Short Response 2

                At least in part, I do think that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. For any piece of artwork (or anything really,) different people will think of it different ways. Some types of things are objective properties of things. For example, if something is green, everyone will think of it as being green. Along with that, everyone more or less has an idea of what it is to be “green” that is consistent, for the most part at least, with everyone else’s idea of what greenness is. However, not everyone thinks of beauty the same way or identifies the same things as being beautiful. This suggests that unlike something like the concept of greenness, whether something is beautiful depends on the person looking at it. One person may passionately think that something is beautiful while someone else may strongly believe that its ugly and another person might be indifferent to it. I think this is because different images, sounds, etc. awaken different feelings in different people that correspond to their individual mental states differently. Two people might both see something from the perspective of their mental states, but if those mental states are different and what they are evaluating is subjective, they might see the same thing in two different ways. They both might see the same thing, for example, as being green or not being green because greenness is an objective quality that exists in objects independent of anyone’s opinions. However, they might not see the same thing as being beautiful or not being beautiful, which suggests that the idea of beauty is different from an objective quality.

                Even though I believe that what beauty is in the eye of the beholder, however, I do believe that the concept of “beauty” exists objectively as a goal that people, or specifically artists, aim for. When an artist creates an artwork, he or she is aiming for beauty in the work in some way. The nature of the beauty different artists are aiming for might be different. For example, in some works of art, the artist might aim to create something that’s beautiful in a tragic sense or in a way that evokes sadness. Other artworks might reflect the aim to create something beautiful in a way that is more pleasing and happy. (I recognize that it is a controversial claim to say that artists aim for beauty, but I think it is at least true in the sense that artists configure their artworks in a certain way because that configuration is more pleasing to their goals or what they mean to express than a different one). I also think that beauty exists, not only in the intentions of artists, but also in the way people evaluate artworks. People typically evaluate artworks on whether they think the artworks are beautiful. They may define beauty in different ways and may view different artworks as beautiful or not beautiful, but they all hold artworks to a standard of beauty, even if the specific standard is different.