Beauty is the heart of the good life.
Beauty is not an ornament to the good life, it is at its heart
by Nick Riggleis
Nick Riggleis a philosopher and writer. He is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. His third book is This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive (2022).
It is a remarkable and mysterious fact that a life devoted to beauty can be a good life.
Leonard Cohen spent his life writing beautiful songs and literature: ‘A lot of those songs are just a response to what struck me as beauty, whatever that curious emanation from a being or an object or a situation or a landscape, you know,’ he said. ‘That had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone, and I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me.’ Cohen prayed to respond to beauty with beauty, and just listen to what his ‘prayers’ – and his sustained effort over many decades – yielded.
The Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (1876-1973) similarly relied on and returned the beauty of music:
" For the past 80 years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being."
Beauty sustained and renewed Casals, and in return he gave us all the beauty he was capable of making.
Why is beauty like this? Why is it a value that we can live amid and for? It is difficult to know how to approach these questions, but one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s quirky remarks about beauty is suggestive:
" If I say A has beautiful eyes someone may ask me: what do you find beautiful about his eyes, and perhaps I shall reply: the almond shape, long eye-lashes, delicate lids. What do these eyes have in common with a gothic church that I find beautiful too? Should I say they make a similar impression on me? What if I were to say that in both cases my hand feels tempted to draw them? That at any rate would be a narrow definition of the beautiful "
What does the beauty of an almond-shaped eye with long lashes and delicate lids have in common with the beauty of a gothic church, with its pointed arches and arcades, its sharp and reaching spires? Nothing: their geometries are orthogonal, their aesthetics antithetical. So how are they both beautiful? If you look to the beautiful objects themselves, you will struggle to discover their commonalities, but you will notice something when you look to what you do in response to them: the hand wants to draw what the eye sees as beautiful, whether that’s a gothic church, a handsome face, or a stunning landscape. Maybe you don’t draw. You take a picture, write a description, linger in the space, or let it echo in memory. In response to rhythm, you move your body; the dish is delicious, so you ask for the recipe; the outfit is stunning, so you comb through your wardrobe to recreate it. Like Cohen and Casals, you imitate and recreate the beautiful.
Aesthetic life is driven by cycles of imitation, expression, and sharing. But notice that you cannot do this alone. Aesthetic life requires another person – the one you imitate or who imitates you; the one who gifts you their song or who is open to your works. When we engage in aesthetic life in this way, we connect ourselves to others doing the same: we share with them, imitate them, or become imitable to them, receiving their aesthetic offerings in turn. When you live your aesthetic life well, you distribute and create new value that resonates with community: you imitate, express and share, and when you succeed, you become genuinely funny, stylish, playful, discerning, musical, poetic, quirky, bold or creative. In doing so, you augment the aesthetic value in the world by adding to it your own beauty – your riffs and tweaks, your insights and enthusiasms – thereby yourself becoming a source of imitation, expression and sharing. In doing so, you keep collective aesthetic life, our practice of aesthetic valuing, alive.
by Nick Riggleis
Nick Riggleis a philosopher and writer. He is associate professor in the Department of Philosophy at the University of San Diego. His third book is This Beauty: A Philosophy of Being Alive (2022).
It is a remarkable and mysterious fact that a life devoted to beauty can be a good life.
Leonard Cohen spent his life writing beautiful songs and literature: ‘A lot of those songs are just a response to what struck me as beauty, whatever that curious emanation from a being or an object or a situation or a landscape, you know,’ he said. ‘That had a very powerful effect on me, as it does on everyone, and I prayed to have some response to the things that were so clearly beautiful to me.’ Cohen prayed to respond to beauty with beauty, and just listen to what his ‘prayers’ – and his sustained effort over many decades – yielded.
The Spanish cellist and conductor Pablo Casals (1876-1973) similarly relied on and returned the beauty of music:
" For the past 80 years I have started each day in the same manner. It is not a mechanical routine, but something essential to my daily life. I go to the piano, and I play two preludes and fugues of Bach. I cannot think of doing otherwise. It is a sort of benediction on the house. But that is not its only meaning for me. It is a rediscovery of the world of which I have the joy of being a part. It fills me with awareness of the wonder of life, with a feeling of the incredible marvel of being a human being."
Beauty sustained and renewed Casals, and in return he gave us all the beauty he was capable of making.
Why is beauty like this? Why is it a value that we can live amid and for? It is difficult to know how to approach these questions, but one of Ludwig Wittgenstein’s quirky remarks about beauty is suggestive:
" If I say A has beautiful eyes someone may ask me: what do you find beautiful about his eyes, and perhaps I shall reply: the almond shape, long eye-lashes, delicate lids. What do these eyes have in common with a gothic church that I find beautiful too? Should I say they make a similar impression on me? What if I were to say that in both cases my hand feels tempted to draw them? That at any rate would be a narrow definition of the beautiful "
What does the beauty of an almond-shaped eye with long lashes and delicate lids have in common with the beauty of a gothic church, with its pointed arches and arcades, its sharp and reaching spires? Nothing: their geometries are orthogonal, their aesthetics antithetical. So how are they both beautiful? If you look to the beautiful objects themselves, you will struggle to discover their commonalities, but you will notice something when you look to what you do in response to them: the hand wants to draw what the eye sees as beautiful, whether that’s a gothic church, a handsome face, or a stunning landscape. Maybe you don’t draw. You take a picture, write a description, linger in the space, or let it echo in memory. In response to rhythm, you move your body; the dish is delicious, so you ask for the recipe; the outfit is stunning, so you comb through your wardrobe to recreate it. Like Cohen and Casals, you imitate and recreate the beautiful.
Aesthetic life is driven by cycles of imitation, expression, and sharing. But notice that you cannot do this alone. Aesthetic life requires another person – the one you imitate or who imitates you; the one who gifts you their song or who is open to your works. When we engage in aesthetic life in this way, we connect ourselves to others doing the same: we share with them, imitate them, or become imitable to them, receiving their aesthetic offerings in turn. When you live your aesthetic life well, you distribute and create new value that resonates with community: you imitate, express and share, and when you succeed, you become genuinely funny, stylish, playful, discerning, musical, poetic, quirky, bold or creative. In doing so, you augment the aesthetic value in the world by adding to it your own beauty – your riffs and tweaks, your insights and enthusiasms – thereby yourself becoming a source of imitation, expression and sharing. In doing so, you keep collective aesthetic life, our practice of aesthetic valuing, alive.
2 年 前
