3. Other Instances of the Objective Conception of
Beauty.
We find a simpler and often empirical notion
of objective beauty in
the idea that the artist who
wishes to present perfect beauty selects out
of many
examples the most beautiful parts of each, since one
cannot
find one person whose every part is perfect.
The argument occurs already in
Xenophon's Memora-
bilia
of Socrates (III, x, 1). In several cases this view
is modified by
the principle that the sculptor, painter,
and poet must avoid the imitation
of the individual
with his characteristic peculiarities and present a com-
posite image, formed after a model created
in the mind.
The relationship between the beautiful and the use-
ful is defined in a variety of ways. The critics of beauty
as an
innate idea, as a form of Being or, more generally,
as a metaphysical or
ontological idea, often consider
the useful to be the foundation of beauty;
empirical
and pragmatic reasons are to replace the so-called
obscure
and vague notions.
Usefulness or utility is, however, also taken in the
sense of fitness and
appropriateness, meaning the apti-
tude of
proportion, form, or structure to the end pro-
posed. When the full realization of a potential in
human beings and
the fitness of the parts to the design
for which each thing is formed are
called beautiful,
no pragmatic or utilitarian idea is involved. The
use
of utility by the Earl of Shaftesbury shows that the
concept can
find a place even in a metaphysics of
beauty:
The same features which make deformity create incom-
modiousness and disease.
And the same shapes and propor-
tions which make beauty afford advantage by adapting to
activity and use. Even in the imitative or designing arts
the truth
or beauty of every figure or statue is measured
from the perfection
of Nature in her just adapting of every
limb and proportion to the
activity, strength, dexterity, life
and vigor of the particular
species or animal designed. Thus
beauty and truth are plainly
joined with the notion of utility
and convenience, even in the
apprehension of every inge-
nious
artist, the architect, the statuary or the painter
(
Char-
acteristics
..., II, 267).
In all these instances the beautiful does not depend
upon the useful and is
not derived from it, but is linked
or coexists with it. For a further
discussion of Shaftes-
bury, see below,
Section II, Paragraph 1, Metaphysical
Foundation.
