The call of beauty

Why does it matter?

Lately I’ve been making an effort to get more beauty into my life,¹ and to pay more attention to what’s already there. One of my favorite Christmas presents this year was David Doubilet’s Two Worlds book of photographs taken half in and half out of water. Some of them are breathtaking.

Although aesthetics has never been a great philosophical interest of mine, operationally I think aesthetics have² always been important to me, and it’s become more conscious in the past couple of years. I choose walking and driving routes at least partly on their visual appeal (when not in a hurry). I’m pretty sure aesthetics are what drives most of my tendency toward tidiness.³ What my spaces—home, office, car—look and feel like is important to me. I recently thought I wanted weather-protective mats for my car—easier to clean after a Minnesota winter—but when I installed them it changed the feel of the interior so much that I took them back out and returned them. They made it feel way too industrial. I hadn’t realized that I cared about the carpet’s cozy factor. Who knew a car’s homey-ness would be a thing?

The philosophical field of aesthetics explores the theory of beauty and art—what makes something beautiful? what makes something art?—all of which is interesting in its way, but right now what I want to think about is why beauty matters, when it does.⁴ Why should I care that my spaces and things be beautiful? (Should I care?) Why should I seek out beauty, preserve it, or create more of it? What is (or should be) the role of beauty in life? What is the value of aesthetic value?

South Marble Island in Glacier Bay National Park (copyright Erica Stonestreet 2024)

Beauty is a narrower concept than aesthetic value more generally. There’s lots of aesthetically valuable art that many people would not judge to be beautiful as such, but do find expressive or meaningful in significant ways. For now, I want to set that bigger category aside and focus on beauty in the sense of sensory interest, enjoyment, excitement, etc. This is better suited to include natural beauty, which for me is really the primary kind. Beauty is still a complex and multifaceted concept, and I suspect we use the word in many ways that may or may not all hang together in a unified concept in the end.

As I said, aesthetics as a branch of philosophy isn’t my field. So what I’m doing here isn’t so much exercising content expertise as skill expertise: I’m going to think like a philosopher about beauty in my life, but I’m not really drawing on much knowledge of what other people have already said about it. Plus, I do know that aesthetics as a field is mostly not about beauty as such.

So. Why does beauty matter? In a grand sense, I wonder if the answer is it just does. That is, beauty is generally thought to be valuable in its own right. There are lots of kinds of value: moral, economic, sentimental, historical, intellectual, relational, recreational, entertainment, etc. etc. Aesthetic value, of which beauty is a species, is another one. Some kinds of value, such as economic and sentimental value, are clearly dependent on humans’ valuing the relevant objects. Like moral value and unlike economic value, however, beauty is thought to be a kind of intrinsic (as opposed to instrumental) value. If that’s right, beauty matters because it’s beauty. Which, of course, feels like a total non-answer. Thanks, philosophy.

We could get into debates on the nature of value itself—is it subject-dependent (internalism) or independent (externalism)? If it’s subject-dependent, how can we say anything general about it? If, on the other hand, value is subject-independent, what the heck kind of thing is it? How could we know about it, and how could it have any pull on us? This all gets into the philosopical weeds real quick, and I’ve never really had the patience for it. I’ve long been less concerned with the nature of value than with how we should respond to it.

Hoarfrost in the sun (copyright Erica Stonestreet 2023)

So the interesting question (to my mind) is not why beauty matters period—I’m just going to take that for granted—but why it should matter to me. Notice the “should” here. Value creates in us a feeling of being compelled—a feeling of obligation, though I hate to use that word because it feels so dry. Beauty induces pleasure, and enjoying, preserving, or creating it feels like an act of joy rather than a stodgy duty. The point is that as a kind of value, beauty calls for certain kinds of responses from us: a particular sort of appreciation, as well as perhaps preservation and possibly also creation. It’s compelling in a way that brings us outside ourselves: while it’s definitely true that we like beauty because it pleases us, it’s not beautiful because it pleases. Our pleasure is the appropriate response to it. When we appreciate beauty, we’re getting something right.

From a quick poke around the internet, it seems that scientists agree: apparently the leading theory of why we’re attracted to beauty is that it’s a signal that something is good for us.⁵ If this is right, it would explain the longstanding historical association of beauty and goodness. Without knowing the scientific details (which I don’t have time to search out), however, I’m a little suspicious of the idea that we appreciate the beauty of fractal plants because they’re good for us. Nightshade and poison ivy also have fractal shapes, but are definitely not good for us. So, a lot of fractal-y things are good for us, and maybe that’s a good enough proxy for “good-for-us-ness”, but I don’t really see how that could be the whole story. I assume there are more nuanced stories out there somewhere to explain our attraction to beauty.

For me, one factor is no doubt that beauty can be a signal of order. I find tidy spaces beautiful, and I feel more relaxed and comfortable in them. But not everybody works that way. (I have things to say about clutter and our relationships to our stuff, but I’ll save them for another day.)

I suggest that beauty’s real value is related to the fact that it opens us up to wonder. Leaves come in intricate and varied shapes. A cool breeze on your cheeks makes you feel alive and a part of the world. The smell of rain before a storm induces a sense of anticipation. The sparkle of subzero air⁶ raises the spirits. A flower’s grace invites delight. And that’s just nature, doing its thing, with no particular intention of getting us to see the world in certain ways. Artifacts can also open us up to wonder, and I suggest that this is because they frame our perception in particular ways: an artist is pointing something out to us, nudging us to perceive in intentional ways. (This can be through beauty, or aesthetic value more generally.)

Veiled Lady, Raffaelo Monti, Minneapolis Institute of Arts

What’s the value of wonder, then? For one thing, I think there’s just intrinsic value in the exercise of our sensual, cognitive, and emotional powers.⁷ Wonder makes us feel alive. For another thing, though, responding to beauty in fitting ways gets something right. The world can be compelling on its own terms, and it’s good to be reminded that we’re not all that matters. This is one of the lessons Susan Wolf draws from her analysis of meaning in life and why it matters. Engagement with positive value (of any sort, including of course beauty) is a way of acknowledging and living in harmony with the fact that the world is wider than our own narrow concerns.

What do you find beautiful, readers? Drop a line, a link, or a photo below in the comments.

1. For instance, I recently subscribed to Colossal’s daily emails, because art is amazing. No idea why it took me so long to actually subscribe, since I’ve known about them for years.

2. I had to look up whether ‘aesthetics’ is singular or plural. Apparently it’s both: singular when discussing the subject area, plural when discussing the qualities of something.

3. I’m also “Type A,” so I like things in their places because I like systems because they ease cognitive load and because I like a sense of control. But I really do think that when it comes to inhabiting spaces, it’s also very much about the sensory atmosphere of a place.

4. This is not limited to art. In fact, for me, natural beauty may be more important.

5. While I’m linking to tiny BBC stories about beauty, here’s one about math too. Because math has such a reputation for difficulty, I like to point out its beauty whenever I can.

6. Yes, for those of you who don’t live in places where there’s subzero winter: the air on a sunny, frigid January day really does sparkle sometimes with tiny ice crystals.

7. Immanuel Kant thought that the experience of beauty had to do with the free play of our cognitive—by which he mostly meant rational—powers. Something like this seems right to me, though I’d lean away from the limitation to reason and include senses and emotions.