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Word Gems 

exploring self-realization, sacred personhood, and full humanity

Dr. Mortimer J. Adler's 

Six Great Ideas

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Much has been said on the subject of beauty that will not bear
close scrutiny. What is said is often moving, even uplifting. It
frequently gives one the sense of being on the verge of getting
at the heart of the matter, but like epigrammatic discourse at its
best, it leaves one unsure that the promise of penetrating in-
sights can be fulfilled by patient thought expressed in plain
speech.

The test of the intelligibility of any statement that overwhelms
us with its air of profundity is its translatability into language
that lacks the elevation and verve of the original statement but
can pass muster as a simple and clear statement in ordinary,
everyday speech. Most of what has been written about beauty
will not survive this test. In the presence of many of the most
eloquent statements about beauty, we are left speechless—
speechless in the sense that we cannot find other words for
expressing what we think or hope we understand.

This is not to say that, in the discussion of the great ideas,
there has been more disagreement about beauty than about
truth and goodness. With regard to beauty as with regard to
truth and goodness, the same fundamental issues are argued,
issues concerning their objectivity and subjectivity. The differ-
ence lies in the fact that with regard to truth and goodness, the
issues can be addressed with a clarity that is lacking in the case
of beauty.

There is less that can be said about beauty with clarity and
precision than can be said about truth and goodness. In the
pages that follow, I am going to limit myself to observations
that can be expressed in the language of common speech and to
distinctions that I think are immediately intelligible to common
sense.

I will carry the analysis no further than it can go within these
limits. This may leave many questions unanswered for the
reader, but he or she will at least understand the questions that
have not been answered.

In the tradition of Western thought, two writers—and only
two—provide the guidance we need to proceed along the lines
just indicated. One is a thirteenth-century theologian, Thomas
Aquinas; the other, an eighteenth-century German philoso-
pher, Immanuel Kant. While these two do not agree with each
other on all points, certain observations made by Kant help us
to understand certain words used by Aquinas that are critical
terms in his definition of the beautiful.

"The beautiful," Aquinas writes, "is that which pleases us
upon being seen." In this definition of the beautiful, the two
critical terms are "pleases" and "seen."

Many things please us and please us in different ways, but
everything that pleases us is not beautiful. If we use the word
"pleases" as a synonym for "satisfies," then any good that we
desire pleases or satisfies us when, coming into possession of
that good, our desire for it is calmed, put to rest, or made
quiescent.

Pleasure itself, bodily or sensual pleasure, is among the
goods that human beings desire. We have a natural craving for
sensory experiences that have the quality of being pleasant
rather than unpleasant. It is also the case that some human
beings, generally regarded as abnormal, have a predilection for
pain—for physical pain or for sensory experiences that are un-
pleasant in quality rather than pleasant. When these desires,
normal or abnormal, are gratified, we are pleased or satisfied.

When sensual pleasure or pain is an object of desire, it does
not differ from food or drink, wealth or health, knowledge or
friendship, as something needed or wanted. Anything needed
or wanted is something that pleases or satisfies us when we get
it. How, among all the things that please or satisfy us, shall we
identify the special character of the beautiful as an object that
pleases us?

The answer to this question can be found in Aquinas's defi-
nition. The object we call beautiful is one that pleases us in a
very special way—"upon being seen." Food and drink, health
and wealth, and most of the other goods we need or want please
us upon being possessed. It is having them, to use or consume,
that pleases us. They please us when they satisfy our desire to
have them, not just to see them.

Here Kant throws light on the special character of the plea-
sure afforded by objects we call beautiful by telling us that the
pleasure must be a totally disinterested one. What Kant means
by "disinterested" is that the object falls outside the sphere of
our practical concerns. It is an object we may or may not desire
to acquire, to possess, to use, consume, or in some other way
incorporate into our lives or ourselves. We may be quite con-
tent simply to contemplate or behold it. Doing just that, and
nothing more, gives us the special delight or joy that we de-
rive from objects that please us upon being seen. And if, in
addition, we do desire to possess it, we do not regard it as
beautiful because of that fact.

A person can find a natural landscape or a painting in a gal-
lery enjoyable in this special way without also having any prac-
tical interest in acquiring the real estate or the work of art that
would make the enjoyable a permanent possession. The im-
pulse of the buyer or collector may arise from the wish to have
the object regarded as beautiful under one's control, but that
wish may have a different motivation.

The same individual may be a connoisseur and a collector,
but he or she can be a collector without being a connoisseur,
relying on the judgment of others concerning the enjoyability
of the thing in question.

It is also true that connoisseurs need not be collectors. Most
of us are neither. We neither claim to have an expert or privi-
leged position in judging which things to call beautiful, nor,
when we find things that we enjoy with disinterested pleasure,
do we also wish to possess them exclusively for ourselves.

The other troublesome point in Aquinas's definition of the
beautiful lies in the word "seen." Do we derive disinterested
pleasure only from visual objects—things that we apprehend
by the use of our eyes? That can hardly be the case, for, if it
were, it would exclude musical compositions and poetry of all
sorts from the realm of the beautiful. It would also exclude what
is sometimes referred to as the purely intelligible beauty of a
mathematical demonstration or a scientific theory.

The trouble we confront here is not solely due to the use of
the word "seen" by Aquinas in his definition of the beautiful.
In our everyday speech and thought we tend to locate the beau-
tiful in the realm of the visible. We tend to put "beautiful" into
the company of other adjectives that apply exclusively or pri-
marily to objects we apprehend by our sense of sight, such as
"good-looking," "pretty," "handsome," "attractive in appear-
ance." The oft repeated remark that beauty lies in the eye of the
beholder confirms this inveterate tendency on our part.

This is not to say that any of us would identify the beautiful
with objects that are merely good-looking, pretty, handsome,
or visually attractive. We are given to saying that someone is
good-looking, pretty, or handsome, but not beautiful. Never-
theless, our habits of speech reveal that we are also given to
thinking that the beautiful is the superlative degree of a quality
that is to be found in visual objects that are good-looking,
pretty, or handsome. All give us disinterested pleasure upon
being seen, but we reserve the word ''beautiful" for that which
pleases us to the highest degree and most exceptionally.

This tendency is further confirmed by the way that most of
us use the word "art" or the phrase "fine arts." What in English
we call the fine arts are called beaux arts in French or schone
kunst in German (i.e., "arts of the beautiful"), and we think of
the objets d'art (the objects produced by these arts) as things
hung on the walls of museums or placed on pedestals there.

The familiar phrase "literature, music, and the fine arts"
would, accordingly, exclude poetry and music from the arts of
the beautiful. This tendency carries over into the sphere of na-
ture, where we find the beautiful mainly, if not exclusively, in
scenes (landscapes, seascapes) or in trees, flowers, or animals
that please us upon being seen.

How shall we correct this tendency, as we must if we are to
accord to sonnets and sonatas the possibility of their being
regarded as beautiful, even if the disinterested pleasure they
afford us has nothing to do with their being seen? The answer
is that the word "see" does not always mean "apprehend vi-
sually." All of us have said, "I see what you mean," in order to
convey to another person that we understand what he or she
has told us. Here the seeing is with the mind, not with the eyes
alone, though the eyes may be involved if the statement to be
understood is a written one; yet they need not be involved if
the statement is a spoken one.

Another way of transcending the narrowly optical connota-
tion of the word "seen" is to remember that we often refer to
the vision of a great reformer or religious leader, when the
vision in question is the contemplation of an ideal to be
achieved. It is certainly not a sensory experience involving our
eyes.

The Latin word "visum" which Aquinas used in his defini-
tion of the beautiful (id quod visum placet, that which pleases
upon being seen) has the broader connotation of vision in the
sense of contemplating an object that cannot be seen with the
eyes, as is the case with an inspiring ideal or what, in Christian
theology, is called the beatific vision—the contemplation of
God that is vouchsafed souls that are saved.

To make our understanding of the matter secure, let us elim-
inate that troublesome word "seen," and substitute for it words
that do not have a restrictive sensory connotation. We can then
rephrase the definition in one of the following ways.

The beautiful is that which pleases us upon being contem-
plated. It is that which pleases us when we apprehend it with
our minds alone, or, if not by our minds alone, then by our
minds in conjunction with our senses, but not by the sense of
sight alone. We might even say that the beautiful is something
that it pleases us to behold, but only if we remember that we
can behold something in other ways than by sight.

The pleasure in any case must be, as Kant observed, a disin-
terested pleasure. We are simply pleased by contemplating, ap-
prehending, or beholding the object. Nothing more is required
for us to experience the delight or enjoyment that must be pres-
ent when we call the object beautiful.

Kant not only helps us to understand the term "pleases" in
Aquinas's definition by introducing the notion of a purely dis-
interested pleasure. He also helps us to understand the kind of
knowing that is involved in the vision of the beautiful—the
special kind of knowing that is contemplating or beholding, the
special mode of apprehending that is appropriate to an object
that gives us disinterested pleasure when we apprehend it.

The apprehension, Kant declares, is devoid of concepts. The
kind of knowledge that is expressed in scientific and philosoph-
ical judgments, in the conclusions of historical research, and in
the generalizations that most of us are given to making in the
course of our daily lives, is not devoid of concepts. Judgments
that involve concepts are judgments that apply to kinds or
classes of objects; even when they are judgments about an in-
dividual object, concepts are involved to the extent that the
individual is regarded as a particular instance of this or that
kind.

An apprehension totally devoid of conceptual content must,
therefore, have for its object a unique individual, an individual
that is not regarded as a particular instance of any class or kind,
but is apprehended for and in itself alone.

When an object that we apprehend (contemplate or behold)
gives us the purely disinterested pleasure that is derived simply
from knowing it, the knowing is not scientific, philosophical,
historical, or even ordinary commonsense knowing. It is the
very special kind of knowing that eschews all conceptual ingre-
dients, and is, therefore, a knowledge of the individual as such
—just this one thing, unclassified, not one of a kind.

All the objects to which we stand in some relation can be
placed in two main categories. On the one hand, they are ob-
jects of desire, objects we need, want, or love, objects of prac-
tical interest, objects with respect to which we take one or
another sort of action. On the other hand, they are objects of
knowledge, objects of perception, memory, and thought, ob-
jects of conceptual knowledge or objects of nonconceptual ap-
prehension or contemplation. Goodness, as we have seen, is
the value appropriate to the sphere of desire; truth, the value
appropriate to the sphere of knowledge. Beauty, it would seem,
belongs to both spheres, and to each in a very special way.

The term “pleases" in the definition of the beautiful places it
in the sphere of desire, but since the pleasure is of the very
special sort that Kant calls "disinterested," the desire is also of
a very special sort—a desire to know. The knowing, as we have
seen, is also of a very special sort—a nonconceptual contempla-
tion or apprehension of the individual object as such. Never-
theless, since it is a mode of knowing, however special in
character, beauty is a value that is appropriate to the same
sphere in which we find truth, as well as a value that is appro-
priate to the same sphere in which we find goodness.

More remains to be said about beauty in relation to truth and
goodness. Our understanding of beauty so far raises one ques-
tion that we must hold before us as we proceed. So far, it would
appear to be the case that beauty is entirely subjective. Defined
as the property of any object that gives us the disinterested
pleasure we can derive from simply contemplating or appre-
hending that individual object as such, beauty would appear to
be entirely relative to the taste of the person pleased. As per-
sons differ in their tastes, so they differ with respect to what
affords them pleasure when they apprehend it.

We have found it possible to separate the sphere of truth
from the sphere of taste. We have found it possible to distin-
guish real from apparent goods. This has enabled us to differ-
entiate the objective from the subjective aspects of truth and
goodness. Can we do the same in the case of beauty? Hardly, if
the beautiful is strictly identical with the enjoyable—with that
which gives us joy or delight when we apprehend it.

Many of us who enjoy something in this way and, therefore,
call it beautiful may wish to think that everyone else ought to
enjoy it, too. But we have no right to impose our taste on others
unless we can find grounds for prescribing oughts in the sphere
of the enjoyable. Even if such grounds cannot be found, we
may still find that beauty is not entirely in the eye—or the mind
—of the beholder.