How delightful it would be to listen to your favorite piece of music in the mild weather of a sunset. The lure of pure dew on rose petals – which seemed as tears glistening on charming cheeks – remains a wistful nostalgia for me. I have a vivid picture of my childhood. I was an early bird; getting up at dawn to go to the garden in our backyard and play with beautiful roses. I enjoyed flowers more than a nightingale did. The sweet perfume of roses made me touch them with my lips with deep affection. The sunrise and sunset were the most enjoyable moments I had ever felt. The allure of nature always melted my heart.
How do you define beauty? Does it mean the delicate body of a fair sex? Do you see beauty in the batting eyelashes of a woman or twinkling stars of the sky? It would be an oversimplification to minimize beauty in girls or women’s faces turning a blind eye to all jaw-dropping splendors. One might think that s/he realizes beauty only by her/his eyes. I bet you can feel beauty by all your five senses. For instance, you enjoy a melodious song by listening, perfume by smelling and delicious food by tasting. So, when beauty or pleasure evokes sexual orientations in one’s mind, their imagination of beauty is poor.
Nehamas writes, “I think of beauty as the emblem of what we lack, the mark of an art that speaks to our desire. Beautiful things don’t stand aloof, but direct our attention and our desire to everything else we must learn or acquire in order to understand and possess, and they quicken the sense of life, giving it new shape and direction.”
Edmund Burke, expressing an ancient tradition, writes, “By beauty I mean, that quality of those qualities in bodies, by which they cause love, or some passion similar to it” Among the Greeks, the connection of beauty with love is proverbial, and Aphrodite the goddess of love won the Judgment of Paris by promising Paris the most beautiful woman in the world.
Perhaps the most familiar basic issue in the theory of beauty is whether beauty is subjective, located “in the eye of the beholder”, or whether it is an objective feature of beautiful things.
In this regard, Hume writes, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, without pretending to regulate those of others.”
I do agree with Hume’s saying. For instance in European culture, a woman with blue eyes and blonde hair is considered beautiful while she is considered beautiful with black eyes and dark hair in our culture. Likewise, a woman with black skin is pretty among Blacks, whereas the same woman is deemed ugly for the Whites. It is said that Juliet seemed gorgeous to Romeo – who articulated his strong love and emotions in lyrical poetries about her. A king guessed that Juliet were the most charming goddess of beauty and wished to see her. When the Bedouin girl was taken from the desert to the king, he couldn’t believe his eyes to see a blackish common girl who was everything except beautiful. Hence, a picture will seem beautiful to a person while the same picture may be considered ugly to the next person.
For instance, I love to listen to a piece of soulful music in a lonely sunset so as to weep about the sob story of my life. But you might love to listen to a song with strong beats along with your friends on a crowded beach so as to have great fun. I am crazy about the sweet perfume and fresh aroma of roses, but you will prefer their red petals better. I enjoy communing with a girl with high moral standards – no matter if she is the ugliest. However, you will seek for the prettiest one irrespective of her morality and ethics. So, do you believe, now, that beauty lies in the eye of the beholder?
It would be unfair to minimize beauty in lust and carnal desires. Doesn’t a person with high moral standards seem attractive? I bet you will succumb to the charm of one’s humility, honesty, devotion, good humor, etc. Moreover, I believe that virtue and ethics – which are called inner beauty – overshadow one’s outer or facial prettiness. In other words, however ugly one is, his/her humanity and magnetic personality will be highly alluring. So, this beauty is intangible, which can be realized by sixth sense or reason, such as the attraction of lyric poetry, it is called inner beauty. Since external beauty is not absolute, there is not a clear definition about it. However, everyone will be influenced by inner beauty or morality.
A theory suggests that morality lies in (inner) beauty. In other words, all positive attitudes and inner beauties which are reflected through one’s actions and behaviors are called morality. Based on this idea, one bears morality if s/he cherishes inner beauty. Hence, inner beauty is the criterion for morality and ethics.