Are you familiar with the range of his music? Do you consider this piece beautiful in the same way as Prelude to The Afternoon of a Faun?

I really got into that thanks Noble Dust. I would say the piece is beautiful. me Lemme listen to that Ravel piece again......

Got any more links plz?:)

Here's a nice logical progression from what I've posted so far:

Mid-late Symbolism:


Early Modernism:


Minimalism:


Post-Minimalism:


If you can't make it through all of it, skip ahead to the last piece (John Adams) for some truly wigged out piano music (four hands).

Noble Dust's post of the song "Heir apparent" is not pleasant—at all—to me. — River

Is pleasant synonymous with beautiful? Maybe Opeth is an extreme example. But take this song instead (make it at least 3 mins in to see what I mean. But you really need to hear the whole track to get the context):



Another aspect of apprehending beauty is being willing to experience things outside of your comfort zone or preference for genre. You don't have to "like" Opeth or the progressive death metal genre, but is it possible for this music to have beauty in it?

is it possible for this music to have beauty in it? — Noble Dust

If it profoundly disturbs?

Can you think of no example of any artwork that is both disturbing and beautiful? "Disturbing" is closer to an emotion anyway. The proper dichotomy would be more like "beauty and ugliness". I think they can exist together; something can have both qualities.

Loved the "Early Modernism".

It's always good to try new things. Therefore I agree with you on experiencing things outside my comfort zone. However, this band/artist just really doesn't appeal to me. The noise (what we can define as "music" is a whole different thread) of this artist is monotonous, hardly any change in measure, and vocals that sound like the dying screams of a Tarsier. Yet again, you redeem yourself by Debussy. Music can most certainly have beauty within. Have you listened to Aida?...Turandot? Absolutely magnificent. Heavy metal...perhaps you're a young dude under 30, a characteristic of which you cannot redeem yourself.
Now, in regards to an earlier comment you made, to me pleasant ≠ beautiful. However, I feel that word beautiful does include a tangible slice of pleasantness, it encapsulates it in a way, but supersedes it most definitely.

However, this band/artist just really doesn't appeal to me. The noise (what we can define as "music" is a whole different thread) of this artist is monotonous, hardly any change in measure, and vocals that sound like the dying screams of a Tarsier. — River

Did you get past the 1 minute mark in "Deliverance"? The point I was trying to make with that song is that "ugliness" (the first minute) can exist alongside beauty (the next minute). But I digress, I'm not trying to get you to like Opeth. I don't really listen to them much anymore, but I thought they would be a good talking point in this discussion.

Yet again, you redeem yourself by Debussy. — River

So where exactly are we drawing the line of what makes something beautiful, then? As I showed with Preludes Book II, Debussy evolved tremendously not only harmonically, but structurally. What about Book II still counts as beautiful? Is Shoenburg beautiful?

Have you listened to Aida?...Turandot? Absolutely magnificent. — River

No, where should I start?

Heavy metal...perhaps you're a young dude under 30, a characteristic of which you cannot redeem yourself. — River

I am, but I was never a true metal head. Just had a slight metal phase. Opeth has always stuck with me.

However, I feel that word beautiful does include a tangible slice of pleasantness, it encapsulates it in a way, but supersedes it most definitely. — River

I guess I agree with this if we use a different word than "pleasant"; the connotation there to me is more sensual; a pleasant touch on the arm, a pleasant aroma of fine wine, a pleasant afternoon with Mozart playing in the background. The positive association we have with beauty is more akin to "right feeling", or a form of "pleasure" that is very pointed and specific. It connects to other aspects of the human experience that come up in things like philosophical investigation, religious experience, human intimacy of all kinds. So it's a specific sort of positive association or experience.

You seem to have an ear for the whole tone scale and cluster chords!

Can you think of no example of any artwork that is both disturbing and beautiful? " — Noble Dust

The atomic/nuclear mushroom cloud.

That's not art, unless you're of the "everything is art" persuasion. But assuming you didn't mean that, so you're saying the use of the bomb is horrible, but the visual is beautiful? Doesn't the visual become associated with the horror of the act, though? I don't find the mushroom cloud particularly beautiful.

It has the beauty of predictability .....

That's not art, — Noble Dust

Maybe it is ....

I can follow along, it sounds like a difficult piece to learn. My guess is that it would be a pleasure to play, once you get the fingering and everything else (like the notes) down.

I think there's a moral aspect of beauty, what I called "right feeling" earlier. I don't know how exactly to describe it, but predictability I see as something morally neutral; the predictability of an atomic bomb, for instance is a neutral aspect to a tool that has wreaked mass murder on populations (something morally abhorrent). Beauty, on the other hand, is not morally neutral. If you find mass murder beautiful, for instance, then you have a twisted perspective on what's beautiful. The predictability of using a bomb for mass murder is just a neutral function of the tool, the use of which is decidedly not beautiful in any way. If, on the other hand, you're referring to something like scientific "elegance", I agree that it has it's own beauty to it; but the beauty of scientific elegance is more akin to a mystical or religious beauty; seeing scientific principles flawlessly work together like cogs in a machine is not unlike seeing Brahman in everything, for instance, or Christ being "all and in all". So, in my view, those are all aspects of beauty. Predictability seems different.

It's been very rewarding.

There are films that I have seen that have dreadful content but are terrific films. The Godfather, for instance, is about criminals, and their criminality isn't hidden. But the film is "beautifully acted and filmed". Films that endure tend to have that quality -- excellence in production and acting, whatever the content is. — Bitter Crank

It is true that "ugly" content can make a beautiful movie. What you say is that beauty is often in high quality movies, but hte question is is it the quality that makes them beautiful? There are plenty of high quality films that I wouldn't call beautiful, Fight Club for instance. Therefore, I don't think that quality is what makes them beautiful, rather quality is necessary to enable beauty to be present.

Most of us probably agree that we can see beauty in a landscape or a flower. Is it then the same type of beauty as in The Godfather? The question then becomes, what does the flower share with the film? Again, Kant does provide a solution when he says that beauty is the feeling we experience when we experience something and reason and imagination plays freely within us.

The question then becomes, what does the flower share with the film?

Both have a surface, an aesthetic, and both are made: by nature, by man (as if man is different, unnatural, mediated versus immediate, as if his cognition/mediation raises him above nature). Man learns from nature and tries to replicate the beauty he sees in it, without the beauty man finds in nature beauty itself is suspect (Hegel did not get this). Nature is Kant's ideal of purposeless purpose, it is unconsciously eloquent, it says more than it is.

Both have a surface, an aesthetic, and both are made: by nature, by man (as if man is different, unnatural, mediated versus immediate, as if his cognition/mediation raises him above nature). — Cavacava

What I meant was, what is it in the flower and in the film that makes them both beautiful? I like your point because it shows how we can look at the two in similar ways (in some way) but the fact that they both have a surface and so on does not make them beautiful. The way that they both arouse the same feeling within us might be what makes them beautiful.

According to Kant, as I understand it, the purpuseless purpose lies within the notion of beauty. When we look at something beautiful we also feel that the object has a purpose, eaven though we know that there is none. It is the same as with the categorical imperative, we know thorugh our rationality that something is "the right thing to do" since it is "the right thing to do", we don't need a because that relates to some further reason.

The beauty of the film or the flower is in its aesthetic, its surface. This is what strikes us, what draws us to the flower, or to the film. So yes,

the fact that they both have a surface and so on does not make them beautiful.

but without that surface there would/could be no discussion of beauty.

Yes, I agree with that. But what is it in the surface that makes them beautiful? That is the interesting question, since having a surface isn't enough to make something beautiful, plenty of ugly objects have surfaces. I would say that the surface arouse a feeling of senseless pleasantness within us, and that is what makes them beautiful.

So then the question becomes what draws us to them. If all objects have matter & form, then there must be something in the composition of beautiful objects that draws us to them, that enables them to be more than they are as objects.

I think the Beautiful thrust itself at us, it thrust itself into the ways we understand our self (our taste) the many narratives which we tell our self. The relationship between matter and form becomes intense in the Beautiful, which opens up the possibility of new narratives, new ways of experiencing things.

@jamalrob posted this photo in the Shoutbox. Seems very beautiful and deep. (Can't figure how to re-post the photo, but here's the link:)

https://thephilosophyforum.com/discussion/comment/79034

I think the Beautiful thrust itself at us, it thrust itself into the ways we understand our self (our taste) the many narratives which we tell our self. — Cavacava

I would almost say the opposite: I've aways felt, through experience, that beauty has a hidden quality; beauty is everywhere, but most of us don't have the right eyes to see it. Beauty is like light glancing off things; it's possible to perceive shades of it in nearly everything, and that's just the thing: we can't even take all of it in. If I take myself as an example, I'm usually too busy being annoyed, depressed or distracted to even see a hint of the beauty that's around. I tend to just get concentrated doses of it when I play or write music, at best.

You are a musician, what you hear is the same as what I hear, but perhaps because of your training, experience, and practice you hear more than what I can hear, what you find beautiful in the music you find beautiful is more than my unsophisticated taste. That what is hidden from me is not hidden from you the sounds that entrance you may not affect me.

I'm not talking specifically about music, though. And I'm saying I'm as blind to the beauty in the world as anyone else, just that I've had moments where I realize how much of it I don't see, which lead me to that thought about it's hiddenness.

Cheers. I love medium format film. :)

But when I first saw Michelangelo[s Pieta, Picasso's Guernica , Van Goth's Starry Night or read Huckleberry Finn, For Whom the Bells Tolls...I was astonished by their beauty, drawn into them, they intruded themselves on me, and how I experienced them change me.

You're right, I agree. I've had those experiences too. Probably just my contrarian nature rearing it's head. But I think both experiences of beauty are possible; intrusive beauty and hidden beauty; exoteric and esoteric.