... if beauty is truth, is ugliness untruth? ... or is ugliness also truth? ...

William; Are you saying that 'woman' is here is beauty, is here the missing link towards grasping God in God fullness? (not missing, just not present in popular/prolific iconographers/religiousists).
Is this beauty you describe in some small but awsome part the Sacred Feminine? (most are sadly lacking)
But the male is also Sacred, male singularly just gets and creates to many of the entitlements at the present, but not always ever.
Women must one time have their day world if they have not as yet had it?

Agreed we NEED to build this world as WOMB, but you still need the seeds to sew.

To be beautiful (woman) there needs to be the appreciator (man).
You can sadly? not have one without the other.

Are you saying gay males are merely confused?
We all need beauty, 'they cant have it, cant see it with only themselves to look upon'?
Why gay males (general) find they love and worship their mothers more, to fill the void their doppelgangers cant provide the beauty/truth we all need to be full? :poke-eye:(you dont need to answer this)

I think what you are saying is that beauty is not matterial, is not physical? if so i would agree, beauty is appreciation/recognition not even really the subject for it is concept, is at best recognition of truth, beauty is supposed to be pure supposed to be true, it is man and woman who taints beauty by not looking hard enough for it.
Are you saying that woman cannot look upon themselves and thereby never see appreciate beauty? What of gay females?
Can one ever consider themselves as beautiful and it still be pure beauty?

I worry the bloom you describe is only Delight which transformed into Delirium ( i wonder how many people will get what i just refered to?)
Delirium which is the male aspect reduction/reducement.
when the delight of sight and sense is lost it was males who no longer saw or could prove delight, so delight goes down into delirium because delight was damaged by males sights and reduced and distorted by men alone.

I respect your vision, left unsure if i agree, going back into the womb.

Salima; You make a great point, that all parents mothers (women) fathers (men) God (all) see, look and appreciate the beauty in all their children.
They must, to be parents.

kennethamy; Thanks, my hero

Do women need an admirer to be beautiful?

That's what mirrors are for, right? But this is said without misogyny. After all, isn't truth a woman? (Is woman a mask? A metaphor for metaphor?) Isn't "know thyself" one of the seven hearts of Philosophy?

To what degree is certainty the name of a good feeling? From this angle, beauty is truth. The most beautiful lie at the pageant gets a gift certificat to Bath and Beyond and also the Tiara of Verity.

Spare me the sexism...See the thing in itself...
Don't let metaphores blind you...

To be beautiful (woman) there needs to be the appreciator (man).
You can sadly? not have one without the other.

Don't let the metaphors blind me? But you are using metaphors to warn me against metaphors. I think you may be "blind" to the way I look at language, which is not necessarily a bad thing as it may not be useful or pleasant for you to see things my way.

I think that human thinking is essentially metaphorical. It's not that metaphors blind but rather that they are our eyes. Philosophy, in my opinion, is the mass grave of literalized/fossilized metaphors. For me, questions like "Is Beauty Truth" are opportunities for creative response. I can understand that some will resent me for such indulgence, as they envision philosophy as something more serious perhaps, an attempt at universal and socially relevant truth perhaps.

I disagree, I don't think it is necessary to have the appreciator.

I go on solo hikes, and many times I am the only one around for miles. I can't help but think that when I'm not there, the places that I were are just as beautiful with me not there. So these places are not reliant upon me to be as they are, they just are. So why can't the beautiful (woman) be as she is without the appreciator? If a visitor happens by to admire her, then isn't it the visitor's delight? Am I objectifying it too much? Eh so what?

I am not blind at all...Ideas which should help people think are used by many as thought itself... Words say, but very often the stupid things people say escapes them... Sam Johnson warned against cant...Me too...

Enlightenment/Age of Reason thinkers made a distinction between the Beautiful and the Sublime. The Sublime inspired awe, it was a little scary (but no too scary) it was huge, sometimes infinite like and awful god, it was masculine. Beauty was well ordered, inviting, nonthreatening, like a flower in bloom, it was feminine. I guess I'm drawing these themes from Kant and Burke.

Is the Truth Beautiful?
Or is it Sublime?

Good distinction to mention. As to the final question, I suppose mathematical truths would tend toward the beautiful. Other truths, in my eyes, vary between the two. "A left-handed glove could be put on a right hand if it could be rotated in 4-dimension space." (Wittgenstein). This statement, which seems true, has always struck me as beautiful, as a sort of conceptual poem.

Logic/mathematics, I conflate the two, do tend more toward the beautiful. The Truth of a Truth table is more beautiful than sublime. The Sublime has always struck me as somehow false. Pay no attention to the man behind the curtain. Truth can be scary, especially when it catches you off guard, but in the end Truth is Beautiful.

Well, you still have to be there to think about yourself not being there.

It's hard for me to imagine beauty in the absence of some consciousness that beholds or appreciates this beauty.

---------- Post added 02-09-2010 at 01:46 AM ----------



But who decides what is cant? Folks gather to argue about what is cant and pretty soon someone is talking more cant. A universal standard might be useful but "universal" standards are often derided as cant. Byron and Sam Johnson might have different notions of cant.

For want of a better judge, I will decide, and calling virtue a woman, or truth a woman or any such item of classical art is cant, pure and simple... Don't say what you don't mean...Doing so only garbages up the ability of the language to convey meaning...

You hate on metaphors but are forced to use a (literalized) metaphor. The word "cant" was once, by your standards, cant.

cant (1) "insincere talk," 1709, earlier, slang for "whining of beggars," (1560s), from O.N.Fr. canter "to sing, chant" from L. cantare, freq. of canere "to sing" (see chant). Sense in English developed after 1680 to mean the jargon of criminals and vagabonds, then applied contemptuously by any sect or school to the phraseology of its rival.

So why can't the beautiful (woman) be as she is without the appreciator? If a visitor happens by to admire her, then isn't it the visitor's delight? Am I objectifying it too much? Eh so what?

This makes one wonder about that historical period in which chant became cant. What sort of political/societal/cultural conditions allowed for this shifting of meaning? The Protestant Reformation?