"Beauty is a world betrayed. The only way we can encounter it is if its persecutors have overlooked it somewhere." — Sabina, The Unbearable Lightness of Being.
Dear Sir: Forget your politics. What is beauty? Is it anything?
Dear Lily: It is everything. Beauty is the esthetically pleasing, it is the lovely. Aristotle wrote: "Beauty depends on size as well as symmetry" (ahem, ahem). But beauty is symmetry. Beauty is congruence. It is the bah-bah in black sheep. Beauty is not, finally, inexplicable or ineffable, but it is elusive.
Beauty requires, among other things, that sensory data bring with it a very specific kind of emotional pleasure — one which awakens "the contemplative in man," as Kant said — such as you might feel, for instance, when you see a beautiful piece of architecture, or the Northern Lights, or hear a profound song. Beauty even encompasses melancholy.
Beauty, properly defined, is part of the science of axiology, which is the study of values. Axiology, in turn, is a sub-division of aesthetics. The science of beauty is called aesthetics.
But that's all purely academic.
I am partial to Rach 23-10 and to Wilde's explanation.
Your blog posts are all quite well composed; thank you for commenting on mine so that I might find yours.
Thank you — for your comment and for dropping by.
Great post and thanks for properly defined beauty!
My dear Ms. Alessi, thank you for your beautiful comment, and thank you for dropping by.
Jurgita Po.Alessi reblogged this on Bello2Buono and commented: Beautifully about beauty.