What is beauty? Nishida Kitarō’s answer to this question conflates the Kantian sense of beauty as “pleasure detached from the ego” with the Zen meaning of muga as “no-self.” In line with Plato’s philosophical reflection, beauty has tended to be seen as an experience of “truth.” But what kind of truth is inherent in beauty? For Nishida, “the truth underlying beauty is not obtained by the faculty of thought, it is intuitive truth.” This kind of truth cannot be expressed in words. Thus, one may venture to ask whether it is not the ultimate ineloquence of truth that emanates from beauty. According to Bernard Berenson, ineloquence is the distinctive character of “real art,” namely, an art which does not represent but presents, indifferent to “physical beauty” but able to communicate the being, the “pure existence.” Such is Piero della Francesca’s or Leonardo’s art, whose figures, wrapped in a veil of silence, elicit a sublime sense of the sacred. The same feeling that one might experience enraptured by the harmony of a starry sky, the simplicity of a geometric form, the perfection of a rock garden. Why does beauty seem to be so closely linked to truth? Mathematical beauty is expected to lead the way to physical truth. Which kind of beauty is so ineloquent as to illuminate the “open secret” of truth?
Beauty or the Ineloquent in Truth
Rossella Lupacchini
2020
Abstract
What is beauty? Nishida Kitarō’s answer to this question conflates the Kantian sense of beauty as “pleasure detached from the ego” with the Zen meaning of muga as “no-self.” In line with Plato’s philosophical reflection, beauty has tended to be seen as an experience of “truth.” But what kind of truth is inherent in beauty? For Nishida, “the truth underlying beauty is not obtained by the faculty of thought, it is intuitive truth.” This kind of truth cannot be expressed in words. Thus, one may venture to ask whether it is not the ultimate ineloquence of truth that emanates from beauty. According to Bernard Berenson, ineloquence is the distinctive character of “real art,” namely, an art which does not represent but presents, indifferent to “physical beauty” but able to communicate the being, the “pure existence.” Such is Piero della Francesca’s or Leonardo’s art, whose figures, wrapped in a veil of silence, elicit a sublime sense of the sacred. The same feeling that one might experience enraptured by the harmony of a starry sky, the simplicity of a geometric form, the perfection of a rock garden. Why does beauty seem to be so closely linked to truth? Mathematical beauty is expected to lead the way to physical truth. Which kind of beauty is so ineloquent as to illuminate the “open secret” of truth?I documenti in IRIS sono protetti da copyright e tutti i diritti sono riservati, salvo diversa indicazione.
