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Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre  Though if that's true it begs the question, how do we first perceive something as beautiful? Is there a point where the current context doesn't include any prior concept of beauty? If that's not the case, then we're born with an ability to perceive beauty. |
Hm. You seem to have sidestepped my perpsective, though whether that's a bad thing is questionable.
My idea was that beauty itself is a product of that narrative. The context comes first, and then the conclusion is that it is beautiful. It would be an interesting experiment to find a thousand parents with newborns and ask them to record when, where, and how their child first speaks of beauty. Of course, that would presume that the parents had shared that concept with their child in the first place... hm. Feels very dead-endish to me.
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Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre What if someone suddenly woke in a hospital bed with no memory of how they got there, or of anything at all before that moment. Could they look through their window and see the scene outside as beautiful? Again, I honestly have no idea. Though I would guess they'd be too distracted by thoughts of how they got there to notice anything beautiful... |
I think it's certainly possible, even plausible. Perhaps, as you have suggested before, there are different degrees--I wanted to call them levels--of beauty.
A sudden experience, like a single note, an utterance, a scene, might be the first level, might be beautiful. But why? And diving deeper into contexts, knowing the region, the reason, the history, perhaps those are higher levels of beauty.
Why that first level... perhaps the sheer surprise of seeing it. Of an experience that fits, but that they didn't expect to be there.
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Originally Posted by Mark Lapierre I think beauty does depend on narrative, though not on conscious awareness of that narrative. |
So, I think you're right, though perhaps a conscious awareness of it brings out deeper sense of beauty? Or would it no longer be considered beauty, but something else?