Notions of beauty as Prinicio
Introduction.
The concept and interpretation of the term beauty, has been varying considered over the centuries. It has gone through different stages, has had from an objective interpretation governed by principles and rules, to a much more subjective way of understanding it, linked to sensitivity. The process of development and changes of the western notion of this concept is what I will try to explain below starting with ancient Greece.
Developing.
The word used by the Greeks to talk about beauty was Kalon. Exactly, it meant the beautiful, but, its interpretation went much further than something aesthetic. It is a word that implied different concepts, such as religion, cosmology, harmony. Although, the latter was one of the most fundamental concepts, referring to a good connection. This harmony led them to think about the order, also essential within the Greek notion of beauty. The order was found in the cosmos that literally means something ordered. Therefore, we can deduce that harmony are in the universal order, the cosmos.
Order, harmony, were also related to the gods, therefore, also beauty. The Olympic gods meant the victory of light towards darkness, which would be the Titans. This duality of light and darkness is also the order and disorder. Therefore, the victory of light, of order, to overcome disorder and darkness. In this way, we can understand that the Olympic gods made chaos to the cosmos, thus ordering, in a totally harmonious way, the universe.
So, according to the Greek notion, beauty encompasses light, harmony, the divine order of the universe and the gods of Olympus. They would be like implicit concepts in the term, to understand it. Continuing with the relationship of beauty with the gods of Olympus, this link also makes the idea of goodness with beauty. This is simply due to the fact that since the gods seek order, therefore they are good. This is where the principle of Kalokagathia, which is the concrete word to express the bond between beauty and goodness, becomes important.
As I have initially said, by the Greeks, beauty understood it in connection with many other concepts and, in fact, they found that it was directly related to the divine. Therefore, there was also a great connection with justice, which appears due to the harmonious order of the cosmos. It is from the VI-V AC centuries when Pythagoras offers the first philosophical approach to convey the notion of beauty in relation to harmony.
The order of the universe, according to Pythagorean thought, was strictly caused and related to mathematical calculations. In fact, he said that all relationships could be expressed numerical. Therefore, harmony means a proportion between the whole and its parts, this is the principle of the harmony of the cosmos and everything that includes. It is due to Pythagoras that the importance of the mathematical proportion for the order and beauty of the universe is added.
It is from the 5th century, when the sophists (protágoras, gorgias and hypias) offer a totally diverse approach to that of Pythagoras. In his speech the relativity of the term beauty predominates, applying an individual definition subject to changes depending on the person and their sensitive perception. In this way, it was totally opposed to universality and objectivity in the concept of beauty that there was so far, it is a radical change towards the Pythagorean and initial idea.
Sophists isolate the beauty of objective and universal values such as goodness, justice, the harmony of mathematical proportions … and link it with a single criterion: I have doné. It is a word that means ‘pleasure’, you can see the subjectivity they applied, pleasure was the criterion that defined beauty.
In this same century, Socrates makes a criticism and opposes the sophist vision, since it considers that beauty should be linked to objectivity and universality, similar to the previous Pythagorean thought. The fact is that, of the Socratic thought, the idea that beauty is found if the thing fulfills the function or purpose for which it exists.
Conclusions.
Therefore, the context of things is very important to determine its beauty. In this way, Socrates offers a closer explanation and not so much based on the divine. With this guideline, the sophist idea of the lack of norms to determine beauty is eliminating. The norm that he applies is based on the relationship of the excellence of the thing regarding its purpose.
Plato, throughout the V-IV Acos, is in line with the socratic idea of beauty. Although he incorporates the word eidos (idea), referring to the existence of a world of ideas, separated from the human world, formed by copies and reflexes of absolute and perfect ideas belonging to the world of ideas. Physical education
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