ARQ_People and Places- Seven Essays on Beauty

7/29/2019 ARQ_People and Places- Seven Essays on Beauty

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People and places: essay two

Beauty and public policyGlenn Parsons


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Contents

Introduction 5

Defining beauty 8

Beauty as perfection 13

Beauty as a public good? 16

Conclusion 21

Bibliography 22

About the author 23

Published in 2010 by the Commission for

Architecture and the Built Environment.

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Introduction

In democratic societies, governments take stepsto secure the best possible lives for its citizens.But what makes for a better life? In a free anddemocratic society, citizens will answer thisquestion in very different ways, according to theirdiverse likes and dislikes. Perhaps for me, playingchess makes life worthwhile; whereas for you,

only horseback riding does the trick. Despite thisdiversity of opinion, however, when we reecton human life in general, it is not hard to identifycertain basic and universal elements of a good orworthwhile life. The philosopher Ted Honderichcalls these the great goods1 of human life,and includes among them health and longevity,freedom, self-respect, fullling private and personalrelationships, and the enjoyment of culture.

These great goods, being universally desiredby all citizens, constitute the rightful domain ofpublic policy in a free and democratic state. Butwhere does beauty t into this picture? Is beautyreally a value that belongs in the company of theother great goods in human life? Or is it, like my

personal preference for chess and yours for ridinghorses, beyond the legitimate purview of the statesconcern?

This question is a perplexing one. On one hand,empirical surveys shows that people clearly valuebeauty and generally agree that it belongs, insome fashion, within the realm of public policy2.Furthermore, we have clear examples of beautyplaying a role in public policy decisions in relation

Canadian natural

beauty

Banff National Park,Alberta, Canada

Flickr/AlaskanDude/FrankKovalchek

1 Honderich, T After

the Terror(Edinburgh:

Edinburgh University

Press, 2003)

2 Commission for

Architecture and the

Built Environment,

Public attitudes to

beauty(May, 2010)


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to the natural environment. Many countries preservenatural areas for, amongst other things, their beauty3. This is most obvious in the British governmentsdesignation of certain preserved areas as Areasof Outstanding Natural Beauty, but, the protectionof natural beauty is also a part of the legislativemandate of the national park systems of other

nations. For example, the charter of Parks Canadabids it to present the beauty and signicance of ournatural world, and the US National Parks Serviceis mandated to conserve the scenery for futuregenerations.

On the other hand, when we turn to the beautyof things other than the natural world, beautysplace in public policy seems much less clear. Withrespect to the natural world, there is a fairly broadconsensus about which areas have outstandingbeauty. But when confronted with the diversityof tastes that we observe in other things aroundus art, architecture, home decor, and fashion,amongst other things we quickly become unclearabout what sort of value beauty actually is4. It can

easily seem that beauty is, in these things at least,something different for each of us. Perhaps theword beauty does not refer to some universallydesired great good, but rather to whatever thespeaker happens to personally prefer. This line ofthought suggests that beauty does not belong inthe realm of public policy after all, at least as far asthings such as the built environment goes.

The lesson to draw from this perplexity is that if

we are to resolve the question of beautys placein public policy, we must rst achieve a betterunderstanding of its distinctive kind of value,and the way in which it differs from other likesand preferences. In this essay I review somephilosophical attempts to dene beauty, and defendone particular denition in terms of perfection. This

denition, as we will see, does suggest a legitimateplace for beauty in public policy.

If we are to

resolve the

question of

beautys place

in public policy,

we must first

understand

beautysdistinctive kind

of value

3 Parsons, G

Aesthetics and

Nature, chapter seven

(London: Continuum,

2008)

4 Commission for

Architecture and the

Built Environment,

Public attitudes to

beauty(May, 2010)


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Defining beauty

When we say this is beautiful, what are we saying?One simple and intuitive answer is that we aresimply expressing a liking or preference for thething in question. So saying that dress is beautifulequates to I like that dress. This answer to ourquestion gains plausibility from the great diversityof things that people call beautiful: dresses, faces,

sunsets, cars, paintings, songs, scientic theories,chess moves, and so on. What could all of thesevery different things have in common, except thefact that in each case, the speaker likes that thing?The beautiful dress has a striking colour, but thechess move has no colour at all; the beautiful songhas a catchy melody, but the beautiful sunset issilent; and so forth. Thus, we seem to be left withonly the positive feeling of the speaker a liking as the only common element that makes them allbeautiful.

However, this simple answer wont do. We oftenwant to explain our likings for things in terms oftheir beauty. For instance, when asked why youlike a particular dress, you might reply because

its beautiful. Beauty, as opposed to comfort ordurability, is the reason that you like it. But if wecan explain our liking for something in terms of itsbeauty, then its beauty cannot be the reason forthat liking. If it was, then our explanation would beno explanation at all: in response to why do you likeit? we would say because I like it. If beauty canbe a reason for our likings, as it clearly can, thenbeauty cannot be equated with those likings.

Perhaps we could provide a better denition byappealing to another intuitive idea: beauty is asource of pleasure. Perhaps when we say thatsomething is beautiful, we are not saying that welike it, but that it is pleasing. Sunsets, good chessmoves, songs and other beautiful things seem tohave this much in common they offer us pleasure

when we perceive or contemplate them. But thisidea also is unsatisfactory, because many things arepleasing without being beautiful. For instance, thenew drain pipes I recently installed in my basementplease me a great deal, because they are verydurable, and should prevent my basement fromgetting wet. But that doesnt make them beautiful.

The problem here is that our denition of beauty that which pleases is too broad. In order tocapture the essence of beauty, we need to specifythepar ticularsort of pleasure that it involves.Philosophers often try to do this by appealing to theidea of a things being pleasing for its own sake, oras it is sometimes put, being intrinsically pleasing.The idea is that, when I derive pleasure from the

thought or sight of my sturdy basement pipes, I amnot pleased by the pipes for their own sake. I onlytake pleasure from them because of something thatthey can do for me keep my basement dry. Thus,they are not pleasing in themselves; what reallypleases me is some benet to which they are ameans. Perhaps, then, we can identify the beautifulas that which provides pleasure when seen orcontemplated simply for its own sake. Taken inand of itself, sturdy pipes are not terribly pleasing

To capture the

essence of

beauty, we need

to specify the

particularsort

of pleasure that

it involves


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to look at. But beautiful things are faces, songs,chess moves and the rest. In other words, thebeautiful is not merely a means to an end; we arecaptivated by it solely for its own merits.

This line of thought has played a large role inphilosophical thinking about aesthetics since the

eighteenth century5

. But it fails to capture theessence of the beautiful, for there are many thingsthat are intrinsically pleasing, or pleasing for theirown sakes, that are not beautiful. Perhaps the moststraightforward examples of this are jokes. It mightbe true of certain jokes that it gives us pleasurebecause it is a means of some benet. For instance,you might derive a wicked sort of satisfaction atseeing your enemy made the butt of someone elseswit. But most of our considerable pleasure in jokesis not of this sort good jokes have the power tomake us feel good all on their own. Consider thrillsas another example. A good rollercoaster ridedelivers great enjoyment, but not for any benetit brings: people simply enjoy the thrills for theirown sakes. But good rollercoaster rides, like good

jokes, are not always beautiful .

For such reasons, philosophers emphasizing thenotion of valuing something for its own sake havefocused not on the concept of beauty, but on theconcept of the aesthetic. The latter is generallytaken to be wider than the concept of the beauty,including the humorous and the thrilling, and eventhings that provide no pleasure at all, such as thegrotesque and disturbing. The aesthetic has widely

been thought to be an important concept in relationto art, given that much of the most important artof the twentieth century was not, and was notintended to be, beautiful. The aesthetic, with itsgreater scope, has been thought more relevant tounderstanding this work.

Even if that is generally true about art, the beautifulhas clearly not stopped occupying our attention inmany other walks of life, and thus we still requirean understanding of it. So far we have seen that,even if the beautiful gives pleasure for its ownsake, there is more to being beautiful than justthis. But what could this be? Over the centuries,philosophers, artists and scientists have madevarious attempts to answer this question. Oneancient and very inuential tradition understoodbeauty as involving symmetria, or the harmoniousarrangements of parts6. This tradition, whichcan be traced back to the Pythagorean schoolof ancient Greece, construed beauty in a rathermathematical fashion. The basic idea is that in anygiven thing, only certain proportions of the various

parts produced a beautiful form. Thus in the humanform, for instance, the Greek sculptor Polyclitusclaimed to have discovered the specic lengthsand proportions of bodily parts required for humanbeauty. In architecture, certain proportions ofcolumn length to width were considered requisitefor building beautiful temples. Today, a descendentof this tradition persists in popular attempts toidentify beauty with the so-called golden section, aparticular mathematical ratio7.

The widespread

demand

for beauty

suggests that

we also crave

something

more, a glimpse

of the ideal

5 Stolnitz, J On the

Origins of Aesthetic

Disinterestedness,

Journal of Aesthetics

and Art Criticism 20

(1961):131-143

6 Tatarkiewicz, W.

The Great Theory

of Beauty and its

Decline, Journal of

Aesthetics and Art

Criticism 31 (1972):

165-180

7 Gardner, M The Cult

of the Golden Ratio,

Skeptical Inquirer18

(1994): 243-247


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However, the notion of harmonious proportionultimately fails to illuminate our concept of beauty.Again, the problem is the very wide range of thingsthat we consider beautiful. Whichever ratio of partswe choose, we can always nd some beautifulthings that fail to display it for instance, thehopelessly irregular pattern of autumn leaves on

a forest oor. Proponents of the golden sectiontheory of beauty insist that hidden in each of thesethings, somewhere, is the golden section. Butthis only waters down the notion of a harmoniousproportion so much that the proportion can befound in absolutely everything. And clearly, noteverything is beautiful. Once again, the factor whichmakes all of the beautiful things beautiful remainselusive.

Beauty as perfection

These difculties have moved some philosophersto despair of dening the concept of beauty. Butsuch despair is misplaced; surely a notion as useful,and as widely used, as beauty can be understood.My suggestion is that the beautiful is that whichpleases in virtue of its perfection. But what doesthis mean? The word perfect has several distinct

meanings, but the one we need here is could notbe better, as in this is the perfect beach. The keyidea behind this denition is that to nd somethingbeautiful is to see it as something of supremequality that cannot be improved. Take, for instance,a Gothic cathedral. It might have many appealingfeatures: it might be ominously imposing in itsscale; its stonework might be elegant; its peaceful,serene atmosphere might be pleasantly relaxing.But when we call it beautiful, we do somethingmore than just praise it in one of these ways. Wesay that there is something that itjust right wedelight not just in a pleasing or aestheticallysatisfying feature it has, but in its superlative quality.

However, a problem immediately arises as it is

plausible to think that just about everything isimprovable in some way; nothing, as they say,is perfect. Even the most magnicent cathedralcould have been a little better in some way thestonework could have been a bit cleaner, thestained glass more vivid, and so forth. If this iscorrect, then, according to our denition of beauty,nothing at all would be beautiful. To avoid thisdifculty, we need to make our denition refer toperfection in a subjective, rather than objective,


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way. That is, what is beautiful is not what is actuallyun-improvable, but rather what seems, to a givenobserver, to be unimprovable. Something isbeautiful for me if I cannot imagine how it might beimproved.

This is better, but one might still object that our

denition is too broad. Consider a grocery list thathas just the items that you need at the store. It isperfect given your needs you could not imaginea better grocery list. Our denition entails that youwill nd this list beautiful, but hardly anyone wouldsay that a grocery list is beautiful. The charge here,in short, is that not all perfect things are beautiful.Thus, perfection cannot be the essence of beauty.

To avoid this difculty, we must introduce onefurther complication into our denition. We need toappeal to the idea of surprise the unimprovabilitythat we see must be a surprising one. Or, to putit another way, the perfection in question must becontingent; it must not be a perfection that obtains,as a matter of course, something unremarkable and

expected. Very simple and easily achieved formsof unimprovability, like that of the shopping list, donot sufce to make things beautiful. The pleasureof beauty is not just pleasure in somethings beingof ultimate quality, but pleasure in somethingsbeing of ultimate quality in a world where, given thecircumstances, it shouldnt really be so good.

In some cases, it seems clear to us what it is thatis perfect about the thing we nd beautiful. In the

case of a Gothic cathedral, for example, we may beswept away by the way its combination of spaceand light inspire religious feeling we cannotimagine a space more conducive to such sentiment.However, in other cases, the perfection can be lessobvious. Indeed, some beautiful things can seem,at rst glance, quite imperfect. Great artists often

break the rules of a particular art form or genre,producing works that, according to the traditionalcriteria, are imperfect instances of their kind.Unconventional works of this sort can sometimesbe very beautiful Beethovens Ninth Symphony,for example. Are these not examples of imperfectbeauties? I think that, when we nd these worksbeautiful, we inevitably nd that the artist has donesomething to perfection. For instance, it may seemto us that although a piece of music violates therules of its genre, the composer has, amazingly,found the exact way to express a particular moodor feeling, through his novel use of structure andmelody.

Some beautiful

things can

seem, at first

glance, quite

imperfect


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Beauty as a public good?

Our denition of beauty gives us some insightinto why we desire beauty and why we value it aswe do. To live with beauty is to live in the worldwe want, a world where, despite the obstacles,at least some good things have ourishedbeyond our imagination. It is not difcult to seethe deep psychological satisfaction that this

kind of experience can offer. We can, of course,imagine living our lives without beauty: lives whereeverything seems to be either unsatisfactory, orsatisfactory but no better: just good enough. Insuch a life, we could trundle along well enough,never reaching the ideal in anything, but stillachieving some degree or virtue or happiness. It isnot hard to imagine such a life because this is whatmost of our lives are actually like most of the time.But the widespread demand for beauty suggeststhat we also crave something more: we also want,from time to time at least, a glimpse of the ideal.

Here we see the special signicance of beauty incomparison with other aesthetically valued features.Certainly we enjoy thrills and humour, and we can

be absorbed by the grotesque and the disturbing.And, as some philosophers have argued, there arebenets to our cultivating aesthetic experiencesof these kinds8. But it is only beauty that givesus this connection to the perfect and the ideal.This is why the beautiful is naturally connected toconcepts such as nobility, eternity, and wonder,and why it so easily inspires thoughts of a religiousor spiritual nature. The beautiful provides us witha perfected version of the mundane, awed things

of daily life a piece of heaven on earth. We seemto have a psychological need for this glimpse ofthe ideal, perhaps as a reminder that, despite theimperfections of the world around us, it does afterall exist. For this reason, I think we have goodreason to classify the experience of beauty asamong the great goods of human life.

In principle, this brings beauty into the realm ofpublic policy as something that a governmentshould be interested in securing for its citizens.Or does it? One might argue to the contrary asfollows. Beauty can be found in everything, not onlyin buildings and landscapes and artworks, but inpeople, actions, characters, even in ideas. Perhapspeople need beauty, but why do governmentsneed to help provide it? Can they not nd it inelements of their personal lives? There is certainlysomething to this line of thought. A man might livein a slum and yet enjoy the beauty of his friendsand their company: their unsurpassable kindness,generosity and love. A man might well be richin these things without price. Why, then, ought

government be concerned with the beauty of thepublic domain: the beauty of buildings, landscapes,and cityscapes?

The answer is that it is the sheer omnipresence ofour public, and especially our physical, environmentthat makes its beauty a legitimate matter ofpublic concern. The man in the slum can, withmental effort, turn his thought to the beauty of hisfriends, or his own character and actions, but his

8 Beardsley, M

Aesthetics: Problems

in the Philosophy of

Criticism (New York:

Harcourt, Brace &

World, 1958)

The

widespread

demand

for beauty

suggests that

we also want

a glimpse of

the ideal

Why ought

government

be concerned

with the

beauty of the

public domain:

buildings,

landscapes, andcityscapes?


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surroundings continually impress themselves onhim. Since we spend large amounts of time movingabout in the built environment, its visual characterin particular is pivotal in determining the degreeof beauty in our lives. This is why it makes sense,under some circumstances, to save buildings fortheir beauty as well as for their cultural or historical

importance: they are among the most potentaesthetic assets that a society can possess.

Beauty has a special signicance in relation to civicbuildings and spaces, since it is generally thoughtthat such buildings and spaces ought to expresssomething about the society that builds them. Wewant our public buildings to reect and embodyour modern values, such as transparency andinclusiveness. We also want them to be beautiful,not merely for decoration, but because they standas a symbol for the state of our society. One couldhouse a city council or an elementary school insome bleak warehouse and perhaps make do.Whenever taxes go up, there are inevitably angrysuggestions to do this just this. But we always

ignore these suggestions because we dont wantour communities to be seen as merely goodenough, or making do: we want to remind others,and ourselves, of the ideals to which they aspire.Beauty is a potent way of doing just this.

A modern society, however, must also be judiciousin its use of beauty. As our denition of beautyindicates, it is, by its nature, laudatory in characterand soporic in effect. Too much beauty, or beauty

in the wrong place, can be inappropriate, simplybecause overwhelming perfection is sometimesout of place. For instance, we want certain spaces,such as busy civic squares, to feel lived in and wellused, and this sometimes comes at the expenseof beauty. One of the chief complaints about theInternational, or Modernist, style of architecture

that dominated the early and mid-twentiethcentury was that overly rigid and mechanicaldesigns, while often beautiful to behold and tocontemplate, produced sterile and lifeless placesto live and work9. We also want certain publicspaces to reect the complexities of what goeson inside them. Certain sorts of transcendentbeauty inside a criminal courtroom, for instance,might be distracting and at odds with the natureof proceedings focused on very imperfectcircumstances.

Overall, we can conclude that if beauty is a greatgood, policy makers should devote effort to secureit in our lives, especially in our built environment,where appropriate. But this prospect is boundto be a daunting one to policy makers, given thenotorious subjectivity of taste. People disagree,often strongly, about the beauty of contemporaryarchitecture, for instance. Furthermore, peoplecan become quite cross when their own aestheticpreferences are challenged as George Santayanaonce suggested because they lack good reasonsfor holding them. Attempts to beautify the urbanlandscape will thus rile as many as they mollify.What policy maker could relish entering suchshark-infested waters? It is tempting to simply

Civic buildings

and spaces

ought to

express

something

about the

society that

builds them

9 Brolin, B The Failure

of Modern Architecture

(New York: Van

Nostrand Reinhold,

1976)


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drop talk about beauty altogether, and steer thediscussion toward more quantiable matters: cost,sustainability, economic benets, and so forth.

There is no easy solution to this problem. Peopleoften do disagree about what is beautiful. But, ofcourse, this is not a fact unique to beauty; it applies

to other policy issues too. The critical question iswhether it is possible to have a civic debate aboutthese differences in tastes, a debate which mightmove civic beautication initiatives forward. Herean understanding of the nature of beauty is againhelpful. As weve seen, claims that a building isbeautiful are not merely expressions of simplelikings; rather, they are claims that the building inquestion is perfect in some way. Of course, peoplealso disagree over whether the building is perfect.But this way of framing opens up space for aproductive discussion, rather than an inarticulateclash of tastes. For instance, Fred insists that thenew city hall should be built of stone in an imposingclassical style: thatwould be beautiful, he insists.A reasonable question to raise here is: a beautiful

what? If what we are building is a city hall a placewhere the people govern themselves in an open,transparent fashion then is a stone fortress reallythe perfect form for it? This might not be the endof the discussion, of course, and the conversationmight naturally turn to the ideals that ought tounderlie our civic governance. But that is a politicaldiscussion that we can have, and probably shouldhave, about our buildings: beauty is a natural partof, and stimulus for, these discussions.

Conclusion

Debates about beauty in the built environment aresometimes set up in a way that depicts modernityand democracy as somehow inherently opposedto beauty. In this way of thinking, beauty adopts aclassical style, something that democratic publicsare neither equipped nor inclined to do. Beautyis thus portrayed as an inherently conservative

notion. But this portrait of beauty is false, for just asbeauty can be found in many very different kinds ofthings, from buildings to chess moves, so beautytranscends any one particular style. In a democracy,the pursuit of beauty through public policy isbound to be contentious and deeply entwined withpolitical debate. But if our policy makers simplyignore beauty, they ultimately do their citizens adisservice by depriving them of an important value one of the great goods of human life. They, andwe, do better to make beauty a part of our ongoingpolitical conversation.

Claims that

a building is

beautiful is a

claim that it

is perfect in

some way


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Bibliography

Commission for Architecture and the BuiltEnvironment, Public attitudes to beauty(May,2010)

Beardsley, M Aesthetics: Problems in thePhilosophy of Criticism (New York: Harcourt, Brace& World, 1958)

Brolin, B The Failure of Modern Architecture (NewYork: Van Nostrand Reinhold, 1976)

Gardner, M The Cult of the Golden Ratio, SkepticalInquirer18 (1994): 243-247

Honderich, T After the Terror(Edinburgh:Edinburgh University Press, 2003)

Parsons, G Aesthetics and Nature (London:Continuum, 2008)

Stolnitz, J On the Origins of AestheticDisinterestedness, Journal of Aesthetics and ArtCriticism 20 (1961):131-143

Tatarkiewicz, W. The Great Theory of Beauty andits Decline, Journal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism31 (1972): 165-180

About the author

Glenn Parsons is Associate Professor in theDepartment of Philosophy at Ryerson University inToronto. His main research area is philosophicalaesthetics, and he has a particular interest in theaesthetics of natural and built environments. Hisessays have appeared in periodicals such as TheJournal of Aesthetics and Art Criticism, the British

Journal of Aesthetics, and the Canadian Journalof Philosophy. He is also the author of two books:Functional Beauty(with Allen Carlson; Oxford,2008) and Aesthetics and Nature (Continuum,2008).


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Beauty may be contentious

and difficult to define, but its

also one of the great goods of

human life. It is something we

all crave and, as Glenn Parsons

explains, a necessary part ofany political conversation about

the kind of places and the kind

of society in which we want to

live.

ARQ_People and Places- Seven Essays on Beauty

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