Reflection 2

Is beauty a real property of objects, or is it simply “in the eye of the beholder”?

Whether beauty is a property of objects or is “in the eye of the beholder”, as mentioned earlier, is more a question about if beauty is an objective property or a subjective property. I believe that beauty is a subjective experience; however, there seem to be aspects in the contemplation of beauty that adhere to objective properties. To effectively argue or support my opinion using the authors we read I must connect their ideas together, for I think that alone it is difficult to capture not only the reasons for why beauty is subjective but also its impact in our modern world. To do this I will highlight some critical points of each author which tie into the question at hand. First I will begin by discussing what Richard Wollheim discussed in his essay “Art and its Objects”. He begins his essay by introducing the “physical-object hypothesis”, a theory that claims that all works of arts are physical objects. He gives examples of why this theory is not plausible by explaining that there are works of art that do not have a “physical” instance of what is truly the work of art, “For the ordinary explanation of how we come to group copies or performances as being of this book or of that opera is by reference to something else, something other than themselves, to which they stand in some special relation.” (Cahn & Meskin 468). Here Wollheim is explaining how copies of the book Ulysses and performances of the opera Der Rosenkavalier are copies that in some sense imitate the true idea of the book and opera. Needless to say this parallels the theory of forms that Plato touches on in his discussion about the arts and imitation.

Now Wollheim gives us critical insight into how we interpret art; however, his theories alone will not answer the question about beauty being a property of objects because not all objects are works of art, therefore we must expand our conversation beyond simply the realm of artwork. The feminist writer Mary Devereaux writes about how in today’s media “male gaze” has dominated the ways in which we view women, resulting in the degradation of many women and men alike. In discussing the qualities and consequences of “male gaze” Devereaux gives us a very handy definition which not only expands us beyond artworks but also ties into the later Kantian ideas which discuss beauty, “Objectification, as I am using the term, means no more than to make something the object of my gaze.” (Cahn & Meskin 656). This allows us to consider beauty beyond the realm of artwork, for a person can essentially make anything the object of their gaze. I feel many people carry the belief that artwork is made to be beautiful, which to a degree is sometimes true; however, now we can consider beauty in other things such as people. Devereaux continues in her essay to speak of the consequences of “male gaze” by explaining how it degrades women by exploiting their sexuality which oppresses them because of their portrayal in media as merely objects of male gaze.

“Male gaze” is not simply harmful because of the oppression it causes to women and some men, but is also a systematized construct which has distorted what true contemplation of the beautiful should be. If we want to ask what contemplation of the beautiful looks like, I believe we must look to Kant and his serious consideration of beauty. Diving right into his “Critique of Judgment” Kant explains that beauty is an aesthetic claim and that such claims are subjective. This is because claiming that an object is beautiful gives us no concept of what the object is, and therefore is a quality that does not belong to the object itself. It is important to note that beauty is not a feeling itself that is experienced but is something higher which evokes certain feelings when we see it. In his critique he says, “Everyone must allow that a judgment on the beautiful which is tinged with the slightest interest, is very partial and not a pure judgment of taste.” (Cahn & Meskin 132). He says that if a person wants to make a pure claim of beauty they must be indifferent to the existence of the object in question, or else one could say they are biased based on the usefulness of the object or even the cultural influences they have. This gets us back to “male gaze” which is a construct that inherently contains interest in determining what is beautiful in modern media. This gendered gaze dominates media and influences us culturally so intensely that both men and women participate in male gaze, and this influences us to make claims about beauty that are tinged with the usefulness or agreeableness of women. Devereaux explains that “male gaze” reflects male desires, values, and beliefs; and this shows itself when women are portrayed as merely objects that serve to further their male counterparts (which also results in the woman’s subjectivity being belittled). This gaze extends also to simple paintings of nature because we have gendered it and so enact “male gaze” on works that do not even contain a human presence.

In conclusion we find that beauty seems to be a subjective experience that is not a quality that belongs to objects. For a person to make a pure judgment of beauty they must be indifferent to the object and cannot generalize to all objects that belong in the same class (a point which both Kant and Wollheim address in slightly different examples). If beauty were an objective property of objects it would inform us of some aspect of what the object is. It is the case, however, that when experience something that is beautiful we cannot pinpoint just what makes it beautiful, especially when it evokes intense feelings of awe. There rises an issue in our modern society where “male gaze” has culturally influenced the way in which we contemplate beauty which has degrees of interest embedded within it. It is not necessarily a problem that everyone faces but the mass majority of people tend to face. There is strong reason to believe beauty is subjective; however, there are complications which may suggest otherwise. Wollheim introduces a thought experiment where we consider a work of art without considering the feelings of the creator or the viewer, and reasonable we can conclude that artworks are able to express emotions free from human contemplation (or rather human subjective emotions) and so it could be the case that beauty, too, can be expressed. Kant also explains that even though we experience beauty subjectively we discuss it with one another as if what we consider to be beautiful is universally accepted. We firmly accept an object as beautiful and find it strange when someone does not agree. What we see then is that even though beauty seems to be a subjective property there seems to be something objective working behind the scenes.