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First of all, take your pick- I’m going to use beauty as the example, but it applies just as well to any of the others. The question is subjective vs. objective
1- Subjective beauty is true. Right? I mean, if I think something or someone is beautiful, it’s true for me. There’s no real questioning of that. You might disagree, but you have to acknowledge that my subjective opinion is true for me.
2- Objective beauty is untrue. Or at least, unknowable. Either there is no such thing as objective beauty (do you think there’s actually an objective answer as to who is the most beautiful woman in the world?), or else there’s just no way for us to have any contact with it. Even if you managed to briefly touch objective beauty (somehow, you manage to be right that your living room chair is the world’s most beautiful chair), how would you ever know? What possible abilities would you have to tell the difference between your opinion and some sort of external idea that is “true”?
3- If subjective beauty is true, and objective beauty is untrue, or at least irrelevant and unknowable, then universal beauty must be true. As in, if there isn’t any objective beauty, then everyone’s subjective beauty is equally true. It’s true for you, and that’s it. Maybe a better way of saying it is that everyone’s sense of beauty is only true for them, and therefore outside of yourself, your opinion has no more meaning than anyone else’s. Therefore, you have to acknowledge that, except for your own personal tastes, anything that anyone thinks is beautiful is as true a statement of beauty as any of your feelings on the matter. If that’s true, then you have to conclude that everything is equally beautiful, except in terms of your personal opinion. The guy who selected which design New York City was going to use for its garbage cans might very well have thought it was the most beautiful garbage can around, or even the most beautiful possible? How can you be sure he didn’t?
So, everything you think is beautiful, is. And everything you think isn’t, someone else might think is, and so is. So no matter what, you, and everyone around you, is right. And I think that’s beautiful.
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So, everything you think is beautiful, is. And everything you think isn’t, someone else might think is, and so is. So no matter what, you, and everyone around you, is right. And I think that’s beautiful.
This is only from an objective perspective.
From a subjective perspective, I fucking hate what certain people think is beautiful.
i think your beautiful Andre
i have a very hard time with your line of thought.
you leave us all mad men, or wandering beasts.
left to ourselves and no one else, sealed in solipsism, the world is indeed as beautiful as the individual's imagination.
and without the bearings against the longitudes of another, with no heed that i am alive relative to the breath of life, i am, therefore i am, because i exist only for myself.
let me be clear because what you say puts all of us in danger of its absence: a monstrous warlord of sudan sees mutilation of a generation, beautiful. his young apprentice sees the absolute brutality of the leader beautiful. i imagine the careful cabal to systematically rape, decimate, then obliterate a race of people might have the same geometric beauty of fractal art for his lieutenants.
beauty can be in the physical world as in ideas, in perception to poetry. but not in everything. and if not everything, then not from everyone.
no, some things are ugly. universally, objectively ugly. perhaps it is difficult to know objective beauty, but it is not so hard to know that there is divine ecumenical revulsion. and therefore, everything cannot be beautiful and everything cannot be right.
Not for humans. That's what separates us from monsters and madness. among humans, there is a shared consciousness or perhaps a shared spirit, tenuous as much as it is real.
step outside, its possible. but you leave behind from that consciousness the equally shared reason and empathy. without that, you're only right because of your ability to negate others by brute strength or size. beasts grazing on a different plane of existence i wish no part of.
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