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Full Idea
Scruton describes beauty in terms of the sense of 'fittingness'. …Another way to put this is that we find things beautiful at the moment we realise that they contain patterns that will allow lots of detail to be reconciled or predicted.
Gist of Idea
Beauty is fittingness, of details uniting within a pattern
Source
Tom Cochrane (The Aesthetic Value of the World [2021], 2.5)
Book Ref
Cochrane,Tom: 'The Aesthetic Value of the World' [OUP 2021], p.42
A Reaction
[Scruton 2009 Ch.4] I don't think this explains my love of some particular turn of phrase in Bach, or some startling metaphor from Shakespeare. Pinning down the essence of beauty looks a doomed project to me. Aesthetics over-emphasises painting.
| 24164 | Even non-theists can wonder what, if anything, makes the universe good [Cochrane] |
| 24165 | Pleasure has an intrinsic (independent) value, but that is not a final (for its own sake) value [Cochrane] |
| 24166 | Pleasure serves to maintain our relationship with its source [Cochrane] |
| 24167 | Love is a mutual reciprocation, not just a desire for something [Cochrane] |
| 24169 | We can treat value as a verb; we value something when we positively engage with it [Cochrane] |
| 24168 | Aesthetic value appreciates a thing objectively, as a good in its own right [Cochrane] |
| 24171 | Morality is not a final value; it concerns how we distribute the things we actually finally value [Cochrane] |
| 24173 | We can only understand form if we grasp the whole of which things are parts [Cochrane] |
| 24174 | Beauty is fittingness, of details uniting within a pattern [Cochrane] |
| 24175 | Accounts of sublimity differ over whether we learn something good about ourselves [Cochrane] |
| 24176 | A person's activities have value when they receive full attention [Cochrane] |