Notes on “The Nature of Beauty”

Notes on
George Santayana’s “The Nature of Beauty”

1 The root of all excellence lies in in appreciation and preference. “We desire nothing because it is good, but it is good only because we desire it.” (Spinoza) 177.1

2 What makes rationality “a good and indispensable thing” is our need of it, for both efficiency and to facilitate clearer understanding. 177.4

3 “Science is the response to the demand for information, […] Art is the response to the demand for entertainment”. 178.4 -179.1

4 “To know the truth about the composition and history of things is good for this reason. It is good for the enlarged horizon it gives us, because the spectacle of nature is a marvelous and fascinating one, full of a serious sadness and large peace, which gives us back our birthright as children of the planet and naturalizes us upon earth. This is the poetic value of the scientific Weltanschauung.” 179.4

Between Moral and Ethical Values

5 “Morality is not mainly concerned with the attainment of pleasure; it is rather concerned, in all its deeper and more authoritative maxims, with the prevention of suffering.” 179.3

6 “The sad business of life is rather to escape certain dreadful evils to which our nature exposes us–death, hunger, disease, weariness, isolation, and contempt.”

This burden causes one to feel “the hopeless triviality of the search for pleasure.”

“The moment […] that society emerges from the early pressure of the environment and is tolerably secure against primary evils, morality grows lax.” 179.4

7  “The appreciation of beauty and its embodiment in the arts are the activities which belong to our holiday life, when we are redeemed for the moment from the shadow of evil and the slavery to fear, and are following the bent of our nature where it chooses to lead us.” 180.1

Philosophical normativism would suggest a global seachange is required before this appreciation of beauty could be acheived. We are none of us free “from the shadow of evil” until we are all free of it.

Work and Play

8 Happiness and the degree of civilization in any culture can be measured by the “proportion of its energy which is devoted to free and generous pursuits […] It is the spontaneous play of his faculties that man finds himself and his happiness.”

“He is a slave when all his energy is spent in avoiding suffering and death, when all his action is imposed from without, and no breath or strength is left him for free enjoyment.” 181.1-181.2

9 Work does not mean something done usefully but “what is done unwillingly and by the spur of necessity.

Play does not mean something done fruitlessly but “whatever is done spontaneously and for its own sake, whether it have or not an ulterior utility.” 181.2

In this context we need to look at how we define altruism. Because those who are not spurred by necessity are, by this definition, at play and there is an understanding that they derive pleasure from it, whether or not there is an outside benefit for another.

Also, if we again view this from a philosophical normativist position, as a unified global community we are not yet free of “the shadow of evil”. As a result, the actions taken continue to be “the spur of necessity” (rather than play), and as a necessity, could also not be construed as altruism.

Esthetic and Physical Pleasure

10 Physical pleasure is attached to the body; tactile, sensate.
Aesthetic pleasure requires the latter is transparent and does not “intercept our attention, but carry directly to some external object.” This is the illusion of disembodiment and it is “exhilarating”. 182.2

Differentiating Esthetic Pleasure

11 Beauty exists exclusively in perception. 182.3

12 The perception of beauty is formed by “repeated experiences”, and so it is formed over time.

13 Beauty is an emotional element. It is not typically of the rational or structuralist domains of science.

“The scientific idea of a thing is a great abstraction from the mass of perceptions and reactions which that thing produces; the aesthetic idea is less abstract, since it retains the emotional reaction , the pleasure of the perception, as an integral part of the conceived thing.” 184.1

14 At a point we no longer separate the perception from other objectified feelings. It becomes a quality of the object. 184.3

This perception, diachronically formed of experience, suggests the role of reminiscence or nostalgia.

The Definition of Beauty

15 “Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing.”

16 “Morality has to do with the avoidance of evil and the pursuit of good: aesthetics only with enjoyment.”

17 “As truth is […] the cooperation of perceptions, so beauty is the cooperation of pleasures” 186.1

Here we see two different perceptions of a thing (red as revolutionary, red as passionate) bringing us closer to a truth about an object or idea, while two or more pleasures (the smell and colour of a flower) brings us closer to beauty.

18 Perception is constantly changing. This “fluidity of the mind would make reflection impossible” were it not for our fixing of sometimes abstract ideas to words and symbols. This enables us to recognize in one perception, the influence of another.
“This discrimination and classification of the contents of consciousness is the work of perception and understanding.”

19 An objects expression is “a meaning and a tone” formed from our perceptions not exclusively of the object but of “other [associated] objects and feelings” as well.

“The hushed reverberations of these associated feelings continue in the brain, and by modifying our present reaction, color the image upon which our attention is fixed.”

20 (Object or Image) + (thought, emotion or evocation) = Expression 187.3

21 Expression is formed by the imagination. It requires experience of ideas, notions or perceptions in order that they be applied to the object or image. The more of these one can draw upon, the more expressive. “The expressiveness of everything accordingly increases with the intelligence of the observer.” 188.1

“Expressiveness is thus the power given by experience to any image to call up others in the mind.” 188.3

Liberation of Self

22 “It is the essential privilege of beauty so to synthesize and bring to a focus the various impulses of the self, so to suspend them to a single image, that a great peace falls upon that perturbed kingdom.” 190.1

23 The sublime speaks to the notion of one being aware of a great evil but also being conscious that they remain untouched by it.
Lucretius says that “we are not pleased because another suffers an evil, but because, seeing it is an evil, we see at the same time our own immunity from it.”

“The spectacle of the erring world must sadden the philosopher even in the Acropolis of his wisdom; he would , if it might be, descend from his meditation and teach. But those movements of sympathy are quickly inhibited by despair of success; impossibility of action is a great condition of the sublime.” 190.3

It might be useful to look at some of the related notions in Susan Sontag’s “Regarding the Pain of Others”.

Here I’m also thinking of the uncomfortable sublimity of looking upon a photograph of suffering whose composition is beautiful. Uncomfortable because this expressive beauty is formed by the perception the object evokes and some of those evocations may be, in fact, very unpleasant.

24 With indifference toward, or safety from, terror comes the emotional detachment and liberation of the sublime.
For example, the acceptance of a perilous predicament and giving ones self up to fate and the forces of nature (indifference) or the spectacular awe of an incredible storm from a comfortable and secure shelter (safety). 192.2

25 The Stoic Sublime is the liberation of the self by the consciousness of evil in the world. 193.1

26 “In the beautiful we find the perception of life by sinking into the object, in the sublime we find a purer and more inalienable perfection by defying the object altogether.”

This speaks to transcendental experience; a something greater than the object that is formed by what our experience brings to it but also an intangible that reflects a profound sense of our relationship with the natural world as a living thing.