“To regard beauty as a luxury adornment or a social signifier was to miss the true potential of the experience.” – John Armstrong
Beauty is subjective and according to Armstrong its a “Kindly notion. Saying its opinion based and different from everyone keeps the peace between everyone. I agree with Armstrong’s ideas about beauty for the most part but seeing him break dow the idea of beauty and articulating ever piece almost seems extraneous to me. Beauty is subjective in my eyes and honestly quite simple. I’m not saying Armstrong’s breakdown is wrong or anything I just have never really thought about beauty in depth what leads to use feeling like something is beautiful. I do believe that beauty is linked largely to our emotions and invokes feelings we may not expect. That to me is the unknown power of beauty. You’ll never know when or what will provoke those feelings until its right in front of you.
That is how I view beauty.
Going off of the quote above, I agree with Armstrong and that beauty can be experienced by anyone. It’s not a “luxury” and it doesn’t have be linked to material culture. I guess what Armstrong is trying to say is that its not that special since everyone experiences it one way or another multiple times in their life.
I believe mainstream American Society views beauty also as something subjective but is more broad about it. Meaning you’d be expected to be impressed by a beautiful landscape or universal moment. I liked how Armstrong in his essay talked about Schillers belief of beauty is: “whatever speaks powerfully to both sides of our nature at the same time.” Meaning that beauty is a full body experience or feeling which I feel many in society would agree with. Or maybe not and its all in my head. All I truly know is what I think beauty means due to the fact that it is different for everyone.
Wonderful. Your initial reaction has me wanting you to further explore the basic question: is it worth my time to think about the beauty experience? Why or why not?