When I watched Notre Dame before, I was most moved to see that when people tried to separate the bodies of quasimodo and Esmeralda, they suddenly turned to ashes and dispersed with the wind. The ending of this classic always reminds me and moves me. I believe that the perfect combination of beautiful mind and beautiful appearance is the most beautiful. Of course, Miss World's beauty pageant can't meet such standards. It may not be difficult to objectively select the best-looking beauty in just a few decades, but how can inner beauty be recognized? What's more, different judges have different ideas on the understanding of inner beauty, let alone a unified understanding, and it is reasonable that the evaluation is completely opposite.
Is there a standard for beauty?
In fact, even when it comes to appearance, people's understanding is not consistent from ancient times to the present. Tao Yuanming loves chrysanthemum, Zhou Dunyi loves lotus, Lin Bu loves plum and Zheng Banqiao loves bamboo. This aesthetic tendency seems to show that beauty has no standard, but depends on human temperament.
For another example, Zhuangzi said: "Scholars are beautiful; Fish see the depth, birds see the height ",(The classic of sinking fish and falling geese originally came from this, but later generations completely distorted Zhuangzi's original intention. Obviously, neither fish nor birds appreciate the beauty of the stone, but later generations turned it into a fish and a goose, and everyone was surprised by the beauty of the stone! The fallacy has been passed down through the ages, and we need to add a few words to trace it back to its source. People are beautiful, but fish and birds don't necessarily think it is beautiful. Of course, Zhuangzi is great. He discovered the principle of "no difference among species" in the field of modern natural science, so Zhuangzi is still Zhuangzi, and butterflies are still butterflies. However, Zhuangzi still advocates "right and wrong", "mixed destruction" and "whether there is something or not", and beauty is beauty. Even among the same kind, there is no absolute standard.
The empirical experimental spirit of the Greeks is the key to western civilization and a powerful tool to study aesthetics. Even though Plato, the master of aesthetics, lamented that "beauty is difficult to define", Pythagoras had actually discovered the golden section before Plato and put forward the view that "beauty is order, proportion, harmony and symmetry".
Pythagoras' aesthetic thought has a wide influence. Although it can't be said that it is not easy to talk about it, people have successfully applied the principle of geometric aesthetics in concrete artistic creation, in European garden architecture and even in general life practice. Didn't someone study the geometric proportion of dead ringer to guide beauty?
The firmness of this aesthetic concept is sometimes shocking, because in the early human culture, Pythagoras, Socrates, Plato and others all pointed out that the earth is a sphere, suspended in the air! I know Socrates' ideas have always been pragmatic. He denied the objectivity of beauty and thought that beauty was "suitable for the purpose" and had relativity. But on the one hand, he denied the objectivity of beauty, on the other hand, he came to such a "applicable" scientific conclusion out of his genius perception of the objectivity of beauty! Think about it, all this happened 2500 years ago, and for two thousand years after that, no one believed it was true until Columbus traveled around the world to prove it to us.
Of course, beauty itself is often determined by subjective feelings and cognition, which is also an undeniable fact. Moreover, because of this, beauty has long been a profound culture, and it has been explored from different angles and depths in art, philosophy and religion. Heraclitus of Greece realized that subjective feelings and objective facts existed at the same time, and put forward the "view of harmony" and "relativity" of beauty.
Although Plato is not a religious figure, he has profound and rich religious feelings, just like the idea of an ideal country. He believes that beauty only exists in the world of ideas, and he is most opposed to relativism and utilitarianism. Later Christian aesthetics basically inherited Plato's aesthetic thought and attributed beauty to God's creation. Many artists have also created countless beautiful works of art with their piety and understanding of God. God has become the source of beauty, and art has become the revelation of God.
I am very interested in mysterious aesthetics. I have always believed that there is always a universal law in the universe, whether it is the Lord, the Buddha or the Avenue. Xunzi said, "There are no two ways in the world, and saints have no two hearts." I believe that beauty has absolute standards in essence.
I once wrote a paper "God's Will is Man-made", in which the basic viewpoint of aesthetics is that all beauty comes from the avenue, that is, God's will, which is discovered and created by people. Without transcendental beauty, there is no object of subjective observation, no subjective understanding, and beauty itself is impossible.
But what is Providence's standard? The problem of human civilization has always existed. Some people say that they have achieved absolute standards, but their understanding is quite different and even contradictory.
In fact, although the universe is beautiful, the world is not beautiful, just because there are more people talking about it.
Any beauty comes from subjective evaluation, and these evaluations are often inconsistent. This is the meaning of the concept of beauty, because if beauty is fixed and fully understood by all mankind, it will no longer be beautiful. Just like God, if we know all the secrets of God, then God is no longer God and has no value of faith. Even the golden section cannot be simply used for cosmetic surgery, because the secret of beauty is God's secret. Will God let you know him easily?
Beauty exists in God's heart.
Body is now discovered and created by human beings.
At first, God created the world from an aesthetic point of view.
Now, we find beauty in our own works.
Finding beauty is finding God.
Beauty is limited liberation.
Limited people walk in the light of beauty.
Talent and infinite spirit are one.
The beauty of human appearance is the coat of beauty, and the beauty of God's essence is the heart of beauty. In a short day's beauty contest, we can choose beautiful women with outstanding looks, but millions of years of human history and thousands of years of civilization have failed to show us what God looks like.
Sometimes, we prefer to appreciate only "the beauty of her dancing on the sparkling water, regardless of what will be hidden under the water" (Tagore), because the essence of beauty is too subtle and far-reaching, and our intelligence can't reach her heart, so we are often more willing to comfort our desire for beauty with the relaxed beauty contract of beauty pageant.