The Purpose of Beauty

     It has been an interesting week for seeing and recognizing beauty. Let me try to draw together a few things.

     In class on Thursday, we went through the Bible – not all of it, of course, that would take weeks, but we hit a major portion of the books. Several of the verses jumped out at me. First, in Exodus 32:1a, the Israelites complain to Aaron after Moses has been on the mountain for a long time. But they say to Aaron “As for this fellow Moses who brought us up out of Egypt, we don’t know what has happened to him” (NIV).

     So many times I’ve questioned how the Israelites turned from God so quickly; they had just left Egypt after nine miraculous plagues, went through a divided Red Sea that closed up behind them and swallowed the pursuing Egyptian Army – and here they were, less than forty days later, building a carved image to follow. I always think “Well, if I had been there, I don’t see how I could have fallen away so quickly.” Now, many I’ve heard might mention the fact that, after Jesus, we have the Holy Spirit empowering us, and the early Israelites – at least, not en masse – did not. And there is, of course, truth to that. But I think more telling is what is in the verse itself. Notice the Israelites say: “As for this fellow, Moses, who brought us out of Egypt...” But it was not Moses who had brought them out; God had brought them out. It may sound like a fine line, like maybe in their minds they still meant “God through Moses” but I would not say necessarily. It’s very possible – at that time – that they had somehow given more credit to Moses than God for their deliverance. So when Moses was no longer there, their faith waned. Which leads me to my first point: If our faith is in something temporary, our faith will only be temporary.

     Now we look at Kant once more, and what he is saying. Because aesthetic beauty is fleeting and subjective (often), it cannot ground our perception of beauty. If I am raised seeing piercings as beautiful, and you are not, then our perceptions of beauty will be different simply because our minds were shaped differently growing up. Thus, beauty cannot be objective, argues Kant, unless it can be grounded in something else. The thing that has worth, then, is the thing which can more easily be quantified; human ability is finite, we can all agree on that. So if the sublime, then, is dependent on limited human ability, there is common ground, there is basis for objectivity. And that which can be “conquered” only by the mind, then, is what is truly important; the “sublime,” according to Kant. I think starting with Descartes, the mind and its ability has increasingly become the measuring stick by which we view the world; if our minds can do it, it is important; and if only our minds can do it, it is of greater importance still; meanwhile the physical is marginalized more and more, and become more “subjective” and less an authority of “what is.” It is a strange trick that a pursuit of rationality is becoming more and more irrational.

     This brings me to point number two, which I raised in my last post: beauty’s purpose is what defines it, and what makes it objective. Kant – and others – removed the purpose of beauty, and thus removed any sort of solid foundation for defining it.

     One man I heard speak once mentioned that philosophy has searched everywhere for objective truth, but has not found it; and so, now they have said there is no objective truth. Nothing has meaning or purpose. So we deprive ourselves of any foundation for answering anything. In the time of the judges, every man did what he saw fit; the time of the judges has come back.

     Thursday afternoon, in science class, we watched a movie on “the Privileged Planet” (Earth). An idea that a scientist and a philosopher stumbled across was the idea that the factors (they listed about 20) that were necessary for life to thrive – life advanced enough, such as humans, to have rational, thinking brains – those factors were also uniquely suited to observing and learning about the universe in which it was possible for them to exist. The philosopher asked, then, why? Now, many scientists these days will not ask “why” because there is no “why,” there just “is.”

     This blew me away. I played a game several times called “Myst III: Exile.” It’s a puzzle game, where you, the character, must solve a number of different puzzles in order to set the fictional world right again and make your way back home. Not only are the graphics and the worlds incredibly and beautifully rendered, but the puzzles themselves are simply amazing. Many times I wondered to myself how someone could even conceive a puzzle such as the one I was attempting to solve.

     So it is very easy for me to make the jump in incredulity to God’s creation. If, as many believe today, the universe was created “ex nihilo,” from nothing, then none of these rules and elements necessarily exists. Nothing of how our universe works is “natural” if there is no basis for “natural” outside of the universe. Unless these rules existed before matter existed, in which case where did those rules come from? So the fact that the elements we need for an atmosphere are also elements which are remarkably transparent, and thus allow us to observe the heavens, is not a necessary fact – unless it came about specifically so we could observe the heavens. Where our solar system resides within the Milky Way Galaxy is perfect for advanced life forms; it also gives us the best position with which to view our own galaxy and other galaxies, and learn even more about the universe in which we live.

     And what blows me away, is God did it for us. As a Christian, there is much God calls me to submit to His will – my entire life, in fact; and he could have also asked us to live in an environment of thick, opaque gases, and trust in Him for whatever knowledge He feels like giving to us. But He didn’t. He created this universe and its rules for us to admire His workmanship and give Him praise. Which leads me to my final point:

     God created beauty for us to admire and give Him praise. He created that which is beautiful, and He created in us the capacity to recognize it. When it points back to Him and His perfection and His glory, it is beautiful; because that is beauty’s purpose. That is why it exists. And from there, I think, we can begin building a more perfect definition of what is beautiful.