The Sense of Beauty

Front Cover
Cosimo, Inc., Jun 1, 2004 - Philosophy - 288 pages
George Santayana, poet, philosopher, and literary and cultural critic, was one of the key figures in classical western philosophy. He was a man before his time . . . before the popularization of naturalism, multiculturalism, philosophy as literature, and spirituality without being a religious believer. "The Sense of Beauty" is a primary source for the study of aesthetics. Critics have described it as a milestone in aesthetic theory. Santayana's writings are thematically full of the relationships between literature, art, religion, and philosophy.

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Contents

Form the unity of a manifold 24 Multiplicity in uniformity 25 Example of the stars
100
Defects of pure multiplicity
106
27 Esthetics of democracy
110
Values of types and values of examples
112
Origin of types
116
The average modified in the direction of pleasure
121
Are all things beautiful?
126
Effects of indeterminate form 33 Example of landscape
133

disinterestedness 38
14
Sound
16
Colour
17
Syntactical form
43
its objectification
44
Character as an æsthetic form
45
Ideal characters
46
The religious imagination PART IV
47
Expression defined
48
The definition of beauty
49
Kinds of value in the second term
50
Esthetic value in the second term
51
Practical value in the same
52
THE MATERIALS OF BEAUTY 12 All human functions may contribute to the sense of beauty 13 The influence of the passion of love
53
The lower senses
65
PAGE
68
18 Materials surveyed
76
FORM 19 There is a beauty of form
82
Physiology of the perception of form 21 Values of geometrical figures
88
Symmetry
91
Extensions to objects usually not regarded æsthetically
138
Further dangers of indeterminateness 36 The illusion of infinite perfection
151
Organized nature the source of appercep tive forms
152
Utility the principle of organization
160
The authority of morals over æsthetics 56 Negative values in the second term 57 Influence of the first term in the pleasing expression of evil
192
Mixture of other expressions including that of truth
228
The liberation of self
233
The sublime independent of the expression of evil
236
The comic 233 239
245
62
246
Humour
247
62
250
The grotesque
256
The possibility of finite perfection 66 The stability of the ideal 256
258
CONCLUSION 266270
266
INDEX 271275
271
The relation of utility to beauty
272
126
273
157
275
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Page 52 - ... deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses : But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade, Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so ; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made : And so of you, beauteous and lovely youth, When that shall fade, my verse distils your truth.
Page 52 - The rose looks fair, but fairer we it deem For that sweet odour which doth in it live. The canker-blooms have full as deep a dye As the perfumed tincture of the roses, Hang on such thorns, and play as wantonly When summer's breath their masked buds discloses: But, for their virtue only is their show, They live unwoo'd and unrespected fade; Die to themselves. Sweet roses do not so; Of their sweet deaths are sweetest odours made...
Page 42 - It is unmeaning to say that what is beautiful to one man ought to be beautiful to another. If their senses are the same, their associations and dispositions similar, then the same thing will certainly be beautiful to both. If their natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will...
Page 82 - The beauty of material is thus the groundwork of all higher beauty, both in the object, whose form and meaning have to be lodged in something sensible, and in the mind, where sensuous ideas, being the first to emerge, are the first that can arouse delight.
Page 43 - ... associations and dispositions similar, then the same thing will certainly be beautiful to both. If their natures are different, the form which to one will be entrancing will be to another even invisible, because his classifications and discriminations in perception will be different, and he may see a hideous detached fragment or a shapeless aggregate of things, in what to another is a perfect whole — so entirely are the unities of objects unities of function and use. It is absurd to say that...
Page 268 - Beauty as we feel it is something indescribable: what it is or what it means can never be said. By appealing to experiment and memory we can show that this feeling varies as certain things vary in the objective conditions; that it varies with the frequency, for instance, with which a form has been presented, or with the associates which that form has had in the past.
Page 50 - The definition of beauty. We have now reached our definition of beauty, which, in the terms of our successive analysis and narrowing of the conception, is value positive, intrinsic, and objectified. Or, in less technical language, Beauty is pleasure regarded as the quality of a thing.
Page 44 - Nothing has less to do with the real merit of a work of imagination than the capacity of all men to appreciate it; the true test is the degree and kind of satisfaction it can give to him who appreciates it most.
Page 19 - ... be noted, its relations would be observed, its recurrence might even be expected ; but all this would happen without a shadow of desire, of pleasure, or of regret. No event would be repulsive, no situation terrible. We might, in a word, have a world of idea without a world of will. In this case, as completely as if consciousness were absent altogether, all value and excellence would be gone. So that for the existence of good in any form it is not merely consciousness but emotional consciousness...

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