Reflection 2 Short

This question obviously asks the question “Is there objective beauty in the universe?” I happen to struggle with this question because I can view it in two different perspectives. Before I address these perspectives; however, I must answer the question at hand about objective beauty. To put it plainly I do not think there is an “objective” beauty that any individual object can possess. When a person calls something or someone beautiful, I believe that is a subjective claim that does not apply to every other being that can contemplate the beautiful. This is shown in the way that two people can disagree about an object’s beauty; one thinking it is and the other thinking it isn't. My belief in strictly subjective beauty is tied to my beliefs about how representation is essential to art. I said that people don’t find value in art unless they personally find some sort of representation within an artwork. In a similar fashion people do not find objects beautiful unless they personally can see it.

I don’t think that people “recognize” beauty naturally or rather from birth. Pretty much it boils down to us being told what is beautiful. We are socially constructed to see certain qualities as beautiful and others as not beautiful. In our society there are standards which more or less dominate most people’s opinions. If I did not make myself clear what I said before is my first perspective about the objectivity of beauty, simply that it does not exists. What I just said is the introduction into my second perspective; that true objective beauty does not exists but because of social standards certain qualities are seen as “objectively” beautiful. I think that this can manifest itself in a strange way in that one can recognize an object as having beauty but not personally feeling the object is beautiful. One example of this is with people. For instance I see the features that make Angelina Jolie beautiful; however, I don’t personally find her beautiful.

I suppose once I think about it this is all one perspective because I still do not believe that an object can be objectively beautiful (or universally beautiful if that is a better choice of words). The “objectivity” that I spoke of earlier is an illusion since what people from the United States categorize as beautiful is not the same as what people from Asia categorize as beautiful. In a nutshell beauty is something that can only be experienced through sense perception, primarily through sight, and so is different between individual beings because we experience the world uniquely. That is not to say that two people cannot see the same object as beautiful and is not to say they do so for different reasons. What I mean to say is that our sensory organs are different, namely, I do not share sensory organs with any other being. Due to this biological uniqueness what I experience is different from what others experience, even if only minutely, and this small distinction is most likely the catalyst which makes beauty subjective and not universal.