Combining Texts

Ideas for 'Metaphysics', 'Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour' and 'fragments/reports'

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3 ideas

21. Aesthetics / A. Aesthetic Experience / 4. Beauty
We both desire what is beautiful, and want it to remain as it is [Weil]
     Full Idea: Everything beautiful is the object of desire but one desires that it be not otherwise, that it be unchanged, that it be exactly what it is.
     From: Simone Weil (Prerequisite to Dignity of Labour [1941], p.268)
     A reaction: This seems to be mostly true, though I don't think it reveals the essence of beauty. I might love a particular landscape, but want to plant a carefully place tree within it. Or change one or two words in a great poem.
21. Aesthetics / B. Nature of Art / 2. Art as Form
Beauty involves the Forms of order, symmetry and limit, which can be handled mathematically [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The major Forms of the beautiful are order, symmetry and delimitation, and these are very much objects of the proofs of the mathematical sciences.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a31)
21. Aesthetics / C. Artistic Issues / 7. Art and Morality
The good is found in actions, but beauty can exist without movement [Aristotle]
     Full Idea: The good is always in some action, whereas the beautiful can also be in things without movement.
     From: Aristotle (Metaphysics [c.324 BCE], 1078a26)