Philosophy Dictionary of ArgumentsHome
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| Beauty: that something is beautiful expresses the positive evaluation of a sensory experience. For example, nature, fragrances, sounds and human emotions are perceived as beautiful. In the field of art, judgments about what is to be regarded as beautiful are subject to greater fluctuations or historical developments than in the sphere of natural perception. This need not be interpreted as evidence of subjective arbitrariness. Rather, judgments change with increasing knowledge. See also aesthetics, art, works of art, perception, judgments._____________Annotation: The above characterizations of concepts are neither definitions nor exhausting presentations of problems related to them. Instead, they are intended to give a short introduction to the contributions below. – Lexicon of Arguments. | |||
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Hans-Georg Gadamer on Beauty - Dictionary of Arguments
I 481 Beauty/Gadamer: Philosophy: The concept of the beautiful, which in the eighteenth century had to share the central position within the aesthetic problem with that of the sublime and which was to be completely eliminated in the course of the nineteenth century by the aesthetic criticism of classicism, was, as is well known, once a universal metaphysical concept and had a function within metaphysics, i.e. the general doctrine of being, that was by no means limited to the aesthetic in the narrower sense. >Metaphysics, >Aesthetics, >Being. Hermeneutics/Gadamer: It will be shown that this old concept of beauty can also serve a comprehensive hermeneutics, as it has grown for us from the criticism of the methodologism of the intellectual world. >Hermeneutics. Etymology: The Greek word for the German "schön" is kalon. Admittedly, there are no complete equivalents in German, even if we use the mediating pulchrum. But Greek thought has exercised a certain determination on the history of meaning of the German word, so that essential moments of meaning are common to both words. With the addition "beautiful" we distinguish from what we call technology, i.e. from "mechanical" arts that produce useful things. It is similar with word combinations such as: beautiful morality, beautiful literature, beautifully intellectual/belletristic (German: "schöngeistig") and so on. In all these uses, the word is in a similar contrast to the Greek kalon to the term chresimon. Everything that does not belong to the necessities of life, but the how of life that concerns eu zen, i.e. everything that the Greeks understood by Paideia, is called kalon. The beautiful things are those whose value for themselves is obvious. One cannot ask about the purpose they serve. I 483 Nature/Beauty/Gadamer: As one can see, such a determination of beauty is a universal ontological one. Nature and art do not form any kind of contrast here, which of course means that the primacy of nature is undisputed, especially with regard to beauty. Art may perceive within the "gestalt" whole of the natural order recessed possibilities of artistic design and in this way perfect the beautiful nature of the order of being. But that does not mean at all that "beauty" is primarily to be found in art. As long as the order of being is understood as being divine itself or as God's creation - and the latter is valid up to the 18th century - also the exceptional case of art can only be understood within the horizon of this order of being. (...) it is only with the 19th century that the aesthetic problem (...) is transferred to the standpoint of art (...). (...) this [is] based on a metaphysical process (...). Such a transfer to the standpoint of art ontologically presupposes a shapelessly conceived mass of being or a mass of being governed by mechanical laws. The human artistic spirit, which forms useful things from mechanical construction, will ultimately understand all that is beautiful from the work of its own spirit. I 484 Order/Measurement/Rationality/Aesthetics/KantVsSubjectivism: As unsatisfactory as the development towards subjectivism initiated by Kant seemed to us in the newer aesthetic, Kant has convincingly demonstrated the untenability of aesthetic rationalism. >Aesthetics/Kant. GadamerVsKant: It is just not right to base the metaphysics of beauty solely on the ontology of measure and the teleological order of being, on which the classical appearance of rationalist rule aesthetics ultimately refers to. The metaphysics of the beautiful does not actually coincide with such an application of aesthetic rationalism. Rather, the decline to Plato reveals a quite different side to the phenomenon of the beautiful, and it is this side that interests us in our hermeneutical questioning. >Beauty/Plato._____________Explanation of symbols: Roman numerals indicate the source, arabic numerals indicate the page number. The corresponding books are indicated on the right hand side. ((s)…): Comment by the sender of the contribution. Translations: Dictionary of Arguments The note [Concept/Author], [Author1]Vs[Author2] or [Author]Vs[term] resp. "problem:"/"solution:", "old:"/"new:" and "thesis:" is an addition from the Dictionary of Arguments. If a German edition is specified, the page numbers refer to this edition. |
Gadamer I Hans-Georg Gadamer Wahrheit und Methode. Grundzüge einer philosophischen Hermeneutik 7. durchgesehene Auflage Tübingen 1960/2010 Gadamer II H. G. Gadamer The Relevance of the Beautiful, London 1986 German Edition: Die Aktualität des Schönen: Kunst als Spiel, Symbol und Fest Stuttgart 1977 |
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Ed. Martin Schulz, access date 2024-04-16