Nothing Without Harmony

There is a book or two written about Hässlichkeit that the German program Sternstunde featured. There two authors talked about the affects of a lack of form on different parts of the human condition. It seems that the media and common sense conversations are caught in the most superficial of senses about beauty, but that is to be expected.

There is no matter for form to inhabit. We find form each and every time we understand anything, and what we have conceived as mass, or matter, is form in the scientific sense. Whatever we encounter, if we have the ability to encounter it at all, we encounter through the parts of a whole and the harmony that results when that what comes to be anything. It is, as Plato discusses, the parts and their relationship to the whole; the whole and its relationship to the parts; the parts with respect to the parts; the whole with respect to the whole; the whole absolutely in itself; the parts in themselves; the parts absolutely in themselves, and so on. Whatever we comprehend, we do so through beauty, but not the kind of beauty that walks on a ramp and promotes clothing design or deviant sexual behavior. There are many kinds of beauty, and those who are invested in history enough to know about the ancient Greeks are well-informed of the ontological status of beauty in its natural harmony. It is no surprise that beauty involves itself in politics, in reproduction, in courage; in health and in a lack that continues to want more in order to maintain its present harmony.

There is a long tradition here, one to which I cannot do justice, but treat beauty as though it is serious, because along with its lack it is everything.