Philosophical Writings

Author(s): Hemant Shah
Publisher: Academy of Philosophy

Page 84

The Role of Beauty as a Value in Everyday Life
and images, when the soul has an experience of being contemplated with an object of beauty, it is a reminiscence of what it has known. Beauty, like Truth and Goodness, is a divine attribute and in its absolute state it co-exists with others.
As a philosopher Goethe says "The beautiful is a manifestation of the secret laws of the Nature." On the othemand, Ruskin says, “If we can perceive beauty in everything of God's doing, we may argue that we have reached the true perception of its universal laws”! Beauty has been perceived or experienced as that which flows from the Divine. According to Plotinues, "The absolute Good is the cause and source of all beauty, just as the sun is the source of all light, and Beauty is the communication of a thought that flows from the Divine.”
It has been rightly said that Beauty can be perceived or experienced as a feeling. But it can only be experienced in freedom. Ruskin says, “The sensation of Beauty is not sensual on the one hand, nor is it intellectual on the other, but is dependent on a pure, right, and open state of heart.”* Even the Christian scripture says : “Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God," God who is absolute Beauty. Ancient Indian books say the same thing; in the state of purity of heart one can see beauty in all things. In short, when the heart is pure and able to respond to Truth, Beauty and Goodness, in the Platonic sense comes into existence. This was also explained by Plato in his Phaedrus.
"Suppose a man were to see true beauty, uncontaminate, pure, without alloy; suppose he had strength to gaze not on some compost of human colours and desires and all the vain things of this life, but on the very divinity of beauty itself - would this man's life be ignoble when he has made his home with that which all should seek and has fixed his gaze upon it ? Is not your opinion rather that because he sees beauty, because it is clear to him, he alone will bring forth true goodness and not its