In the essay, “La bella vita”, John Armstrong discusses beauty and what makes something beautiful. He states that, “To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience.” That is, beauty belongs to everyone. Beauty is not just a painting in someone’s house, or beautiful clothing, or jewelry. While I agree with this statement, I feel that Armstrong’s precise definition of beauty is more specific than that. He agrees with Schiller that for something to be truly beautiful it requires both immediate gratification and rational order. Essentially, “For Schiller, true beauty is whatever speaks powerfully to both sides of out nature at the same time.” I don’t think that both of these two aspects are required for something to be beautiful, and I think defining it that way doesn’t account for how many different things people do find beautiful. Take a sunset, for example. There is no immediate logic or reasoning behind it. And yet, people have been finding nature beautiful long before they knew how to explain it, long before they even considered the rational part of beauty. For some people, the unpredictability and unexpectedness of nature is what makes it beautiful. In addition, nature is a beauty completely divorced from luxury or social signifiers, as for the most part, it belongs to everyone, and everyone can appreciate it.
Thoughtful free write.