On Black, White, and the Possibility of Beauty in Locke

Abstract

Locke claims that man makes a mistake by linking the perception of authentic beauty to nature, because beauty is argued to constitute a deliberate man-made fabrication. Specifically, man is said to emotionally wrap the ugliness, and brutishness, of a parsimonious nature within an extreme understanding of perception, where even apparent qualitative distinctions, between tone and hue, form one aspect of this fabrication. By becoming a slave to this emotional fabrication of beauty, Locke argues that the mind liberates reason, by freeing it from the debilitating influence caused by the overwhelming ugliness of nature. Being liberated in this manner, man can then secure the acquisition of property. Trusting the senses, so as to deliver an authentic rendering of external natural beauty, to the mind of man, as once presumed by older philosophy, therefore, becomes impossible. Hence, the prospect modern man ever experiencing authentic beauty, as provided by nature, is lost.