A Universal Beauty?

I would like to resume the topic of universal beauty. I say resume because I had set out to blog about this topic last week, when suddenly a theological current swept me away and I didn't resist its tugging on my mental track. But now finally I want to bring up something that I think I have always been interested in and facinated by, that is the idea that there are natural laws, a created system within our universe, which tell us what is and what is not beautiful, ugly, attractive, pleasant, and repulsive. I certainly am not the first person to entertain the idea that there are laws that define beauty, which are not contingent upon culture, era, ethnicity, gender, background, or human ability to percieve (In fact there is a conference on theological approaches to beauty this weekend, at St. Andrew's Institute for Theology Imagination and the Arts (ITIA), with such lecturers as Nicholas Wolterstorff, Jeremy Begbie, Trevor Hart, Robert Jenson, Carol Harrision, Patrick Sherry, and Bernard Beatty). In other words, that there is the possibility that laws exist which determine and define that which is beautiful in the universe, and these laws are not contingent upon the existence and understanding of a human mind. These laws of aesthetics would have to be independant of perceptive minds, they are unchangible and incorrigible, they are as real and independant as the universal laws of quantum physics, logic, and morality. (In fact, it might be noted here that the early philosophers considered aesthetics just one facet of among many of moral laws and ethics.) This idea of consistant beauty, independant of our personal opinions sounds a bit radical, at least to those who have spent any time hanging around art departments at a Public University. It sounds a little hard nosed and narrow. It sounds rigid to claim that there are laws which determine how beautiful an angled line is that are just as certain as the numerical speed of sound. The funny thing is that I do believe this, and I believe that if these particular laws exist, then we have the ability to discover them--just like Newton discovered the law of gravity. And, like most constanct laws, it is difficult to affirm their place in the universe without also affirming someone who put them in place and established the laws forever (or perhaps it is the other way around).

I am not the first to believe these things, but sometimes I feel like I am the first because of how infected most people's minds are with Postmodern philosophy, because I studied Fine art at Boise State, where most professors revelled in those ideas, even though philosophy has moved beyond the postmodern movement. It is interesting to me that a Christian, opposed to a postmodern worldview from the very depths of their heart, will still avoid affirming any absolute statment with regard to beauty. It does not surprise me that a person would do this, what is surprising is how effectively postmodern philosophy has pervaded the minds of unsuspecting, even intellectual, i,Christian, individuals. However, I am not too interested in writting about postmodern thought these days. I think the reason why people shy away from making absolute statements about beauty is because there is a misunderstanding of what is being discussed. There is a misunderstanding of what part of beauty is being discussed, and people want to affirm the concept that beauty is in the eye of the beholder--this can be a true idea on some levels. Surely, personality determines an individuals taste in another person's personality, the choice of stripes versus polka dots, tuna or salmon, horns or wind instruments, creamy or crunchy, or warm or cool. However, these classifications are still on a larger scale than the level of the laws of beauty. When we are talking about consistent beauty we mean the elements. In the visual arts this means color, scale, variety, unity, rhythm (I am sure that I am missing one or two)--and a composition where all these things work together in a harmony of balance and interets may reveal universal ideas of what beauty is. Offense is taken when someone is denied the right to believe something is beautiful, but this is not what the study of beauty, aesthetics, is about. We must get down to the tiny level, the level of the elements to discuss what is making something beautiful, or what is lacking to make something seem ugly. If we approach it this way then getting offended by someone's claim that a lithograph is beautiful is the same as getting offended by someone's claim that a math problem which spans three white boards is beautiful. When speaking of the laws of beauty, start small. We don't take offense at simple arithmatic problems. Should we be offended by studying the nature of color? or Rhythm? or Variety?