Beauty Of Words Research Articles

Hutcheson on the Idea of Beauty

Hutcheson on the Idea of Beauty Patricia M. Matthews in “poppies on the wheat,” Helen Jackson compares the farmer’s experience of “counting the bread and wine by autumn’s gain” to the pleasure she feels on her observation of the same farm: A tropic tide of air with ebb and flow Bathes all the fields of wheat until they glow Like flashing seas of green, which toss and beat Around the vines.1 Although we may express ourselves less poetically, we have all had the experience of being immediately pleased with some complex object: the dramatic view from a mountain peak, a series of movements in dance, a pretty face. In An Inquiry Concerning Beauty, Order, Harmony, Design,2 Francis Hutcheson argues that this common phenomenon is the key to understanding beauty.3 The kinds of pleasure heretofore recognized by modern philosophers have been limited to sensible pleasures immediately associated with simple sensations like taste and smells, and rational pleasures mediated by a process of reflection on the advantage that objects may bring us. This limited understanding of pleasure misses the fact that we often take an immediate pleasure in complex objects that is not reducible to either of these two recognized kinds of pleasure. Based on this insight, Hutcheson argues that beauty is immediately (and passively) perceived by an internal sense, much in the way that we take an immediate (and passive) pleasure in individual tastes or colors. Further, he argues that the cause of the idea of beauty is complex ideas whose forms [End Page 233] display uniformity amidst variety (UAV), although we need not know the UAV in order to have the idea of beauty. What is “the idea of beauty”? Hutcheson follows Locke in holding that the immediate object of thinking or perceiving is an idea. Ideas are either simple (uniform) or complex (resolvable into simple ideas).4 All simple ideas originate in experience. What, then, is the immediate object of the internal sense? Hutcheson begins his Preface to the Two Inquiries by pointing to the importance of understanding the various sources of pleasure: wisdom is a capacity for pursuing the greatest and most lasting pleasure, so we must be clear on the kinds of pleasure we are capable of receiving (23). One of the pleasures that Hutcheson brings to our attention is the pleasure that arises from complex ideas of objects. He then informs us that “these determinations to be pleased with [certain complex forms] the author chooses to call senses, distinguishing them from the powers which commonly go by that name by calling our power of receiving the beauty of regularity, order, harmony, an internal sense” (24). The body of the Inquiry follows a similar pattern. Hutcheson claims that there are pleasures that accompany complex ideas of objects, and informs us that “the word beauty is taken for the idea raised in us, and a sense of beauty is our power of receiving this idea” (I: IX, 34). In each case, the internal sense receives some idea which Hutcheson refers to as beauty. The complex ideas themselves are made up of ideas received by other senses (or derived from reason, in certain cases), so the only idea left to be accounted for by the internal sense is the idea of pleasure. In addition, Hutcheson often identifies the idea of beauty with pleasure, as in the phrase, “foundation of the beauty or pleasure” (III: III, 49) and “pleasure or pain, beauty or deformity” (VII: II, 84). Hutcheson also tells us that when we claim that an object is beautiful, “we mean [that such objects are] agreeable to the sense of men” (II: I, 39).5 The most straightforward reading of Hutcheson’s description of the idea of beauty is that it is an idea of pleasure taken in certain complex ideas of objects.6 Yet, Hutcheson appears to suggest other possibilities in the Inquiry. He is concerned with the pleasure that results from complex ideas of objects, and he sometimes seems to say that the idea of beauty refers to the complex idea itself. For example, he tells us that “there are far greater pleasures in those complex ideas of objects, which obtain the...

Unlocking the Air and Other Stories by Ursula K. Le Guin

Reviews 85 episode. As well as being involved with the Camposes, Clay places him­ self under the wing of a kindly older trapper who has an Indian wife. He learns to let go of past resentments that consume him. Gradually he jetti­ sons his anger, overcomes what racial reservations he has, and accepts what today we call multi-cultural values. Gradually he allows himself to love Lupita. He understands that a regard for her family and their values must underlie his love. As she says, “You respect me. Actually, you respect all of us, my family, and that’s important.” Increasingly sensitive and human, Clay Westbrook is very much a hero for our time. With the resolution of the plot’s first strand, the second can work itself out. Now emotionally anchored, Clay is ready to deal with those who hassle him and wish to steal his land. He shows himself as prudent in combat as in love. Even traditional Western violence is subdued in Twin Rivers. No one shoots anyone, and the fist fights that do occur are left inconclusive: Clay half-beats one of his antagonists and fights the other to a draw. Only the fatalistic Tony, with his lower boiling point, beats his opponent outright. When at the end the chief heavy shows up spoiling for revenge, it is a measure of Clay’s moral growth that he refuses to fight him again. The story closes with Clay no longer holding grudges against anyone, at peace in the land he loves. Even minor characters, such as the cowboys of the Cross Pole outfit to which Clay belongs, come across as individuals. Only the two “pil­ grims,” mouthing tourist platitudes and jokes (they want, inevitably, to see “les Tetons"), are cardboard: parodies of Easterners, false notes in a book that generally rings true. The narrative informs as it entertains: here a disquisition on the importance of buckets in homesteading, there one on the grim reality behind “Bury Me Not on the Lone Prairie.” If Nesbitt sometimes insists too much, the moral tale he tells offers its quiet rewards. JOHN CLUBBE University of Kentucky Unlocking the Air and Other Stories. By Ursula K. Le Guin. (New York: HarperCollins, 1996. 207 pages, $31.00/$22.00.) In Unlocking the Air and Other Stories, Le Guin demonstrates her sensitive and intimate relationship with the English language and her capacity to bring out the beauty of words and the human experience they describe. She admits that though the stories “talk about reality . . . reali­ ty is a slippery fish that often can be caught only in a net of spells,” so she 86 Western American Literature weaves together in this collection of short stories the power of suggestion, ambiguity, and poignant insight to explore “the mysteries of name and time and ordinary living and ordinary pain.” “Half Past Four” reminds us that people with the same name exist all over the world and yet have their own stories to tell. Not until the third vignette of eight does the reader realize the narratives have nothing to do with each other even though they all talk about Ann, Ella, Stephen, and Todd. In “The Spoons in the Basement,” Le Guin explores the mystery of time by explaining that one of the previous tenants of Georgia’s house, “leaving for the holidays in June of 1910 or for a year abroad in September of 1951,” accidently left six apostle spoons. In “Daddy’s Big Girl” Le Guin studies ordinary living from a most unconventional per­ spective, that of the sister of a young girl who never ceases to grow in height even after she reaches a stature of forty-five feet at the age of fif­ teen. “Olders” tells the story of a farm wife who must confront not just the death of her husband but his planting as well, for in his dying he metamorphosizes into a tree. After his skin browns and grains, he is stood upright in a bucket of water to sprout roots until he can be planted in the Old Grove with his ancestors. Le Guin wonders if there was cruelty in his not dying. At the end of “Half...

The Seventh Sense: A Study of Francis Hutcheson's Aesthetics And Its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain (review)

90 HISTORY OF PHILOSOPHY the authors grapple with important issues in an attempt to understand Spinoza, and their papers will, it is to be hoped, stimulate further interest in Spinoza's works. CHARLESJARRETT Rutgers University Peter Kivy. The Seventh Sense: A Study of Francis Hutcheson's Aesthetics And Its Influence in Eighteenth-Century Britain. New York: Burt Franklin and Co., 1976. Pp. ii + 268. Kivy's admirable book is a great deal more than just an account of Hutcheson's theory of taste; it is an account that, using Hutcheson's view as foundational, describes the development of the theory of taste in Britain from Shaftesbury at the beginning of the eighteenth century to Dugald Stewart at the beginning of the nineteenth century. The book is divided into two parts of almost equal length. Part 1 describes the background out of which Hutcheson's view arose, and then proceeds to a careful and detailed analysis of Hutcheson's theory. Part 2 traces the course that theorizing about taste followed after Hutcheson to its demise at the beginning of the nineteenth century. Kivy outlines the views of a number of pre-Hutcheson thinkers--from Lord Herbert of Cherbury to Shaftesbury--who claimed that there is an internal sense of beauty. Kivy notes that on the title page of the first edition of Hutcheson's Inquiry one finds the following: "In which the principles of the late Earl of Shaftesbury are explained and defended against the author of the Fable of the Bees.... " But as Kivy carefully explains, it is the empiricism of John Locke that forms the philosophical background of Hutcheson's theory, not Shaftesbury's Neoplatonism; so the title page is somewhat misleading. Kivy might have noted that the mention of Shaftesbury was dropped from the title page of the second edition. Kivy's f'LrStanalytic task is to examine what "sense" means for Hutcheson. He here shows Hutcheson's debt to Joseph Addison and discusses whether Hutcheson thought there was one or several aesthetic senses. Whether one or many, Hutcheson thought that our power to appreciate beauty, grandeur, and the like, is a sense because it displays the characteristics that mark sense perception: independence of the will, innateness, independence of knowledge, and immediacy. Kivy argues forcefully that these four do not distinguish sense perception from reason. The next question is what Hutcheson takes to be the referent of the term "beauty." Kivy quotes the well-known passage, "the word Beauty is taken for the Idea rais'd in us.... " But an idea for Hutcheson might be a sensation of pleasure, a sensation of a secondary quality, or a sensation of a primary quality. And the idea might be either a simple idea or a complex idea. Kivy infers that the idea must be a simple one because Hutcheson posits a specific sense that receives it. After examining and discussing passages that suggest that beauty is "something like a secondary quality" and passages that suggest that beauty is a pleasure, Kivy concludes that just as Berkeley identifies intense heat and pain, Hutcheson really thought the secondary-quality description and the pleasure description were two descriptions of the same simple idea. But this conclusion really gives the nod to the pleasure interpretation because on the "something like a secondary quality" interpretation there are two things to be accounted for: a simple idea of beauty, and a pleasure that accompanies it. Kivy also notes that Hutcheson sometimes "speaks with the vulgar" and calls unity in variety "beauty," although, strictly speaking, beauty is a simple idea caused by unity in variety. Kivy rejects the view of Frankena that Hutcheson holds a noncognitivistview of the analysis of "x is beautiful"; that is, the view that "x is beautiful" expresses rather than describes a feeling of approval. Kivy thinks that what clinches the argument is that Locke's philosophy of language, which Hutcheson can be presumed to adhere to, does not make provision for an expressive use of words. But Hutcheson might have developed a theory that is inconsistent with his own higherorder view of language. Such occurrences are often the prelude to philosophical change. Kivy BOOK REVIEWS 91 might have noted that in An...

Poetry and Tradition

It can hardly be claimed that the advance in material civilization has done much for poetry. The growth of large towns has curtailed that intimate connection of man with nature which has in the past provided countless themes for song; the pressure of crowded populations fosters conventions of behavior which are inimical to the free play of imaginative impulse; the spread of standardized education does not always encourage the originality and independence which are necessary to creative work; the specialization of intellectual life diminishes not merely the desire to write poetry but the ability to enjoy it. A mass of evidence shows that poetry is far less popular in western Europe and the United States than in countries like Persia or China or India, whose material civilization is far less advanced but which have kept a traditional taste for the beauty of words. At an even lower level, in societies where conditions are still primitive and existence is indeed hard, poetry may be the main pastime and consolation of peoples like the Asiatic Tatars or the Armenians or the Ainus, among all of whom it is a truly national art practiced with a high degree of accomplishment and enjoyed by whole populations. Compared with such societies, our own mechanized, urban world is indeed feeble and uncertain in its approach to an art which has in the past enjoyed great glory but seems now in danger of becoming an esoteric pursuit of cliques and coteries.

Poe's Theory of Beauty

IN THE COURSE of his efforts to determine the relationship between and literary art Poe developed a comprehensive theory of which pervades his critical thought, imparting to it a curious originality and a remarkable consistency. In fact, to analyze Poe's theory'-of is to analyze at least partially his theory of poetry and his theory of literature; for despite the sharp distinctions that Poe liked to draw between poetry and prose fiction, he tended to regard all literature as subsumed in his generic concept of poetry-a concept which he drew directly from his theory of beauty. As the basic principles of Poe's theory reveal themselves under semantic analysis, the several senses in which Poe used the term beauty become increasingly significant and logically interrelated. Poe sometimes meant one thing by the term beauty and sometimes another,' but in each different use the context guides us toward the proper sense. However, before a particular context can render clearly a particular meaning, it is first necessary to discover a central meaning for in Poe's theory to which his other meanings for can be related. Thus the first step in analyzing Poe's theory of is to clarify his terminology by determining his basic substantive meaning for the word beauty; thereafter, the basic principles and semantic complexities of Poe's theory can be examined in detail.

The Character and Poetry of Keats

There are two sayings of John Keats which have passed upon all men's tongues, and made their way into the inner treasury of the English language. They have become proverbial. One is the first line of Endymion, “A thing of Beauty is a joy forever,” and the other the two last lines of the “Ode on a Grecian Urn”:Beauty is truth, truth beauty,—that is all Ye know on earth, and all ye need to know. When Keats used this word Beauty he meant it in that clear and lofty sense which is not always attached to the term. Beauty is often loosely spoken of, as if it were merely a single word for artistic perfection. But a thing may be perfectly genuine art without being beautiful at all and without being true. We know how much poetry of a very fervid sort has been written within the last quarter of a century, which is quite splendid from the point of view of art, and thoroughly satisfactory to the devotees of Art for Art's sake, yet is entirely unlovely in the white light of Beauty and Truth. Such poetry disturbs. It is of the darkness of doubt, of that darkest doubt of all, which has lost confidence in the existence or the possibility of purity and self-sacrifice. But Beauty cannot disturb. It ennobles the heart, lifting it into an atmosphere of golden quietude and the purest human loveliness. Keats might also have said that Beauty was Goodness as well as Truth, and then the aphorism would have been complete, for that which is beautiful and true in this lofty sense must also be good.

The beauty of words

The beauty of words

A Relief by Mestrovich

THE wood-carving by Mestrovich of Christ Driving the Money-Changers from the Temple is a work of art tremendously significant in its expression of force. It bears evidence, not to be gainsaid, of the essential meaning of its subject. That meaning is power. It is not beautiful in any sense ordinarily connoted by the word beauty. It is powerful in every sense which the word power, the idea behind power, connotes. Those who understand Michelangelo's Christ of the Last Judgment, however repellent to them, will understand this Christ. Others will not. It is not natural in that the figure of Christ amounts to little more than an abstraction, almost a symbol; but it is realistic in the extreme as the conveyancer of irresistible and angered strength couched in the form of a barely recognizable human being. That Michelangelo's Christ is the opposite in being concretely anatomical has little if anything to do with the question of understanding or misunderstanding. A symbolic figure in one case, a deceptively real one in the other, victorious over the seemingly irresistible strength of overpowering greed, they mean one and the same thing when it comes to the essential. The might of just wrath in opposition to the might of greed, gone mad, Mestrovich has refined to the basic, and transmuted into the wood upon which he has plowed clean lines and hewn flat, sharp surfaces, their sinister shadows being produced by angular, knife-like edges. So is the wood made to carry our thoughts into retrospect, and raise our understanding above ordinary. The pattern of lines and surfaces as the artist has arranged them are insistently subversive of one another, and abstract to a high degree. Look at the hands, the features, as lines and surfaces forever colliding, not by chance but by intention, with other lines and surfaces. All is conflict. The words “he glorieth in the goad” describe this embodiment of passionately angry outburst, merciless to lay on, which is Christ. The money changers flee. But they are yet utterly consumed with faith in the money that alone can save their present hides and, anon, put them even with their scourger whose house of prayer they have made a den of thieves. This is the whole point. The living heart, the essence of meaning has, as it were, been plucked out by Mestrovich and planted anew in a body of his own creating, a very powerful body fashioned to make us almost cease to breathe as it reveals to us hitherto undreamt-of intensities of anger and rage, of spiritual sorrow and bodily suffering.