Educational articles

Kristupas Sabolius / Photo by K. Petrikonytė

Kristupas Sabolius
Professor at the Faculty of Philosophy, Vilnius University

(Text adapted from an excerpt of the podcast "Aesthetics Table." Material from the educational club "Aesthetics Sommelier.")

What is beauty – a universal principle or an agreement? In search of an answer to this question, it was decided to test whether the golden ratio truly works as a standard of universal beauty. The golden ratio is a certain proportion discovered by the Pythagoreans in ancient times, and it is found widely in nature – from the petals of daisies to the constellations of planets and the structure of DNA molecules. It can be found in the human body and in architecture. Even an A4 sheet of paper is cut using this proportion.

The thought behind this is: if this proportion is so significant in nature and allows us to feel a certain attraction; if it is so strong that when we look at this proportion, we think it is pleasing to us, perhaps this is the formula of beauty, the code of beauty? Then we should say that there is no agreement about beauty, but rather a universal beauty exists.

The research was conducted in Italy, where mainly Polykleitos’ sculptures were shown. The results showed that the brain areas associated with pleasure were stimulated when people viewed images of the golden ratio. Unfortunately, we cannot simply say, "Here’s the answer to what is beautiful: create works based on the golden ratio, and you’ll get beautiful things." The issue is that the study took place in Italy, which, as we know, is a country of classical culture. It is partly where this culture matured. And, of course, even when we announce mathematically and geometrically verifiable things, we have to understand that they are also a matter of certain conventions and cultural dissemination.

It would be interesting to conduct the same study in Japan, where aesthetics is highly emphasized (perhaps Japan is the most aesthetically oriented culture currently living in the world). Nothing there is considered unaesthetic: you can’t even write a note to a school without using calligraphy... So, I think we would get different results there. Or, how would it be in Iran or African countries? There is a famous study with optical illusions: the Zulu people, who do not have sharp angles in their culture and live in round houses, for this reason, do not see certain optical illusions that Westerners see. The Zulu are resistant to these illusions because they live in a different cultural environment.

When talking about aesthetics as an understanding of beauty, it is worth noting that the very idea of aesthetics is strongly connected to the 18th century – an era very engaged with aesthetics. This century led to the formation of aesthetics as a discipline, with Baumgarten’s works contributing to this. It was believed that aesthetics should be the science of beauty. What does this mean? It means that we need to discover universal principles to talk about beauty, which is a form of sensory experience. But then aesthetics finds itself in opposition: on one side, with intellectual knowledge, and on the other, with sensory knowledge. The latter was understood as brutal, coarse, uncontrolled, whereas aesthetics was seen as refinement, cultivation.

And then comes the idea of integrating a person into society... While at that time it was considered the discovery of a certain principle, in reality, the shadow of it was the understanding that aesthetics is not natural and has to be nurtured.

Sensory perception, which we have (I want to eat, I want to drink, sexual attraction), is almost animalistic. But an aesthetically oriented person, when they go to a Michelin restaurant, slowly cuts a piece – they are not eating, but experiencing. This is about how our senses are not flat – everything can have shades and certain nuances in the way we experience it. Essentially, this is related to the transformation of experience. And while, in a sense, the search for the answer about how beauty works on its own, like a universal principle, is ongoing, there is also the "imported" idea that we have to transform ourselves in order to experience beauty.

The barbarian is someone who does not understand how this works: they just bite into a piece of meat, not feeling any difference – they need to eat. But we, the aesthetically formed or forming individuals, cultivate our senses. When you cultivate, you transform. So, there is nothing innate here – it is a process, transformative, and, I would say, manipulative. And then the question arises: "What are you oriented towards?" If you are oriented towards the golden ratio, then, by raising people in this paradigm, you will have those who are very sensitive to the "golden-ratio-ness." In our culture today, we have golden ratio forms everywhere, and it seems like it means nothing. But, in reality, it does mean something, because we are accustomed and schematized.

The idea of schemas was strongly emphasized by Immanuel Kant. He said that our experience occurs in a schematizing way: schemas are created by imagination, along with intellect, and sensory experience is condensed into a whole because it needs to be processed, condensed into a form, and then interpreted. This is where the question arises: how are these schemas created, who participates in them, and which factors are essential? And here there is much debate. If the 18th century, where aesthetics became important, still believed it was discovering universal principles, with the individual as a subject detached from society, the 20th century speaks about things being socially shaped. We are in a society that strongly imposes these schemas, and, frankly, the imposition of schemas is the greatest form of manipulation and control. Therefore, aesthetics becomes a huge challenge in the context of ideology, politics, and power.

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*Polykleitos (5th century BC) – an ancient Greek sculptor, who in his treatise Canon outlined the theory of the mathematical proportions of the human body in classical Greek sculpture.

*Alexander Gottlieb Baumgarten (18th century) – a German rationalist philosopher, the creator of the term aesthetics and the founder of aesthetics as a philosophical discipline.

*Immanuel Kant (18th century) – a German philosopher, one of the central figures of the Enlightenment era.