financial schemes behind a lot of what goes on in the art market, just as in the stock and currency markets. Indeed, a Van Gogh may no doubt be viewed by some as just a conveniently big banknote.

But my point is that whether a Van Gogh is beautiful or not is not in the gift of the art market or any particular one of us. There's the value that we place on a Van Gogh, and then there's the aesthetic value that it actually possesses. And what determines the latter is not the former.

Yes, I can't disagree with that.

Some people perceive to be beautiful things that are not, and some fail to perceive the beauty of things that are. — Bartricks

My former professor in art failed to perceive the beauty of the Mona Lisa painting when she saw it in person. She wasn't impressed.

but just expressions of scorn. — Bartricks

If the shoe fits.

Can God make a shoe he can't fit in?

My former professor in art failed to perceive the beauty of the Mona Lisa painting when she saw it in person. She wasn't impressed. — Caldwell

Yes, there is clearly something wrong with her.

That's beholding. — Caldwell

The work is entitled Méditérannée. She's at the beach. Her body slightly sunken in the sand, she's protecting her eyes from the sun... And yet she looks eternal, almost prehistoric.

Rodin I prefer — Tom Storm

You cannot judge a sculpture based on a photo. Best to touch it. This said, I never really liked Rodin, too artificial, too forceful for my taste.