Beauty as a Property: Exploring God’s Role in the Beautiful

I have attempted all semester to lay out a convincing case for the objectivity of the beautiful. It has encouraged me to discover that I am not alone in my opinions, and that great philosophers and aestheticians like Hegel and Schelling also believe in beauty as an objective property of the object. And while I believe that a somewhat cogent argument can be made from a purely philosophical position for the objectivity of beauty, an entirely new and useful set of tools and evidences is opened up when we look at beauty through its place in philosophy of religion, or theology generally. I will therefore attempt to explore the existence of beauty through an assumption that God exists. If this assumption is true, what is the significance for the beautiful? Does God’s existence necessitate beauty’s role as objective or subjective, as property or reaction? Philosophical arguments in the mode of Hegel are generally undertaken from a position which, if not atheistic, is at least not based within a theistic worldview. It is my hope that through an evaluation of the characteristics of God I can demonstrate the objectivity of the beautiful and show that in a theistic universe beauty must be seen as a property.

Before we can attempt to answer questions about the role of the beautiful, we must first discuss what we mean when we speak of God. Generally, within the realm of philosophy of religion and in practical, street-level discussion, God is envisioned as “omnipotent, omniscient, and omnibenevolent,” shortened to “3-O.” This of course means that God is absolutely powerful, all-knowing, and perfectly good. This fits in well with the conception of God in any of the major monotheistic religions. I would expand on this definition and state that God is, as Kierkegaard defines Him, the absolute. He is the eternal source of all things and the Creator of the universe. He is at the same time personal and not a vague force or principle. This still falls within the generic monotheistic framework, but excludes deist gods and the anthropological gods of many modern theologians and philosophers. We will take this God as our starting point.

If God is the absolute, and the source of all that is good, as well as the creator of the universe, then it stands to reason that any and all good things find not only their source in Him, but their maximization. As Anselm of Canterbury states, God is “that-than-which-nothing-greater-can-be-thought.” As a Person, God possesses certain attributes of character and qualities of being. Falling under the heading of absolute goodness, we find that God possesses qualities such as justice, mercy, love, peace, happiness, majesty, wisdom, and (most important for us) beauty, all of which are found in their maximal state. Since God exists forever, and has always been God, we can therefore see that He has always possessed these properties, and that they were never technically created, but existed from eternity in the attributes of God. Beauty, as an attribute of God, has therefore existed forever, independent of humanity’s experience of it. We will revisit this later.

If God is the possessor and absolute exemplar of all good-making properties, then God must be absolutely beautiful. This implies two things: that whoever looks upon God must recognize and feel Him to be beautiful, and that beauty is made up of degrees. Taking the first point first, we must now ask the question, “If there is an object (even if it be the only object) which all agree to be beautiful, then does this prove that the object has what we would call objective beauty?” And in response to the second point, we can ask, “If beauty admits of degrees, possessing an absolute maximum and an absolute minimum (nothing at all), is this the sort of thing we would expect to find were beauty a subjective reaction?”

If every single person experiencing a particular thing considers it to be beautiful, we could reasonably conclude that there must be something that all of these experiences have in common. If beauty were merely subjective, it would be almost statistically impossible for every single person to have ever lived to have the exact same sort of reaction (I do not say the exact same reaction, for reasons I will discuss below). There will always be those like Hegel who see the majesty of the Swiss Alps and are unfazed. But my intuition is that upon seeing God, one would be justified in stating, “He is objectively beautiful.” I would argue that the thing held in common, the thing that unites all beings in the recognition of the object as beautiful, is in fact the recognition of the property of beauty within the object.

Addressing now the second question, I would assert that a thing with a maximum and minimum, and gradations in magnitude between the two, is more readily described as a property than as a reaction. Reactions are subjective, and are quite similar to feelings, in that one cannot assign truth or falsity to its possession. One does not say, “I am incorrect in having such and such a reaction,” as one would say, “I am incorrect in identifying such and such a property.” Reactions (fright, nervousness, disgust) do not have points at which they could not be more than they are. However, properties (brightness, hardness, generosity) have definite maximums. This leads me to believe that beauty is a property and not a reaction.

It is therefore understood in what way beauty must be objective. But how are we to account for the widely varying tastes and aesthetic judgments which we see in the world? We can again look to God in order to provide an answer. God, as has already been established, is infinite and absolute. It is impossible for any single human being, with their limited capacity for reflection and understanding, to comprehend the totality of God’s existence. We can only begin to grasp the tiny portion of His character which He has demonstrated in our own lives, and (for any of the major monotheistic religions) trust in the communication of His attributes through direct revelation.

We can understand that God has many characteristics, each one of which is maximally present. We can have propositional knowledge of this, but experiential knowledge is problematic at best. God’s beauty can therefore be thought of as a great multi-faceted jewel, each side of which reflects light in a different and unique way. Humans are positioned all around this jewel so that there is a facet most easily visible to each person, and through which the light interacts and reflects to give an experience of the jewel. The experiences of each person looking at the jewel will be different, because each one sees a different facet of the great and cohesive whole.
In the same way, viewing some facets from a certain position may not be optimal, so that while the person positioned for one facet cannot fully enjoy or even appreciate another facet, viewed from the right perspective it becomes properly beautiful. Beauty remains objective, but the experience of it can differ wildly depending on the aspect of ultimate and perfect beauty which one is oriented toward. The aesthetic experience is then an intensely subjective reaction, manifested in a feeling, but triggered by an objective property. The experience of the beautiful is indeed subjective, but that subjectivity is a response to something that is really there.
Much of the arguments towards beauty as subjective lie in the equation of the experience of the beautiful with the beautiful itself. Many of our reactions to things such as properties which objectively exist can vary widely. For example, I dislike the taste of cheese, but I know many people love it. The taste is objective, even to the point of being scientifically reproducible, but my reaction to it is completely different than my brother’s. However, by equating the taste of the cheese with my reaction to that taste, I would be making a mistake. The taste remains the same and exists independently of my reaction to it. The same is true of beauty. Subjective reactions are engendered by objective impressions.

Some may object that beauty cannot be defined or rearticulated as other objective properties can. I would argue, though, that there are numerous objective properties which cannot be independently articulated or defined, but the insufficiency of language to account for an object does not in any way affect whether that object continues to exist outside of our perception of it. One would be hard-pressed to define being, for instance, at least not without devolving into a Heideggerian jumble of deliberate syntactical gymnastics. This does not make being subjective. There are simply some things which one is directly aware of, and are so obvious and pervasive that attempting to attach words to them becomes a challenge.

A final argument against the subjectivity of beauty is one I have made before, but believe to have some merit, if solely as a method of testing our intuitions about what we call beautiful. As stated above, if beauty is an attribute of God it has always existed. If beauty is a subjective reaction within the mind of a human being, then without human beings there would be no such thing as beauty. And since we have already established that beauty has always existed, and so existed before humans, beauty cannot simply be humanly subjective. God could, it may be argued, experience His own beauty, but I am hesitant to assign such a close parallel between human subjectivity and the Absolute of all that exists. In any case, beauty as reaction occurs not in the world but inside a mind. Without a mind, there is no reaction, and therefore no so-called beauty. If a flower blooms in the forest and no one sees it, is it beautiful? The answer would have to be no. It would of course have the potential to trigger a reaction within a mind, but until a mind experiences it the flower remains passive, aesthetically neutral.

My intuition revolts against this concept. The flower should be beautiful whether anyone sees it or not. And that is just the sort of occurrence that would arise if beauty were a property of things and not simply a mental reaction. The flower, or the mountains of a distant planet, or the face of God, all of these things are beautiful independent of human experience of them. This rings true to me, and I find it fits well within the preexisting theory of the objectivity of beauty.
In conclusion, there are points which, taken together, make what I believe to be a reasonable case for the objectivity of beauty: (1) Beauty is an attribute of God and is therefore an implied property; (2) beauty has existed eternally in God and therefore cannot simply be a human reaction; (3) there is something which everyone would admit to be beautiful once seen, namely, God (implying objectivity); (4) beauty admits of an absolute maximum and minimum, in the way reactions do not; (5) beauty and the experience of beauty are not identical, but the experience of beauty is the subjective reaction to an objective property; and (6) the inability to clearly articulate beauty does not rule out its objectivity. If one then see beauty as an attribute of God, one can argue for the objectivity of beauty in ways which pure philosophical discourse is unable to utilize.

Is There Truth in Beauty?

The relationship between truth and beauty is in some ways similar to that of beauty and goodness. But when we ask ourselves whether there is truth in beauty, we are usually saying not that beauty is a signpost to truth, as is the case with goodness, but that the higher principle (truth) is in some sense contained within the concept of beauty. Therefore the relationship between truth and beauty is not identical to that of goodness and beauty, but is if anything more intimate. Beauty and truth may be related in two ways, each of which depends on the metaphysics with which we deal with beauty. Is beauty a property of a thing, or a reaction to that thing? That is, is it objective or subjective? While it seems as if most philosophers would come down on the side of subjectivity, it can be beneficial to consider both sides of the issue.

If beauty is a property, then the truth contained within it is truth about the world. At the very least, the beauty which is evident demonstrates the truth of itself. Beauty, if a property, becomes demonstrable in the very fact that it exists and is experienced, and so through the very fact of experience it reveals truth about the beautiful object. The truth “this is beautiful” is communicated in the same instance that we recognize the beauty in the object. Much the same as the truth “this is red” or “this is nine inches wide,” beauty-as-property contains the minimum of truth in the demonstration of itself, thus communicating a fact about the object being experienced.

Beauty-as-property means that beauty is objective. It is, by its very definition, not something which exists in our minds but something which exists in the object. We then recognize that property we call beauty in the object, that is, in the universe outside our own heads (or in a specific part of that universe). As a result of this, any truth contained within the beautiful is a truth about the world, as stated above. What we find to be true in the beautiful exists, as it were, independently of our experience of it. What sorts of truths would we then find?

Delving into philosophy of religion, we find a common conception of God as possessing three “transcendental properties:” truth, goodness, and beauty. Peter Kreeft, in his essay “Lewis’s Philosophy of Truth, Goodness and Beauty” writes: “Our minds want not only some truth and some falsehood, but all truth, without limit. . . Our desires, imaginations, feelings or hearts want not just some beauty and some ugliness, but all beauty, without limit. . . For these [truth, goodness, and beauty] are the only three things that we never get bored with, and never will, for all eternity, because they are three attributes of God” (Baggett 23).

It seems, therefore, that the truths we find in beauty could be truths about God. God is revealed through His attributes. God, the Truth of all truth, that which is more true than any other thing and which would be true were all other things false, is God, Beauty of all beauties, beside which all other beautiful things are ugly and the source and reflection of beauty in all lesser things. The experience of beauty-as-property could therefore be an experience of God, and if it is an experience of God then it is also an experience of truth, and quite possibly of absolute truth.

If beauty is a reaction, the truth within beauty is subjective, and is truth about ourselves. We experience an object and do not see it to be beautiful, but see it to be beautiful. That which we experience does not possess the property ‘beautiful,’ but engenders the reaction within the subject which is identified as an experience of beauty. Therefore the aesthetic experience occurs not between an object and subject, where the subject identifies facts about the object, but instead within the subject’s consciousness, with the object acting as a catalyst or spark through which to undergo the beautiful reaction.

This means that, if beauty is a reaction, when and if we experience truth in beauty, we are not given access to truths that exist anywhere but inside our own minds. There is nothing about the object which admits of the descriptor “beautiful,” and so whatever truth we see within it is either a truth about the reaction taking place, i.e. “I am having an experience of beauty,” or contained and directed toward our own consciousness, which is the ultimate source of the reaction to the object. Note that if beauty is a reaction, there is nothing beautiful without human experience of it. An object’s beauty is dependent upon our evaluation of it. There is no proposition “This is beautiful;” there is only “I think this is beautiful.” When the “I think” of the statement is removed (or before it arrives) objects merely exist without aesthetic properties. The first sunrise over a newly-formed Earth and the wheeling of undiscovered galaxies are not beautiful, because we never experience them.

It would seem that beauty-as-reaction lends itself to the expression of truths such as “I enjoy x” or “y is aesthetically pleasing to me,” but those truths are intensely subjective, and are in point of fact more like opinions than meaningful truth claims. To put it simply, we may discover truths about ourselves through beauty-as-reaction, but those truths will be only facts about our preferences. An aesthetic experience will amount to a recognition of the world as a lens through which our minds impose meaning upon the universe, assigning values of beauty and pleasure to objects totally devoid of such attributes, truly shaping the way we view existence.

So while the truth contained within beauty is far more limited than the truths received through ordinary experience, they are in a certain sense more unassailable. When beauty is a property, we may indeed mistake our awareness of something for an awareness of beauty, but the fact is firmly planted in the outside universe and independent of our experience of it. However, if beauty is a reaction, our sense of the beauty of something is always true, and we cannot be mistaken. Just as one cannot be mistaken that they are in pain (only perhaps confused regarding language), one cannot be mistaken in regards to subjective beauty. In other words, beauty-as-property can be doubted/mistaken by the subject, but true independent of that subject; while beauty-as-reaction cannot be doubted/mistaken by the subject, but is only true as long as the subject experiences that reaction.

Is There Objective Beauty?

As I mentioned in my previous post, I am currently taking a class on aesthetics, which, for those of you not familiar, is the philosophy of beauty (more or less). As I also mentioned, I've never taken a course in this area before and it's raising some very interesting questions. For example:

The Bible says in Colossians 1:15 that Christ is the "image of the invisible God, the firstborn of every creature." Is an image necessarily inferior to the thing being represented? Or should we reject the ancient Greek notion of mimesis altogether and hold that images do not have to have implied referents? What does that mean for this verse?

Why does beauty transcend language? Dr. Kyle Grady says that at the same time that beauty compels us to speak it robs us of our words. Can we find a justification for this in Christian thought?

Is there such a thing as objective beauty? From whence would it be derived, and how could we know it? What does Christianity have to say about this?

I'll be responding to each of these questions in upcoming posts, but I want to begin with the last one, which in a way rather shows my hand in regards to my personal philosophy of beauty.

I believe that beauty is indeed objective, though it comes to us subjectively. Beauty is an attribute of God, and as all Divine attributes is eternal, absolute, and universal. God's other attributes (truth, goodness, justice, power, etc.) are all the source from which we draw our conceptions of these things in the world, and I think it is the same with beauty. Just as all of these other attributes have an absolute (and thus objective) reality or fulfillment in God, so absolute (and thus objective) beauty can also be found there.

We see reflections of this perfect beauty in the world, in varied and diverse places, all of which give us a glimpse of that true, perfect beauty beyond this world (forgive me for sounding Platonic), in God. So the different reflections of this attribute, each impacting us in different ways and to different degrees, are all facets of ultimate and objective beauty. So while it may seem that beauty is subjective on one level, of we "zoom out" and consider God, we can see that objective beauty exists because it finds its absolute in Him.