Beauty is in the Eye of the Beholder.
I don’t think so.
The reading on Kant is one of those lessons that I find very interesting. To say that something is beautiful, one must attend to their judgment of taste, which does not require reason. This is why the judgment of taste is not logical, it concerns aesthetics, hence why it is subjective.
To find something beautiful, we must first look at the form, to be appreciative of its representation, and the pleasure it evokes. That is why, for Kant, beauty lies in the form.
If I can paraphrase Kant, perhaps it would be safe to assume it in this commonly used quote, “Beauty is in the eye of the beholder.” To judge something that is beautiful, first, we must be able to look at that something through our eyes that it is indeed beautiful. Oftentimes we regard something as beautiful because it pleases our eyes. And I find that a valid and persuasive judgment.
Granted, out there, there must be a universal concept of beauty and/ or what is beautiful, and yet I don’t think it’s a great investment of time and contemplation to find it. I like to borrow and rephrase Heidegger, he said that Dasein can only be informed to us by the Dasein. With this line of thought, I like to assume the position that beauty is there because we are here to inform others about what is beautiful. What interests me about the judgment of taste is that everyone is allowed to say what pleases them. Unlike, for example, the position of Kant on the use of public and private reason where reason is manufactured as something exclusive among the people. Everyone is invited to have a say about what is beautiful.
Is beauty really in the eye of the beholder? Yes! But I don’t think so.
