Summary
Denis Dutton as a philosopher studying art and beauty mentions his opinion about the origin of beauty. According to him, there exists a universal standard for beauty, and the strongest theory to explain this comes from Charles Darwin. He believes that the experience about the mental intensity and satisfaction of beauty is a part of evolved human psychology. Thus, natural selection in evolutionary mechanisms explains our basic disgust and pleasure. Another cardinal principle about evolution is a sexual choice, and the beautiful tail feathers of peacocks are the most famous example of this. The tail feathers of the peacock result from mate selection of peahens. So to speak, beauty is a way of nature to enable to act from far away. Also, people from different culture like a special landmark that is similar to those of savannahs of the Cainozoic, and this is evidence that all people find beauty from similar poetic experiences. In artistic beauty, you have only to examine hand axes made 2.5 million years ago. These are mostly symmetrical acute leaf or teardrop shape, and they would be the first art work. Skilful axes presented desirable personal qualities and these skills upgraded producers’ positions and gave reproductive advantages. However, it is not sure where the idea came from because there was no language at that time. Nevertheless, we feel the shape is beautiful, and we have discovered beauty from the skill. Therefore, beauty is an inheritance from our ancestors, and it will continue with our descendants.
Words: 249
Response
Denis Dutton’s lecture is a lot of fun. Philosophy lectures are easy to get boring at any moment, but his lecture with animation is really interesting. In addition, his idea that derives the origin of beauty from a theory of biological evolution is unusual. The idea that standards of beauty vary from person to person and from country to country is almost widely-accepted thought, but I am convinced that it might be so explained while I am listening to his lecture. However, I am not sure that his theory is certainly true. This is because beauty or art is a highly abstract concept, and there are too many cases that different people often have different feelings about the same object. Thus, I think that a standard of beauty that people with different cultures have in common possesses a certain amount of unity in the process that each other’s thoughts are mixed and recreated through cultural exchange rather than is inherent in ourselves. Nevertheless, I intend to rethink of his idea because his theory is quite persuasive.
Words: 176
2 comments:
Your topic was so interesting to me. You said you cannot be sure whether there are some standard of beauty since all we have different idea observing same objects, but I believe there are some common standard to define beauty. This is proportion. I believe when we see perfectly proportional objects, we feel it’s beautiful and it is inherited by our ancestors from long along times ago. There are some reasons I believe it. 2 years ago, I have watched some documentary program in Korea, and according to the program, there are some reason that people prefer handsome, slim, tall, and beautiful spouses. That’s because people want to have healthy offspring. In other word, if we see someone who has perfectly symmetrical body and beautiful face and we considered them who have healthy and perfect gene. As a result, we become attracted by them for our juniors. Like this, I believe there are something obvious to define beauty and it’s universal and exist from our ancestors. (Words= 166)
I love this topic! One of my favourites.
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