Role of Beauty as Value in Everyday Life

Author(s): Hemant Shah
Publisher: Z_Philosophical_Writings_001802.pdf

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Philosophical Writings
Let us now come to Beauty - beauty as a intrisic value. All through the previous pages we have tried to understand the philosophy of beauty, beauty expressed in art and in Nature. We also saw how the conception of beauty since ancient period development in West and in India. Let us see beauty as a value. By value we mean that which is “adapted to the furtherance of our conjoint human existence that which satisfies our elementary wants and concerns (dispositions), that which contributes to human happiness and well-being, by which means a sense of pleasure is produced and in which a good worth-striving for is presented."}} Beauty has always remained a prominant value to man in all the sphere of his life. He does not marely insist on a beautiful wife but also wants beautiful house, beautiful dress, beautiful music, beautiful Nature. Beauty always pleases, and evsrybody seeks pleasure in life. Thus the role of beauty; the role of aesthetic pleasure is unique compared to the other two values, i.e. Truth and Goodness. As Prof. Kainz says, "While the beautiful is primarily conceptless, truth is composed entirely on concept. Maximum intellectual truth represents the exact opposite of the materially and physically agreeable. The beautiful mediates between these two poles of the naturals pattern of human nature."34 He further says “The beautiful is such an effect - relation and such a positive kind of effect as is experienced with an awareness of value. The pleasant and life enhancing accompaniment of feeling which comes with the appearance of the beautiful comprises the beautiful as a value, and indeed one of the human original or basic values parallel to the good, the true and so forth,"i5
In our final summing up of Beauty as a value we should note that "this value is not moral or practical; neither it is sensuous, however much it is based on the concrete and funded on the sensuous and on the pleasures attached to the sensuous. The pleasure is higher than that of the Sensuous agreeable of Kane's distinction; it is universal and necessary as the agrreable is private and contingent."