Be forewarned: After looking more closely through this book, I've discovered that there are many pictures of nude paintings and, unfortunately, even some nude photographs. I wish I'd known this before purchasing it. 'Cause it was an expensive book.
Aside from the soft porn, this work is an impressive endeavor. Besides being edited by one of the most "nimble" contemporary minds, it is itself a beautiful book with the quality of pictures you find on a art geek's coffee table. I look forward to meandering my way through it. I also picked up his more recent, On Ugliness, which despite the name, looks to be just as well-crafted.
I'm sure he'll develop his argument persuasively, but already I'm finding my understanding of beauty conflicting with his as he lays out his premises. Eco distinguishes something that is "good" from something that is "beautiful" by pointing out that a good thing may be desired by us, but a beautiful thing can be enjoyed without necessarily possessing it. I agree with this as far as it goes. But I would want to say that there is something about a beautiful thing that we desire. It is not necessarily a desire to possess, but perhaps a desire to be made a part of it. This manifests itself in various ways. One way, I believe, is that it inspires in us a desire to create something beautiful ourselves - almost channeling the beauty that has inspired us and, therein, being identified with it. We do desire to possess beauty, just not as an addendum to be enjoyed, rather, we want to consume it, to drink it in, to become it somehow. It's why we write poetry about sunsets - we see God's created beauty and we are moved to sub-create/pro-create/create-alongside-of.
This said, I appreciate the potential of his argument for making a case for objective beauty, not limiting it to some "eye of the beholder" sense.
Thoughts?
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