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Single Idea 18555
[filed under theme 21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 4. Beauty
]
Full Idea
The beautiful is that from which nothing can be taken away and to which nothing can be added but for the worse.
Gist of Idea
The beautiful is that from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added
Source
Leon Battista Alberti (De Re Aedificatoria [1485]), quoted by Roger Scruton - Beauty: a very short introduction 9
Book Ref
Scruton,Roger: 'Beauty: A Very Short Introduction' [OUP 2011], p.162
A Reaction
Scruton rejects this Platonic tradition of beauty as organic wholeness, because you can't say how it would be 'worse' without invoking beauty, which makes it circular. Scruton appears to be correct.
The
30 ideas
with the same theme
[beauty as a quality in minds and objects]:
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299
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What is fine is always difficult
[Plato]
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249
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People who value beauty above virtue insult the soul by placing the body above it
[Plato]
|
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155
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Beauty is the clearest and most lovely of the Forms
[Plato]
|
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390
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If goodness involves moderation and proportion, then it seems to be found in beauty
[Plato]
|
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172
|
Love of ugliness is impossible
[Plato]
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173
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Beauty and goodness are the same
[Plato]
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4026
|
Beauty is harmony with what is divine, and ugliness is lack of such harmony
[Plato]
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52
|
We choose things for their fineness, their advantage, or for pleasure
[Aristotle]
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514
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Beauty is merely animal without intelligence
[Democritus (attr)]
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18555
|
The beautiful is that from which nothing can be subtracted and to which nothing can be added
[Alberti]
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12925
|
Beauty increases with familiarity
[Leibniz]
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8110
|
Leibniz identified beauty with intellectual perfection
[Leibniz, by Gardner]
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19773
|
Without love, what use is beauty?
[Rousseau]
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22711
|
The beautiful is not conceptualised as moral, but it symbolises or resembles goodness
[Kant, by Murdoch]
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4025
|
Kant saw beauty as a sort of disinterested pleasure, which has become separate from the good
[Kant, by Taylor,C]
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20412
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Beauty is only judged in pure contemplation, and not with something else at stake
[Kant]
|
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21488
|
The beautiful is a perception of Plato's Forms, which eliminates the will
[Schopenhauer]
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4182
|
A principal pleasure of the beautiful is that it momentarily silences the will
[Schopenhauer]
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20271
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Beauty in art is the imitation of happiness
[Nietzsche]
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20433
|
'Beauty' can either mean sensuous charm, or the aesthetic approval of art (which may be ugly)
[Fry]
|
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21233
|
The beautiful is whatever it is intrinsically good to admire
[Moore,GE]
|
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23922
|
The word 'beauty' leads to confusion, because it denotes distinct emotions
[Bell,C]
|
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5928
|
Beauty is neither objective nor subjective, but a power of producing certain mental events
[Ross]
|
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23848
|
The aesthete's treatment of beauty as amusement is sacreligious; beauty should nourish
[Weil]
|
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23832
|
We both desire what is beautiful, and want it to remain as it is
[Weil]
|
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23899
|
The secret of art is that beauty is a just blend of unity and its opposite
[Weil]
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18544
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Maybe 'beauty' is too loaded, and we should talk of fittingness or harmony
[Scruton]
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18553
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Beauty shows us what we should want in order to achieve human fulfilment
[Scruton]
|
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18556
|
Beauty is rationally founded, inviting meaning, comparison and self-reflection
[Scruton]
|
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6607
|
The word 'beautiful', when deprived of context, is nearly contentless
[Fogelin]
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