If twenty people agree that the rose is beautiful then it is very likely that the beauty is not just in the eye of that beholder but in the qualities of the rose.
Exactly. If twenty independent strangers agree, it’s not just “in the eye” – it’s in the rose. The eye can be trained or dulled, but it can’t conjure beauty out of nothing.
Even with fashion and herd effects, that level of convergence usually points to real qualities in the thing itself.
Or you know. People were taught that a beautiful rose must have certain quantities (fresh, blooming, rich colour etc) and upon seeing that this particular rose has those qualities assert that it must be beautiful.
You think you're funny. Sure, nobody actually arrests you for thinking otherwise but society pressures people in more subtle ways daily. Think about the treatment people who aren't conventialy attractive, neurotypical or alloromantic get.
No, it doesn't. A preference for balance, harmony, aspects like the rule of thirds and the golden ratio have been found in ancient cultures to today and in different cultures around the world.
This argument can be strengthened. As my post makes clear, adoption of the relativist view instantiates what some may refer to as taste, or opinion, as the highest authority on the matter of beauty. This in turn authorizes any opinion as true. Thus the woman who is ugly to the man who sees her as such stands on the very same footing as the man who sees the same woman as beautiful.
From here we call it a draw. The question then becomes: how are we to adjudicate between the two claims?
Suppose a witness to the subject has no prior opinion. The only authority remaining to him is concurrence. In this sense your argument works equally well against the relativist. If most people agree, the relativist must concede that this consensus carries weight, for it is the only mechanism left to resolve disagreement.
But several problems immediately appear.
First, what of sample size? If ten people judge a woman’s beauty and six declare her lovely while four declare her homely, is she therefore beautiful? On what grounds? There exist millions of additional observers whose judgments have not yet been counted. The verdict appears provisional at best.
Second, what of the human tendency toward conformity? People routinely shape their stated opinions to align with the group. In doing so they may lie not only to others but eventually to themselves. Consensus, therefore, may reflect social pressure rather than perception.
And third, if beauty were purely subjective, widespread convergence would be inexplicable. Independent observers repeatedly agreeing on certain features like symmetry, proportion, harmony suggests that perception is responding to real qualities present in the object rather than manufacturing them from nothing.
For this reason, repeated convergence across observers is better explained not by relativism, but by the presence of objective qualities that human perception reliably detects.
Beauty, then, is not merely in the eye, nor merely in the rose, but in the relationship between a perceiving faculty and real structural features of the thing perceived.
Concerning beauty, let’s take the relativist’s position. They often interject with “eye of the beholder” nonsense, not as true leveling in both directions, which leveling would be, but as armor for the ugly. A raising of their status. A lowering of the high in return. They fail to understand the game they play is inappropriate, that relativity betrays them. For they believe the statements negate the portioners of this nectar, this ichor, that their adorations are deserving of the demos. But it’s the wrong game. If their tenets hold, as they truly believe, then the adoration for the few and revilement for the others is not awash. It is on firmer ground still. For the beauty, if in the eye alone, is in that case very real, undoubtedly real. And so too must the be the profane. No amount of appeals of any nature can sway what is then a matter of momentary taste. For if taste is the measure, then taste in the moment is perfect. Fixed. God like.
The idea of a ratio in human proportions to determine objectively beauty is a complete myth and I 'm very surprised there are still so many people interested in engaging with it. Beauty is influenced by a lot of things, cultural values, exposure, personal preference (to some degree) however it is definitely not just some objective science of proportions, and human nature. It's definitely true that in a lot of western societies people with these proportions of faces have been considered extremely beautiful, but this does not account for the different experience in other cultures particularly in Africa or south-East Asia. But honestly even if we stick just to more western countris this rules fails to work as soon as we leave a society with our same cultural values, even just going to Italy in the 1600s, a face was considered very beautiful if it had a very high forehead.
As for the was this discourse is applied on art I have less criticism on the content itself and more the way it's presented. What the article said about clothing is a great example, can the rule architecture is good example: can a building be beautiful if it tries to be symmetrical and somewhat follow a 2/3 rule? Yes absolutely, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to make a beautiful building, nor that even need the building to feel harmonious to still be beautiful, but the article definitely presents it this way.
Any attempt ever to objectively determine beauty, especially in art will always backfire, because art reflects nature, and though we may try to use science and rules to understand nature, we have to do so flexibly, remembering always it's something we're imposing on it, not the other way around.
Rules do have a place in art, but only when we start thinking about art as language, the rules for one language cannot be universal, it'd be silly to judge a french sentence on the basis of English grammar, well art is the same, there are art esthetics that create principles for symmetry and proportion and rationality that determines beauty, and way to make something beautiful within that framework, the same way there exist estethics that define beauty in much different ways, maybe on the basis more on colour, or materials or anything really.
I hope this comment isn't too confused, I have written it very quickly and I know I 've jumped between very different topics, maybe even a bit erratically , also I should add this isn't my native language so I apologize if I failed to make myself understood. But this is what I believe.
Ditto. I am surprised by how often people seem to completely ignore anything beyond modern western and classic(think ancient greece) beauty standards.
Furthermore, what was the author trying to achieve by proving that beauty is objective? To be able to say that if someone finds something "not objectively beautiful" beautiful, they're objectively wrong?
As an artist, when you're studying anatomy and proportions of the human body you're not supposed to take every measurement literally because humans are not ideal. Not every person is 8 (their own) heads tall like the basic proportions dictate, not everyone is built like the greek statues. To draw realistic people you need to be able to tweak the "template" here and there. And guess what. I still find them beautiful.
I must admit that not only do I disagree with this essay, I am also disappointed by it.
Absolutely true. Beauty is subjective only to a very small degree. Anyone can see that but people have been conditioned otherwise.
The total abolishment of beauty in fine art as well as in architecture leads to depression and isolation.
My realist painter friends talk a lot about this. There is a quiet revival of visual beauty in the fine arts here in Sweden, with realist two realist art schools attended by students all over the world.
We cannot deal with the modernist paradigm anymore. We long for beauty.
Excellent piece, and the 2/3 ratio is well described here. I've often heard it alluded to but never seen it broken down in this way - very helpful. So thank you.
Beauty is wildly under-discussed in our day (and even more under-pursued), and giving clear language to beauty and its pursuit is a help to us all.
A good analogy is music. Certain sequences of notes are naturally melodious to us, and predictably so based on mathematical relationships. But another intelligent species would not have the same perception.
My view is a triad: beauty is objective, its perception is subjective (mediated through our sensibility), and its measure is relative (contextual).
Aesthetics is bound up with perception itself: we don’t create beauty, we encounter it, though our senses and assumptions can distort what we register.
So yes, the eye matters. But it matters because it’s looking at something real.
Have never believed beauty was entirely in the eyes of the beholder. People hate that, but there’s so much truth to it. It scares people because it introduces the idea of a hierarchy, that there’s such a thing as “good” and “bad” art. (Which I would argue, there is). This is why the most brilliant artists of all time never settled. They knew what they created was never fully good enough, so they were in constant pursuit of an unattainable perfection.
A necessary correction to the subjectivity delusion. However, the 2/3rds ratio is not a beauty rule; it is simply the geometry of biological vitality. Reducing beauty to a set of rules is an impulse that attempts to quantify what should be instinctive.
You have written about taste, but not about Beauty. They are often confused in this past century because of the Nihilists, the Post-Modernists, the Fabians, the Futurists, the Vorticists, the Existentialists and whatever moniker the short-sighted who have never comprehended Beauty have employed to label their clique of unknowing with marketing. But as late as the 18th and 19th centuries, before the great Smash-up of Marx and that lot, literate people generally and certainly artists (of whom there were and are very few) understood the difference. Taste is mere opinion.
Beauty, which is covalent with Truth, is neither subjective nor objective. Beauty is a principle, absolute, unopposed and unopposable, which "is" -- it can not "exist" because it isn't mortal -- with or without humankind to observe it. But it can be discovered, witnessed. The Artist -- real Artists who are geniuses, not the hacks who claim to be -- is the rare being who glimpses it and then, in turn, uses his rare talent and learned skill to fashion a material representation of what is IDEAL. That is, that which is TRUE and beyond Man with his insistence upon dyads, like left and right, up and down, the points of the compass, etc.
Here's somewhat of a tangent, but I'll leave it here anyways.
It makes me think that some beauty is lost the moment one explains why a certain thing is beautiful. Like when a joke isn't funny once someone explains it.
Not the explanation, the explanation itself is rather beautiful, but the fact it has been explained; proven that beauty is something simple, reasoned, capable of reproduction without feeling, rather than something sublime, unexplicable, mysterious...
If twenty people agree that the rose is beautiful then it is very likely that the beauty is not just in the eye of that beholder but in the qualities of the rose.
Exactly. If twenty independent strangers agree, it’s not just “in the eye” – it’s in the rose. The eye can be trained or dulled, but it can’t conjure beauty out of nothing.
Even with fashion and herd effects, that level of convergence usually points to real qualities in the thing itself.
Or you know. People were taught that a beautiful rose must have certain quantities (fresh, blooming, rich colour etc) and upon seeing that this particular rose has those qualities assert that it must be beautiful.
I remember that beautiful rose lesson in school. I got a B+ on the test.
You think you're funny. Sure, nobody actually arrests you for thinking otherwise but society pressures people in more subtle ways daily. Think about the treatment people who aren't conventialy attractive, neurotypical or alloromantic get.
I am funny to those with a sense of humor.
How people are treated is a completely different subject than aesthetics.
Why is it different? Society teaches people what's "normal" just as society teaches people what's "beautiful". Aesthetics are a social construct.
No, it doesn't. A preference for balance, harmony, aspects like the rule of thirds and the golden ratio have been found in ancient cultures to today and in different cultures around the world.
Your postmodern take is factually incorrect.
I knew I loved those high waisted jeans!
This argument can be strengthened. As my post makes clear, adoption of the relativist view instantiates what some may refer to as taste, or opinion, as the highest authority on the matter of beauty. This in turn authorizes any opinion as true. Thus the woman who is ugly to the man who sees her as such stands on the very same footing as the man who sees the same woman as beautiful.
From here we call it a draw. The question then becomes: how are we to adjudicate between the two claims?
Suppose a witness to the subject has no prior opinion. The only authority remaining to him is concurrence. In this sense your argument works equally well against the relativist. If most people agree, the relativist must concede that this consensus carries weight, for it is the only mechanism left to resolve disagreement.
But several problems immediately appear.
First, what of sample size? If ten people judge a woman’s beauty and six declare her lovely while four declare her homely, is she therefore beautiful? On what grounds? There exist millions of additional observers whose judgments have not yet been counted. The verdict appears provisional at best.
Second, what of the human tendency toward conformity? People routinely shape their stated opinions to align with the group. In doing so they may lie not only to others but eventually to themselves. Consensus, therefore, may reflect social pressure rather than perception.
And third, if beauty were purely subjective, widespread convergence would be inexplicable. Independent observers repeatedly agreeing on certain features like symmetry, proportion, harmony suggests that perception is responding to real qualities present in the object rather than manufacturing them from nothing.
For this reason, repeated convergence across observers is better explained not by relativism, but by the presence of objective qualities that human perception reliably detects.
Beauty, then, is not merely in the eye, nor merely in the rose, but in the relationship between a perceiving faculty and real structural features of the thing perceived.
Concerning beauty, let’s take the relativist’s position. They often interject with “eye of the beholder” nonsense, not as true leveling in both directions, which leveling would be, but as armor for the ugly. A raising of their status. A lowering of the high in return. They fail to understand the game they play is inappropriate, that relativity betrays them. For they believe the statements negate the portioners of this nectar, this ichor, that their adorations are deserving of the demos. But it’s the wrong game. If their tenets hold, as they truly believe, then the adoration for the few and revilement for the others is not awash. It is on firmer ground still. For the beauty, if in the eye alone, is in that case very real, undoubtedly real. And so too must the be the profane. No amount of appeals of any nature can sway what is then a matter of momentary taste. For if taste is the measure, then taste in the moment is perfect. Fixed. God like.
Sharp rejoinder.
The idea of a ratio in human proportions to determine objectively beauty is a complete myth and I 'm very surprised there are still so many people interested in engaging with it. Beauty is influenced by a lot of things, cultural values, exposure, personal preference (to some degree) however it is definitely not just some objective science of proportions, and human nature. It's definitely true that in a lot of western societies people with these proportions of faces have been considered extremely beautiful, but this does not account for the different experience in other cultures particularly in Africa or south-East Asia. But honestly even if we stick just to more western countris this rules fails to work as soon as we leave a society with our same cultural values, even just going to Italy in the 1600s, a face was considered very beautiful if it had a very high forehead.
As for the was this discourse is applied on art I have less criticism on the content itself and more the way it's presented. What the article said about clothing is a great example, can the rule architecture is good example: can a building be beautiful if it tries to be symmetrical and somewhat follow a 2/3 rule? Yes absolutely, but that doesn't mean it's the only way to make a beautiful building, nor that even need the building to feel harmonious to still be beautiful, but the article definitely presents it this way.
Any attempt ever to objectively determine beauty, especially in art will always backfire, because art reflects nature, and though we may try to use science and rules to understand nature, we have to do so flexibly, remembering always it's something we're imposing on it, not the other way around.
Rules do have a place in art, but only when we start thinking about art as language, the rules for one language cannot be universal, it'd be silly to judge a french sentence on the basis of English grammar, well art is the same, there are art esthetics that create principles for symmetry and proportion and rationality that determines beauty, and way to make something beautiful within that framework, the same way there exist estethics that define beauty in much different ways, maybe on the basis more on colour, or materials or anything really.
I hope this comment isn't too confused, I have written it very quickly and I know I 've jumped between very different topics, maybe even a bit erratically , also I should add this isn't my native language so I apologize if I failed to make myself understood. But this is what I believe.
Ditto. I am surprised by how often people seem to completely ignore anything beyond modern western and classic(think ancient greece) beauty standards.
Furthermore, what was the author trying to achieve by proving that beauty is objective? To be able to say that if someone finds something "not objectively beautiful" beautiful, they're objectively wrong?
As an artist, when you're studying anatomy and proportions of the human body you're not supposed to take every measurement literally because humans are not ideal. Not every person is 8 (their own) heads tall like the basic proportions dictate, not everyone is built like the greek statues. To draw realistic people you need to be able to tweak the "template" here and there. And guess what. I still find them beautiful.
I must admit that not only do I disagree with this essay, I am also disappointed by it.
For people who consider themselves more intelligent because they're on substack and not tiktok this kind of thinking seems pretty shallow.
Look up "rule of thirds" for photography.
It's essential for good composition, and so simple to do, with a little attention.
Absolutely true. Beauty is subjective only to a very small degree. Anyone can see that but people have been conditioned otherwise.
The total abolishment of beauty in fine art as well as in architecture leads to depression and isolation.
My realist painter friends talk a lot about this. There is a quiet revival of visual beauty in the fine arts here in Sweden, with realist two realist art schools attended by students all over the world.
We cannot deal with the modernist paradigm anymore. We long for beauty.
Excellent piece, and the 2/3 ratio is well described here. I've often heard it alluded to but never seen it broken down in this way - very helpful. So thank you.
Beauty is wildly under-discussed in our day (and even more under-pursued), and giving clear language to beauty and its pursuit is a help to us all.
I wrote a piece about it too from the natural law framework, my lens, too: https://substack.com/@susanbarico/p-153412945
Beauty is objective
No question
There IS accounting for taste.
But it has to be learned, acquired.
And teachability is a form of humility.
A good analogy is music. Certain sequences of notes are naturally melodious to us, and predictably so based on mathematical relationships. But another intelligent species would not have the same perception.
Mathematicians dispute claims that the 'golden ratio' is a natural blueprint for beauty
Experts blast 'myth that refuses to go away', saying that sums alone cannot define which faces are easy on the eye.
www.independent.co.uk/news/science/mathematicians-dispute-claims-that-the-golden-ratio-is-a-natural-blueprint-for-beauty-10204354.html
My view is a triad: beauty is objective, its perception is subjective (mediated through our sensibility), and its measure is relative (contextual).
Aesthetics is bound up with perception itself: we don’t create beauty, we encounter it, though our senses and assumptions can distort what we register.
So yes, the eye matters. But it matters because it’s looking at something real.
Have never believed beauty was entirely in the eyes of the beholder. People hate that, but there’s so much truth to it. It scares people because it introduces the idea of a hierarchy, that there’s such a thing as “good” and “bad” art. (Which I would argue, there is). This is why the most brilliant artists of all time never settled. They knew what they created was never fully good enough, so they were in constant pursuit of an unattainable perfection.
Perhaps, but morality is not.
http://litscribe96.substack.com/p/if-there-is-no-god-all-things-are
A necessary correction to the subjectivity delusion. However, the 2/3rds ratio is not a beauty rule; it is simply the geometry of biological vitality. Reducing beauty to a set of rules is an impulse that attempts to quantify what should be instinctive.
You have written about taste, but not about Beauty. They are often confused in this past century because of the Nihilists, the Post-Modernists, the Fabians, the Futurists, the Vorticists, the Existentialists and whatever moniker the short-sighted who have never comprehended Beauty have employed to label their clique of unknowing with marketing. But as late as the 18th and 19th centuries, before the great Smash-up of Marx and that lot, literate people generally and certainly artists (of whom there were and are very few) understood the difference. Taste is mere opinion.
Beauty, which is covalent with Truth, is neither subjective nor objective. Beauty is a principle, absolute, unopposed and unopposable, which "is" -- it can not "exist" because it isn't mortal -- with or without humankind to observe it. But it can be discovered, witnessed. The Artist -- real Artists who are geniuses, not the hacks who claim to be -- is the rare being who glimpses it and then, in turn, uses his rare talent and learned skill to fashion a material representation of what is IDEAL. That is, that which is TRUE and beyond Man with his insistence upon dyads, like left and right, up and down, the points of the compass, etc.
That was interesting, it sparked many thoughts.
Here's somewhat of a tangent, but I'll leave it here anyways.
It makes me think that some beauty is lost the moment one explains why a certain thing is beautiful. Like when a joke isn't funny once someone explains it.
Not the explanation, the explanation itself is rather beautiful, but the fact it has been explained; proven that beauty is something simple, reasoned, capable of reproduction without feeling, rather than something sublime, unexplicable, mysterious...