Beauty as Humor
Isaac Greene on After some years away, I find myself back in the stream of an old argument: the objectivity of beauty. There is a group that wants to assert that beauty is an objective property of some cultural artifacts. To deny it as such is to deny aspects of the created order. Just as we believe in an objective external reality that we share in, beauty is a property that we find as part of that reality. Denying it as such can only be a sign of the post-modern times.
On the other is the “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” crowd. The variety of human experiences is too vast to insist on one expression earning the designation Beautiful. So many factors are at play it must be an inner, subjective experience.
I have my issues with both of these really, but in my actual real-life experience beauty certainly is illusive. Even within myself I can’t agree on what I find beautiful. There are pieces of music I used to adore that I can barely stand anymore, and there are pieces I found bland that now utterly entrance me. The music did not change. It must have been me. And I am one person, imagine the variations of experience across the cultures of the world and through time.
The problem gets worse when those in the first group accuse those in the second group of denying the reality of beauty. When this happens I think what we need is a new metaphor, and I think I have found it. Beauty is like a joke.
“Humor is in the ear of the beholder,” seems almost obvious. We speak of a sense of humor to describe the different tastes individuals have in what they find funny. You and I both find something funny, even if we disagree on the particulars of what that is. One person’s knee-slap is another’s groan.
When someone says, “That’s not funny,” we may very well be aghast or even offended that what gets our goat lets theirs roam free. But, none of us think the other is denying the existence of humor, or telling us we don’t experience the joke as funny. We well understand that what they are saying is “I do not find that funny.” We expect these variations. Even a single person will find some things funny at the right time, but be utterly embarrassed at the wrong.
Humor (like music) is also highly acculturated. Many kinds of humor do not travel across cultures well, with inside jokes, cultural references, linguistic devices (puns really can’t be translated, a great grief), and more.
This is just how humor is. I will not be accused of denying the objective reality of the Funny or of becoming a post-modern grifter because of this.
When it comes to beauty though, tempers might run a bit hotter.
Truth, goodness, beauty. An odd trio, and perhaps (all due respect to Plato and the gang) unevenly yoked. Beauty is the only one that describes an inner experience in response to something. (Debates about objective truth and goodness being far outside the scope of this little project).
Perhaps it’s no accident that the movement that privileged inner experience (the Romantics) and solidified our modern notion of the aesthetic also challenged the nature of truth and goodness on experiential grounds. If beauty is subjective, then why not truth and goodness?
For now, I’ll take “why did the chicken cross the road” and I’m happy to leave you “three peanuts were walking across the Strasse.”