The opinion of many historians and philosophers
is
that the concept of beauty, like other universal ideas
(for
instance, nature, truth), is a vague and empty
abstraction. Yet, beauty has
often been defined. During
many great cultural periods, artists who created
works
and critics who established the norms and the theory
of these
works stated what beauty is, and it seems
preposterous to assert that those
who have felt to be
in the presence of beauty deceived themselves. Un-
doubtedly the person who has this feeling
or inner
certitude not only means something which is very
relevant to
him, but also something which he believes
to be inherent in the object thus
characterized. On the
other hand, it is equally certain that the peculiar
qual-
ity called beautiful is not the same
at all times and
for all persons; nor can we deny that a variety of
subjective and objective factors influence our opinion
that something is
beautiful. A brief survey of the types
of answers that have been formulated
on this issue may
illustrate its relevance.
In English the term beauty goes back to the French
beauté, which in turn is derived from a
conjectured
vulgar Latin bellitatem, formed after
the adjective
bellus, which neither originally nor properly desig-
nated something beautiful; pulcher and formosus had
this
function. Bellus was a diminutive of bonus (good)
and was used first for women and children, then
ironi-
cally for men. Its affectionate
overtones are said to
explain why bellus (and not
pulcher) was adopted in
the Romance languages,
where it survived either alone
or jointly with formosus. The German schön carries
in
its oldest forms the meaning of bright, brilliant, and
also striking,
impressive.
It is uncertain whether the adjective or the noun
was used first. Whenever
the issue is decided, it will
be done not on historical but “philosophical”
grounds.
Empiricists and positivists claim priority for the adjec-
tive, metaphysicians for the noun. Homer,
who is often
cited in the controversy, uses the adjective
kalos. He
applies it to men, women, garments, weapons,
cattle,
and dogs and seems to refer to a pleasing, sensuous
characteristic; occasionally he takes
kalos in the gen-
eral sense of good, proper, designating a
high achieve-
ment or the full realization
of a potential. It is doubtful
whether Homer means personified beauty when
he uses
the noun
kallos.
To be sure, neither the etymology nor the early
history of a term
designating a universal idea can
explain the later uses of the term, but it
is not without
interest for the student of the long and intricate
history
of beauty to see that the ambivalent use of beauty and
goodness, beauty and light or radiance, goes back to
the very origin of the
concept, and that already in
Homer's time the term was used
comprehensively.
In the following we shall deal with the fundamental
approaches to the
question of beauty and with the
factors that enter into the judgment of
beauty. No
claim is made to have found a logical classification for
the material, nor for proceeding systematically. We
have tried to be clear
and coherent in our necessarily
succinct summaries, and we hope to have
established
an intelligible pattern.
