Friday, 4 August 2023

Is beauty good?

 

TEDx Talks - Own your face | Robert Hoge | TEDxSouthBank

In the article "Nietzsche - Your conscience is no saint", Nietzsche states that "Earlier societies (he is rather unspecific about which exactly) did not see things this way; for them, it was the successful, beautiful, powerful aristocratic people who were valued as good, while the rest were bad, in the sense of weak, deficient, or just not up to much."

The YouTube video above clearly illustrates that non-beauty does not equate to bad.  Conversely, beauty can be superficial, manipulative and does not equate good.  

However, there seems to be a natural desire in us to love cute and beautiful things, animals and people, and repulse against the opposites.  People want to be liked, accepted and the pursuit of beauty seems natural too.  

How do we reconcile our rational analysis that beauty does not equate to goodness and our natural desire for beautiful things? 

What do philosophers say about beauty?

The following Wikipedia page discusses the topic: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beauty

A pdf file of the Wikipedia article (8/8/23) is here.

See Also

Radio Podcast 

Philosopher Zone - Beauty: aesthetic or moral ideal?   Guest: Heather Widdows, Professor of Philosophy, University of Warwick UK

ABC RN Sunday Extra - 

Websites

 #EverydayLookism - https://www.everydaylookism.com/

Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy - Beauty: https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/beauty/ 

YouTube videos

TED - Looks aren't everything. Believe me, I'm a model. | Cameron Russell

No comments:

Post a Comment

Moral Value Pluralism

  What is Pluralism? - PHILO-notes   The following are articles from Wikipedia and Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy. Value pluralism - Wi...