Beauty is only in the eye of the beholder

There are few things more beautiful, in my opinion, than well-composed music sung by a talented artist. The combination gives rise to the distinctively human appreciation of what is truly fine.

One of my Christmas gifts last year was a CD by Susan Boyle, the heretofore obscure Scottish woman who rocketed to fame on “Britain’s Got Talent” with her stirring rendition of “I Dreamed a Dream” from the popular musical “Les Miserables.” However, the first song she sings on the album is “Wild Horses,” co-written by aging rocker Mick Jagger.

The instant I heard Miss Boyer caressing one beautiful note after another I, like every other music lover, was transported in heart and mind to that wonderful realm of the human soul that loves the beautiful. Although modern, materialistic natural scientists are determined to reduce this sublime human emotion to some sort of firing of brain synapses, no one in fact takes such a claim seriously.

But long before certain scientists began to find a physical cause for music appreciation, aesthetic sensibilities had been reduced to matters of mere personal preference, as in the phrase, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.”
The above proposition, surely incontrovertible, is supposed to lay to rest the notion that genuine beauty exists in the world, and especially that appreciation is a result of refined judgment rather than personal preference. “Who’s to say that some things are more beautiful than other things, or that there is such a thing as good taste,” some say.

Susan Boyle is not the best singer in the world, but she is very good. Her meteoric rise is encouraging in at least two ways. She rose to world wide appreciation on the basis of her talent, and her choice of music rose above the modern world’s current preference for basic rhythms appealing to the lowest common denominator.

By the standards of the most esteemed music critics, Miss Boyle is a “middlebrow” artist, a cut above pop music, but falls short of the operatic standard. In any case, the world is better off for being exposed to this, as always when those with musical talents appeal to the best in us.

Doubtless this line of reasoning is not persuasive to those who think that “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder (or hearer).” But a moment’s consideration will reveal that it is a truism, although hardly without significance. For where else is beauty to be beheld except through the human senses?

We are the only creatures who can be impressed by a beautiful sunset, much less the music of Johann Sebastian Bach or Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart, and many other gifted composers. This experience can be called “subjective” in the sense that we are the “subjects” for it, but that hardly makes it unworthy of respect.

Consider also the well-known conundrum: “If a tree falls in the forest and there is no one to hear it, is there sound?” If the answer is no, it must be because there are no animals present, who hear sounds too. But assuming they are absent, then there is indeed no sound.

Have I slipped over into the opposing camp with this answer? Absolutely not, for what is sound if not the experience of the ear? Of course, the felled tree sends out sound waves, but in the exceedingly unlikely event that there are no living creatures in the area, there is no sound.

The analogy with sight is instructive. Can we really speak of the world providing sights if there is no one to see them? Sight is the experience of an organ, the eye. It has no separate existence.

If all these observations and judgments are true and accurate, then nothing is proven by reducing sound and sight to synapses, or by identifying the organ within which they are experienced.

We are still left with the question of what is beautiful, which I can only suggest (in my limited space) is determined by reference to the best formed or best ordered things in our experience. As an essay on singing I read years ago put it, we know who is the best singer only when we hear that person. There is no theory of beauty that transcends experience, as some persons, for reasons best known to God, can discern or display what is beautiful in a superior way.

ABOUT THE WRITER
Richard Reeb taught political science, philosophy and journalism at Barstow College from 1970 to 2003. He is the author of “ Taking Journalism Seriously: ‘Objectivity’ as a Partisan Cause”  (University Press of America, 1999). He can be contacted at rhreeb@verizon.net.