In an email exchange that grew out of the entries about beauty my cousin said something that I like and agree with. She said that beauty is both objective and subjective. There are different levels of beauty, one is what she called the “main beauty” and is related to eternal or objective truths. And then there is the beauty as we find it in various aspects of our lives here on earth. And I agree with her, too, that this has something to do with God.
So in answer to her, here is what I believe: We have an innate capacity to appreciate beauty, not just appreciate it; to love it, to seek it, to be drawn to it. This relationship with beauty is part of what enables us to know God. It is a sign of God within us that gives us a point of reference to understand something about the qualities of God.
The way we experience and exercise this potential is individual. We see and create beauty in different ways. I’m not sure about the ideas of subjectivity and objectivity. Just because everybody doesn’t see the beauty in something doesn’t mean its not there, but it does mean that whether it is seen depends on who’s looking.
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