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April 30, 2007
Beauty is what comes to most people's minds when they stay at the lighthouse cottages at Cape Willoughby on Kangaroo Island and take in the scene. Apart memories of being there isn't tourist photography mostly about snapping beauty?
What then is beauty? Many say--ie., common sense-- that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Moreover, there is no need to talk about beauty since everybody knows what it is. Aesthetics is not necessary.
Gary Sauer-Thompson, Lighthouse cottage, 2007
Admittedly, what is considered beautiful in Australia need not, and often isn't, considered to be beautiful in Greece. However, if you challenge someone who says that this porch scene is beautiful by asking them in what way is it beautiful,--ie what makes it beautiful--- they usually say, 'well it looks beautiful to me.' They beat a quick retreat from the objective to the subjective.
Not many, for instance, consider a bunch of rocks to be beautiful:
Gary Sauer-Thompson, 7am, 2007
Rocks cannot be considered a beautiful object in the sense that sunset or a shell are. So says common sense. Well a few people might feel that way, it is conceded. They are like the few who find seaweed beautiful. And that is the end of the matter. What more can be said? Well, why aren't rocks beautiful in the sense that a shell is? That's philosophical talk is the reply. It confuses things.
Over some glasses of crisp white wine on the front porch, whilst watching the sun go down, taking in the broad sweep of nature, in a blissed out way that borders on a vertigo of rapture they will add that natural selection has no need for beauty. It's a useless luxury for survival. Or they will say that arresting climate change depends upon protecting large areas of wilderness.
What's happened to beauty then? Philosophically speaking it is being projected onto nature by the tourist eye. it is not a feature of nature. Intrinsic values do not exist.
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Pretty cottage pics Gary. I was always fond of the landscape just south of Maroubra Beach where you could wander in, around and on the cliff faces.
One of the most relaxing times I had was when we went away for a long weekend to Berkeley Springs in West Virginia. It had cottages far from the madding crowd (no internet) I ended up reading the local papers front to back while pretty much doing nothing. Not even watching TV.