III. STUDIES OF BEAUTY
The main work that has been done in the twentieth
century on the concepts of
beauty may conveniently
be sorted into four lines of inquiry: (1) the philosophical
analysis of beauty, (2) the phenomenology of beauty,
(3) the psychology of
beauty, (4) the sociology and
anthropology of beauty. These will be
described briefly.
1. Philosophical Analysis.
The distinctions made in
Part II of this article are the product of
philosophical
analysis by many mid-twentieth-century thinkers, a
number of whom have already been referred to. Philo-
sophical analysis consists of various procedures de-
signed to elicit and make explicit the nature
of a con-
cept: e.g., is it simple or complex?
If complex, what
are its constituents? Does it have necessary and suffi-
cient constituents, or is it really a
family of concepts
with overlapping sets of criteria? Analytic methods
have contributed to progress in every branch of philos-
ophy, including aesthetics. It is safe to say that, at
the
very least, the distinct issues involving beauty and the
reasonable defensible resolutions are better understood
today than in any
previous period.
2. Phenomenology.
The phenomenologist is con-
cerned with
the characteristics of experience itself,
including its
“intentional objects.” His aim is to remain
wholly
faithful to what is given, without importing
extraneous presuppositions or
illegitimate inferences—
to discriminate and expose the subtle
differences be-
tween closely allied
experiences, and fix their essential
natures. To ask what is the difference
in experience
between beauty and grace or prettiness, for example,
is
a phenomenological question. What distinguishes
contemporary phenomenology
as a particular school
or movement is the systematic formulation of its
pro-
gram (despite many differences among
its practitioners)
and the immense sensitivity and thoroughness with
which inquiries have been carried out.
Phenomenologists (including those sometimes re-
ferred to as existential phenomenologists) have con-
tributed to several branches of aesthetics. Some under-
standing of their methods and results
can be provided
by a brief account of two phenomenological essays,
among the few that deal directly and in detail with
concepts of beauty. The
first is “Der Ursprung des
Kunstwerkes,” by Martin
Heidegger (Holzwege [1950];
trans. by Albert Hofstadter, as “The
Origin of the Work
of Art,” in Hofstadter and Richard Kuhn,
eds., Philos-
ophies of
Art and Beauty, New York [1964]). Seeking
for the essential
“workly” character of the art-work
(in contrast to
the “thingly” character of mere things
and the
“equipmental” character of useful objects),
Heidegger
finds it in “the setting-itself-into-work of the
truth of what
is.” Thus in Van Gogh's picture of
the
peasant shoes (i.e., of certain pieces of equipment), the
being of
the shoes (their “truth”) is
“unconcealed.” In
its capacity to suggest something
of the life of the
peasant—his toil, poverty,
toughness—this painting
“discloses a world”; as a physical object,
exploiting and
exhibiting the qualities of a medium, it “sets
forth the
earth.” The art-work is a field of conflict
between
world, which strives for openness, and earth, which
has a
tendency to withdraw and hide; in this conflict,
the truth of being is laid
open, and this happening is
beauty: “Beauty is one way in which
truth occurs as
unconcealment.”
The second essay is Truth and Art, by Albert Hof-
stadter (New York, 1965). According to
Hofstadter,
beauty, “the central aesthetic
phenomenon,” is “a
union of power and measure, a
dynamic or living
harmony” that is “the appearance of
truth—not of any
truth at random, but of truth of being”—which is the
kind of
truth that “comes about when a being projects
and realizes its
own being.” In certain natural phe-
nomena—the snowflake, the color gold, the form of
the
horse—Hofstadter discerns this self-realization;
e.g.,
“the horse's visual appearance makes it look
like
life-will—energy, vitality, mobility—come to
perfect
realization” (Ch. 7). In the experience of beauty
we
are seized by the “rightness” or
“validity” of the object,
which appears in its
highest form in works of art
(Ch. 8).
3. Experimental Psychology.
The systematic exper-
imental study
of aesthetic responses is generally re-
garded
as having been initiated by Gustav Fechner,
in his Vorschule der Aesthetik (Leipzig, 1876). He has
been
followed by a large number of investigators,
among whom Richard
Müller-Freienfels and Max Des-
soir are
especially noteworthy. Psychological aestheti-
cians have studied reactions to elements of visual,
musical, and
verbal design (colors, lines, sounds of
words), and to combinations of
elements (rhythm,
meter, pictorial balance); they have used the
“method
of paired comparisons” to discover what kinds
of object
certain people call beautiful, and what kinds of people
call
certain objects beautiful—and why. They have
learned a great
deal about preferences in these matters,
e.g., that it is not the Golden
Rectangle, but propor-
tions close to it,
that are preferred in playing cards,
etc.; that the popularity of red among
American chil-
dren declines after age six;
that British children find
beauty in nature before they become
aware—about age
ten—of beauty in art; that when
photographs of several
men or women are superimposed to produce a
“pro-
file-picture,” it is judged more beautiful than the origi-
nals. Much of this work is reviewed in A.
R. Chandler,
Beauty and Human Nature (New York and London,
1934),
and C. W. Valentine, The Experimental Psychol-
ogy of Beauty (London, 1962).
It is not always clear at what point psychological
aesthetics casts light on
the nature of beauty. Valentine
holds—and offers experimental
evidence (in Chs. 7 and
13) to show—that the appreciation of beauty is not
the same as the enjoyment of pleasure, though typically
accompanied by it;
yet “It has been found more con-
venient in such psychological experiments to ask per-
sons the question, 'Do you like this, and if so,
why?'
or 'Do you find this pleasing?' rather than “Do you
think this beautiful, and why?'” (p. 6). But different
questions, however convenient, are likely to evoke
different answers (cf.
H. J. Eysenck,
Sense and Non-
sense in Psychology, Baltimore [1957], Ch. 8).
The problem of explaining our perception of beauty
(or our experience of
kalistic pleasure) has tempted few
psychologists, and is generally thought
to remain un-
solved. During the first decades
of this century, the
Empathy Theory was widely accepted. First ex-
pounded by Theodor Lipps in his Aesthetik (2 vols.,
Hamburg and Leipzig, 1903-06),
the theory was de-
veloped and popularized by
Vernon Lee (Violet Paget),
in The Beautiful
(Cambridge and New York, 1913) and
Herbert S. Langfeld, The Aesthetic Attitude (New York,
1920). The primary purpose of
the Empathy Theory
was to explain the expressiveness of visual forms
in
terms of the unconscious transference of the perceiver's
activities
to the object (something in the mountain as
seen activates our tendency to
rise, and so we see
mountain as “rising”); when the
empathic response is
highly unified and quite uninhibited and
unchecked,
beauty is experienced. The hypothesis was never veri-
fied, and serious difficulties were raised
as a result of
some experiments. The satisfaction taken in perceiving
ordered patterns of visual stimuli has been explained
by the Gestalt
psychologists in terms of phenomenal
“requiredness”
and “good gestalts” (see, for example,
Kurt Koffka,
“Problems in the Psychology of Art,” in
Art: A Bryn Mawr Symposium, Bryn Mawr, Pa., 1940);
but Gestalt psychologists have generally not given
special attention to
beauty.
4. Social Science.
When beauty is considered in the
context of a whole society or
culture, a number of
significant questions suggest themselves: What are
the
social causes and effects of people's ideas of beauty
or
experience of beauty? How is the capacity to ap-
preciate a certain kind of beauty, or the preference
for it,
associated with other cultural traits, or with
social class, role, or
status? Though the pioneering
sociological thinkers of the nineteenth
century, for
example, Jean-Marie Guyau, L'Art au point
de vue
sociologique (Paris, 1889), began to consider such
ques-
tions, even today it cannot be said
that we have ob-
tained very conclusive
answers. This is partly because
the specific questions about beauty have
been sunk into
more general questions; there are many studies of the
variability of taste, of connoisseurship, of artistic repu-
tations, etc., but it is not clear in many cases what
light they shed on the social aspects of beauty. Adolf
S.
Tomars, for example, begins his Introduction to the
Sociology of Art (Mexico City, 1940) by marking out
the
“phenomena of art” as those referred to in making
the
judgment “this is beautiful” (Ch. 1). And he defends
a relativistic account of beauty, which he holds to be
required by the
scientific character of his investigation
(Ch. 12). But for the most part,
beauty drops out of
his inquiry into relations between characteristics of
art
(“styles”) and types of community, social class,
or insti-
tution. Vytautas Kavolis (Artistic Expression; A Socio-
logical Analysis, Ithaca, N.Y. [1968]) discusses many
discoveries about preference: for example, according
to the Lynds' study of
“Middletown,” homes of lower
middle-class urban
families in the 1920's “were more
likely than those of other
class levels” to have Whis-
tler's
portrait of his mother (Chs. 3, 7); and highly
ethnocentric people prefer
regular, balanced designs
(B. G. Rosenberg and C. N. Zimet, 1957). But
Kavolis
himself does not use the term “beauty” at
all.
Cultural anthropologists have made a beginning in
the investigation of
beauty (again almost always ap-
proached
through aesthetic preference, especially in
view of the linguistic
difficulties), with cross-cultural
comparative studies, and intercultural
functional stud-
ies. There is evidence to
support two generalizations.
First, “the appeal of what a people consider sur-
passingly pleasing, beauty as an abstraction, that
is,
is broadly spread over the earth, and lies deep in human
experience—so wide, and so deep, that it is to be
classed as a
cultural universal” (Melville J. Herskovits,
in Aspects of Primitive Art [1959], p. 43). This is
seen,
for example, in the Pakot (Kenya) distinction between
the
“good” milk pot and the “beautiful”
lip of the pot's
rim or the severely critical attitude of the Tlingit
audience toward their dancers, and in the artistic ac-
tivities of Australian aborigines: “aboriginal
art is pre-
dominantly nonmagical, i.e.,
used in the secular and
ceremonial life by men, women, and children, to
satisfy
an aesthetic urge or to portray their beliefs”
(Charles
P. Mountford, in Marian W. Smith, ed., The
Artist in
Tribal Society, New York [1961], p. 8). Herbert
Read,
commenting on this paper, however, suggested that
“tribal art in general is vital rather than
beautiful”
(ibid. p. 17).
Second, there is a significant cross-cultural conver-
gence in standards of beauty, despite evidence
that
some standards of judgment applied by experts in one
culture are
not applied in others. “I believe that there
are universal
standards of aesthetic quality, just as there
are universal standards of
technical efficiency,” wrote
Raymond Firth (Elements of Social Organization,
Lon-
don [1951]; 3rd ed., Boston [1963], p. 161).
Irvin L.
Child and various collaborators in a number of studies
have provided evidence against the earlier prevalent
view among
ethnologists that taste is completely vari-
able. They found, for example, significant correlations
between
BaKwele and New Haven judgments of
beauty (or aesthetic likeability) in
BaKwele masks
(I. L. Child and Leon Siroto, 1965).
