Sean Schriever

Professor Emerson

ENG 110

10 April 2018

Beauty is in the eye of the beholder. People hear this phrase everyday in english classes or museums or anywhere else that people may find beauty.  There is no set definition of beauty, it is one of the few things in this world where the idea of beauty fluctuates so much because of each person’s unique definition and idea of what beauty truly is. John Armstrong writes in his essay “La Bella Vita” believes that beauty is a kindly notion that seeks to bring peace to people that have different views on things. In Armstrong’s essay he talks about a German dramatist and poet by the name of Friedrich Schiller. Schiller discusses these things that drive beauty, these things are sense and form. These drives work together to help shape or own personal illusion of beauty. For one to truly see beauty they must balance these drives and tend to both of them. He also believes that we cannot just talk about beauty we need to talk about our lives and what we can pull out of it that we find beautiful. To me, beauty is the simple things that we find in our lives that occur everyday that we see but never truly find beautiful until we stop and look at them.

In John Armstrong’s essay “La bella Vita” he describes what beauty is. His description of beauty is in stark contrast with what today’s society views beauty as. To Armstrong beauty is something simple that engages us and truly makes us feel something. To society beauty is possessions, it’s a new car, or a new house. “True beauty is whatever speaks powerfully to both sides of our nature at the same time… when we find something beautiful we are called towards a vision of harmonious perfection”(Armstrong La Bella Vita).  These sides of nature that reside within all of us are what allows us to feel beauty, they allow us to feel and connect with something that is truly beautiful. The problem with society is that often times we only feel one side or neither side of nature. These sides of nature are strong and when we as a society only feel one side of nature we confuse it with the feeling of true beauty because there is so little in this world that we can find true beauty in, this allows for many people to go without ever feeling that harmonious sensation that Armstrong talks about in his essay. While beauty is different to everyone there is a common part of this world that everyone can find beauty in, and it is the simple, common, things in life that we see everyday but never stop to see the true beauty that resides within these everyday occurrences.  

I believe that it is possible for beauty to change lives. It is common for many people to be in a dark place in their lives, only to be saved by something. That something that saves them is beautiful to that individual person. This thing that changes their lives could be meeting someone new, or adopting a pet, or even something like finding God. Beauty can change an individual persons lives, but it cannot change a large population. It cannot change a large population because everybody has different views on what is beautiful. If the large population all had the same idea of what beauty is then it is possible but will have varying ranges of success. this i because of the small changes in each person’s views that will change what they see and how they perceive it.

Schiller has an unnerving conviction that ambitious social reform will always be frustrated until a much larger number of people have reached a higher level of inner development of the sort enabled by beauty. This idea is a seemingly impossible task. In order for a large number of people to develop the higher level of development they need to spend years immersed with the drives of sense and form to be able to determine what is beautiful. Schiller’s idea will be stressed until it is achieved because while it is a lofty goal if it were to be achieved then the world would be exponentially better off because of the heightened sense of true beauty and culture. In this idea of a higher level of understanding of beauty from social reform, it would lead to a large number of the population having similar ideas of beauty because of the impact that society has on people. Society can impact people in many ways. This is done through social media, advertisements, and even entertainment. This allows for people with common views to get together and voice their opinions and views. It can also lead to people changing their views.

Beauty is an illusion. There is no true definition, no cookie cutter mold as to what is beautiful and what is not. In terms of beauty it needs to be thought of like Schrodinger’s cat. Everything is beautiful and not beautiful at the same time, it just depends on who is looking upon it.