1. 1
Universal Beauty – Seeing beauty in an unlikely place
By
Mian Tze Kng
(20114060053800)
A dissertation submitted in fulfillment of
Master of Fine Art
Department of Fine Art
Glasgow School of Art
12 May 2008

2. 2
Universal Beauty – Seeing beauty in an unlikely place
“Two men look out the same prison bars; one sees mud and the other stars.”
~ Frederick Langbridge
The above quote commonly gives an impression that in the same dire situation, it is more
favourable to see stars than mud. Stars shine and bring a sense of optimism whilst mud, dull
and dirty, suggested bleakness. The focus seems to rest on man over environment; we are
capable of being an actor instead of reactor. We can choose to make the best out of any
situation; even when physically bound, our spirits are free and alive.
Before we continue to think of other examples of positive thinking, such as the cup being half
full instead of half empty, is this all we can read out of this quote? In the first place, why do
we think that seeing stars is more favourable than mud? It is not unusual to utter ‘what a
beautiful starry night’, but seldom, if at all, ‘what a beautiful mud puddle!’ Although this
suggestion departs from the intention of Langbridge, it is worth taking a step back to consider
the assumptions we so quickly make. Since when do we attach a positive label to the stars and
negative label to mud? Surely things in themselves do not possess moral values, such values
being conferred by us as we try to make sense of the world.
Three basic matters need to be acknowledged before we can carry on further. First of all there
is a world out there; secondly there is ‘normal’ human being; and, thirdly, there is thought.
The world out there refers to anything that is outside of us, in this case, the prison, stars and
mud. By ‘normal’ I refer to the human being who has the mental faculty to experience the
exterior world, like the two physically imprisoned men looking at the stars and mud. Thought
is the mental process where we think about things. So now we are faced with the
interpretation after our senses have taken in the information and our minds have processed it.
One obvious reason that the stars may be so interpreted positively is their physical observable
characteristic: they are twinkling and bright. The same goes with mud: grimy and dirty. So is
this sentiment universal? Surely there will be someone who disagrees; perhaps he or she is an
astronomer having to stare at stars everyday laboriously tracking or calculating such that no
wonder remains. Or the constellation could be a reminder of failed relationships that left
emotionally deep scar in the heart. While human sense experiences and interpretation may
vary, just imagine if all stars were to disappear suddenly, would this loss affect everyone on
earth? I believe it would and I believe this is a clue that there is universal beauty. Is this leap

3. 3
to equate the sense of regret with the universal beauty too frivolous? How about the mud? It
may not be very difficult to think stars are beautiful but what about the mud? Not everyone
will feel sorry if mud disappeared from earth. For the rest of the paper I will attempt to
establish that there is universal beauty and that it is possible to see beauty in unlikely places;
in the mud for example.
Universal and Beauty
By universal I mean all human beings who have the faculty of experiencing the world share a
common denominator; the ability to see beauty beyond the appearance. It is where one sees
the co-existence of ugliness and beauty. This includes the mentally handicapped but it will be
another task to determine if they have the same concept of beauty in our definition. Also, I am
not saying beauty only resides in reasoning but due to the limited scope of this paper I will
focus on people capable of cogitation.
So what is Beauty? Many will say beauty is in the eye of the beholder and if that is the case
everything can be beautiful. Not just architecture or facial features conforming to the Golden
Ratio1
but anything that defies convention may still have its appreciative beholder. This, of
course, does not say very much of what beauty is. Occidentally, the earliest known discussion
about beauty is part of reasoning and has to do with order. Aristotle avers the chief forms of
beauty are order and symmetry and definiteness, which mathematical sciences demonstrate in
a special degree. Beauty has also been associated with God, truth and moral good and to keep
this discussion manageable, beauty in this paper refers to anything that is aesthetically
valuable. Aesthetic simply means the sense experience and the aesthetic value is the pleasure
we felt through sensation, emotion and reflective contemplation. This value is rested on the
excellence of humanity inevitably what is true and good. Very importantly, beauty is not the
absence of ugliness.
How do we perceive things?
1
Ancient Greek mathematicians first studied what we now call the golden ratio because of its frequent appearance
in geometry. The ratio is important in the geometry of regular pentagrams and pentagons. The Greeks usually
attributed discovery of the ratio to Pythagoras or his followers. Two quantities are in the golden ratio if the ratio
between the sum of those quantities and the larger one is the same as the ratio between the larger one and the
smaller. The golden ratio is approximately 1.6180339887.
At least since the Renaissance, many artists and architects have proportioned their works to approximate the
golden ratio—especially in the form of the golden rectangle, in which the ratio of the longer side to the shorter is
the golden ratio—believing this proportion to be aesthetically pleasing. (source: wikipedia
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Golden_ratio#History, accessed 12 May 2008)

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As mentioned in the introduction there are basically three factual assumptions when we try to
make sense of our world –the world out there, a ‘normal’ human being and thought.
Interference to any of these will change our perspectives significantly.
The world out there – the prison, mud, stars and all other objects. This is the objective world
where subjective experience is possible. To borrow Kant’s term, this is the noumena. We are
embedded within a cultural and social domain and we operate mainly through language
within a symbolic order. Although there is a world as it is, we seem only be able to
comprehend it through language. We become conscious of our own subjectivity and
experiences yet at the same time we become little aware of thoughts and feelings that are
beyond language. Immanuel Kant thinks that it is not possible to know the world as it is for
we are only able to know the world as our human faculties are capable of perceiving. We
should not confuse an epistemic condition of our experience with the noumena. In his
‘Copernican Revolution’ Kant saw our capacity as the determinants of what we perceive
instead of us trying to understand as much of the world out there as possible. We are now the
object instead of subject. The world out there only makes sense to us when they conform to
our knowledge, therefore what we perceive is determined by how we perceive it2
. Following
on this, in his Judgement of Taste it was stated:
In order to decide whether anything is beautiful or not, we refer the representation,
not by the Understanding to the Object for cognition but, by the Imagination (perhaps
in conjunction with the Understanding) to the subject, and its feeling of pleasure or
pain. The judgement of taste is therefore not a judgement of cognition, and is
consequently not logical but aesthetical, by which we understand that whose
determining ground can be no other than subjective. 3
Further elaboration on the relationship between the world out there and how we perceive
beauty will continue at the later half of the paper.
‘Normal’ human being – Most of us are born with mental faculties that allow us to have
experiences at all. These faculties are at the same time our necessity and physical constraints
in understanding the world. For example sight – our vision is very much different from the
bee that sees ultraviolet light and responding to what we see is not as simple and
2
See Dr Stuart, Susan, An Introduction – The context and theory begin (7.3), Kant’s Metaphysics Handout from
Senior Honours class, (2007/ 08) p. 10.
3
See Immanuel Kant, Dover Publications Inc, Critique of Judgment (United States of America: Dover
Publications Inc, 2005), p. 27.

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straightforward as we think. When we open our eyes what we actually see is a distorted
upside down image in our retinas excited by the photoreceptors and this information travels
through the optic nerve to the brain before it is analysed in thirty different visual areas.4
After
analysing all the individual features, we are then able to identify what we are looking at. Once
the input, stars or mud, is recognized, the data goes to the limbic system via amygdala for
interpretation5
. Therefore in order to have visual perception we need to satisfy three criteria:
we need light (visible or invisible), our eyes must be able to receive information and our brain
must be capable of processing the input6
. We will not be able to see if any of them are
missing or with certain influences such as LSD, our perception will be very different. All
things considered, we will then gauge our emotional significance when we see the mud and
stars.
Thought – When our senses receive input it will be passed on to the cerebral cortex which is
the part of the brain that is responsible for producing a meaningful perceptual experience of
the world, allowing us to interact effectively, and to support abstract thinking and language. It
allows us to attach meaning to things we encounter through the cognitive build up. If we are
constantly reminded by the media that a lady has to be slim to be beautiful, we will
consciously or unconsciously use that as the yardstick. We may have our own opinions but
they are constantly being challenged and reshaped by culture and society. For the Empiricists
our mind starts off as a blank slate and will be written on when we learn or experience things.
David Hume, an Empiricist, claimed that we could only have knowledge through experience
and all ideas are a result of it and even if we think we have objective knowledge it is because
they exhibit a kind of constancy and coherence that give rise to the idea of objectivity7
. Surely
this reality is limited if it is based solely on empirical experience. Even Kant who thinks
experience and reason are impetus to knowing and making judgement postulates the
impossibility of knowing the world as it is because even if we are able to ‘know the world
independently of our personal point of view on it, what we know (the world of ‘appearance’)
bears the indelible marks of that point of view’8
. Is this the only way our thought makes sense
of the world?
4
Reith Lectures 2003 – The Emerging Mind, BBC Radio 4,
http://www.bbc.co.uk/radio4/reith2003/lecture1.shtml, accessed 3 Feb 2008
5
Ibid
6
Eye Info, Royal National Institute of Blind People,
http://www.rnib.org.uk/xpedio/groups/public/documents/publicWebsite/public_light_sensitivity.hcsp, accessed 3
Feb 2008
7
See Roger Scrutor, Oxford, Kant – A very short introduction (Britain: Oxford University Press, 1982), p. 25.
8
See Roger Scrutor, Oxford, Kant – A very short introduction (Britain: Oxford University Press, 1982), p.27.

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Morpheus, a character in the movie The Matrix asked:
What is real? How do you define real? If you are talking about what you can feel,
what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals
interpreted by your brain. This is the world that you know…It exists now only as
part of a neural-interactive simulation that we call the Matrix.9
In many senses we are living in the realm of the Matrix or we are the brain in a vat. Would
either Hume or Kant be able to distinguish the real if Morpheus’ question was directed at
them? I would like to call this realm the ‘2nd
reality’. It is the world that are nurtured and
constructed. This is a world where we may agree that stars symbolizes hope and mud despair.
2nd
reality
A few centuries back Hume stated in his A Treatise of Human Nature:
Since nothing is ever present to the mind but perceptions, and since all ideas are
deriv'd from something antecedently present to the mind, it follows, that 'tis
impossible for us so much as to conceive or form an idea of any thing specifically
different from ideas and impressions. Let us fix our attention out of ourselves as
much as possible; let us chase our imagination to the heavens, or to the utmost limits
of the universe; we never really advance a step beyond ourselves, nor can conceive
any kind of existence, but those perceptions, which have appear'd in that narrow
compass. This is the universe of the imagination, nor have we any idea but what is
there produc'd. (T, 67-8)
Hume believes that we cannot have a priori reasons and that nothing goes beyond ideas which
are derived from perception. On the psychology side, Abraham Maslow who is the father of
humanistic psychology, in his Hierarchy of Needs (see diagram, source:
http://www.trumpuniversity.com/learn/images/maslow_hierarchy.gif) shows that humans
have a number of needs that are innate and they can
be broadly categorised under D-needs (Deficient)
and B-needs (Being). In his book Towards a
Psychology of Being he states that if the first three
needs, physiological, safety and belonging, are not
met it will lead to neurosis. The D-needs correspond
9
The Matrix (1999) (motion picture), Dir. Andy and Larry Wachowski, Warner Bros., Village Roadshow
Pictures, United States and Australia.

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to D-cognition and B-needs to B-cognition. We daily operate under the D-cognition mode
where the focus is not on seeing a world as it is but upon seeing only those aspects of a thing
that are necessary for meeting the needs and interests of daily life. B-cognition is the opposite
where we see beyond our ordinary daily will-filled consciousness and see things as they are.
We will return to this in the 1st
reality. If Hume or Kant was right about all our knowledge of
reality is build up by our perception or what we perceive is determined by how we perceive it,
the D-cognition we operate in will catch us in the cycle where we mould the world into the
limits of our own capacity and the world in return conditions and shapes us into ‘creatures
governed by bodily needs and desires’10
. If our perception is mainly serving a practical end
naturally we cannot see beyond the apparent in mud because our experience with it does not
satisfy any needs. Mud is filth and foul. However if we ever taste the goodness of the Dead
Sea mud, mud may become an object of desire! So does the key to universal beauty lie in the
beneficial properties of any objects that are not physically attractive? It is arguably so in the
2nd
reality.
2nd
reality is reality driven by our D-needs and when we are able to satisfy them, we feel good
about ourselves. We often turn to the world out there instead of within us to fulfill these
needs. Once the physiological and safety needs, first two basic needs, are met, we will
consciously turn to our society for acceptance and meaning for life. So what are we faced
with? A hall of mirrors that is currently in the form of television and computer monitors,
posters, billboards and other forms of advertisements. Jean Baudrillard alleges that
postmodern societies are organized around “simulation” where the reality is simulated by
cultural modes of representation, as in television, computer cyberspace, and virtual reality.
He went on to say such reality is more real than real, it is hyperreality. The media,
information and communication technologies provide experiences more intense and involving
than our daily lives which seem banal in comparison. The ‘loading programme’ in the movie
The Matrix is already prevailing in our society. If our lives lack excitement and we want an
immediate solution, we can turn to the television and watch a reality programme like the
Amazing Race. If this is still one step removed we can try the most accessible form of virtual
reality now, home gaming consoles or video games. This allows great immersivity, though
not fully, and our lives become more exciting without us stepping out of our house. The
media, amusement parks, mega shopping malls, and other excursions into ideal worlds build
the realm of the hyperreal and are becoming our oxygen supply. (No wonder oxygen bars are
gaining popularity in the big cities.) Without these oxygen masks we will feel suffocated,
10
See Parker J. Palmer, HarperSanFrancisco, To Know As We Are Known – Education as a Spiritual Journey
(United States of America: HarperCollins, 1993), p. 13.

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with them we feel alive. This overwhelming flux of images and information are the ‘air’ we
breathe and shapes our thoughts and behavior when we passively receive them.
‘If the savings book was the epitome of modern life, the credit card is the paradigm of the
postmodern one’11
I would add on e-commerce like PayPal for the online shopping paradise
like ebay. Things can be sent from different parts of the world to our doorstep and the
‘Silkroad’ spread across continents in a matter of days. Our purchasing power does not solely
depend on dollars and cents and we could now own pieces of histories when others return
them back and recycle the value in this virtual market. It is not too far-fetched to say this is
the same as what we thought of as beautiful. There is a virtual (in every sense) market for
beauty. We have moved from the state of simply ‘being’ to ‘having’ and now, ‘appearing’. So
anyone who controls appearance controls thought and hence it may not be too difficult to stir
a desire for and to change the opinion of mud and sell the idea of Beauty along the way. If I
am able to package and market mud so desirably like Dead Sea mud, in due time it is possible
to change people’s perception of the mud. The virtual world has opened up many
opportunities to indulge and fuel the D-needs and the line between what is real and what is
not is no longer distinctive. The danger of simulation is that we cannot differentiate the real
from hyperreal and the need to know what is real has even become inconsequential to many.
What is more important or urgent is to have the D-needs satisfied.
One of the scenes in The Matrix shows Morpheus leading Neo along a city sidewalk against a
black swamp of human traffic. As they walked on Neo was distracted by a lady in red while
Morpheus was talking:
The Matrix is a system, Neo…You have to understand, most of these people are not
ready to be unplugged. And many of them are so inert, so hopelessly dependent on
the system that they will fight to protect it…Were you listening to me Neo, or were
you looking at the woman in the red dress?
In this movie the reality we know of is just a bunch of computer codes and the lady in red was
written to be a distraction in the training programme. If our reality is built up by empirical
knowledge alone, as Hume suggested, then ‘real is simply electrical signals interpreted by
your brain’. Although our perception of mud may be changed by manipulating our D-need
and cognition, such ‘encoding’ is meant to feed into larger scheme of programming. This
11
See Zygmunt Bauman, Blackwell, Life in Fragments: Essays in Postmodern Moraltiy (Oxford: Blackwell,
1993), p. 5.

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beauty that is build on personal interest and desire is just another code planted into our mind
by clever marketers or some Big Brothers.
1st
reality
The society appears to be progressing as discoveries and scientific breakthroughs speed up
like never before, but we are skipping and sacrificing the ‘being’ in the process. Superficiality
is the curse of our age and instead of developing our own intelligence, we developed artificial
intelligence. Which or where is the real us? The avatar in Second Life, or this corporeal body?
I would say neither. This corporeal body in a way is the avatar of the reality we now know,
the 2nd
reality.
So what is 1st
reality? If 2nd
reality is the construct, a realm driven by D-need, 1st
reality is
reality that is formed through relationship and knowing the world as it is. It is when we
operate under B-cognition and see beyond appearances, beyond the needs and interests of
daily life. This transcendental perspective allows us to side-step the hall of mirrors and look
within ourselves. We are not a blank slate as Hume thought and our reality only a product of
our sense impression. He argues that there is no foundation for the belief in an objective
world as such belief belongs to thought alone, and merely reflects the ‘relations of ideas’ but
Kant in his Critique of Pure Reason proved otherwise. Kant argues that true knowledge is
possible only through the synthesis of experience and reason. “Without sensibility no object
would be given to us, without understanding no object would be thought. Thoughts without
content are empty; intuitions without concepts are blind.”12
Such knowing transcends the
subjective point of view and is able to lay claim to the world as it is. However, Kant is not
referring to knowing the world ‘as it is in itself’ apart from our perspectives because this is
impossible. He meant instead that our subjective experiences are only possible if there is an
experienced objective world structured in space and time. ‘Experience consisting solely of
subjective sense impression is not a possible experience’13
.
Kant makes a distinction between the world as experienced and the world (experienced
world) as it is in itself. He claims that we can obtain a priori truths about the nature of our
experience and these truths do not depend on the experience for confirmation. Hume and
other empiricists see knowledge conforming to objects while Kant asserts that ‘objects must
12
See Smith, Norman Kemp, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason (London: Macmillan & Co. Ltd, 1929), p.
93.
13
Dr Stuart, Susan, An Introduction – The context and theory begin (7.3), Kant’s Metaphysics Handout from
Senior Honours class, (2007/ 08) p. 10.

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conform to knowledge’. In a constructed world of the 2nd
reality, we are directed by the
physical characteristic of stars and use it within our linguistic and symbolic system to be an
emblem of hope. Similarly the marketeers work with this system and dispense promises by
directing our gazes to the benefits of their products. Our identities are built through these
promises that target at our D-needs. Whilst in the 1st
reality we understand that objects
conform to our knowledge thereby allowing us to take step back from the lure of these
promises. We can exercise our B-cognition and make a choice to go with the flow or find our
own pace. We learn to see the object as a whole, as a complete unit, detached from relations,
possible usefulness and expediency. In the same book under B-cognition in Peak-experience
Maslow mentions:
He can then more readily look upon nature as if it were there in itself and for itself,
and not simply as if it were a human playground put there for human purposes. He can more
easily refrain from projecting human purposes upon it. In a word, he can see it in its own
Being (“endness”) rather than as something to be used, or something to be afraid of…
In 1st
reality we realize we have a choice. We can avoid selecting only certain aspects of the
object, those which are useful to us, those we are familiar or conform to our language. When
we see objects partially we are abstracting to relate the aspects to our linguistic system.
Language “deals with external reality rather than psychic reality, with the conscious rather
than the unconscious”14
. Instead of constructing our reality with and by words, we can enter
into a wordless world. This is the world where universal beauty can be found and
experienced.
Universal Beauty within 1st
reality
Let us return to the stars and mud illustration. In order to perceive the beauty in them (that
they are aesthetically valuable) we must perceive them fully by avoiding our tendency to
classify, compare and evaluate them. Stars are bright and shiny so they should aptly be
symbols of hope while mud is filth and foul the symbols of gloom. The moment we start
categorizing them we are performing an abstracting and generalizing act with the
impossibility to see them as unique noumenon. “…what we call knowing, i.e., the placing of
an experience in a system of concepts or words or relations, cuts off the possibility of
cognizing.”15
If we are seeing the stars and mud as if they are the only objects of their kind
14
See Maslow, Abraham H., Van Nostrand Reinhold, Toward A Psychology of Being (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold , 1968), p. 90.
15
Ibid p. 90.

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we will grasp the fullness and richness of them. Like a child who comes to know the world
with “innocent eyes”, we will be so fascinated and examine every aspect of it since no
attribute is any more important than other. We will devote the whole power of our mind to
perception and let our whole consciousness be filled by the contemplation of the object
present, be it a landscape, tree, star, mud, or anything else. We lose ourselves entirely in this
object and forget our individuality so that it is as though the object alone existed without
anyone to perceive it, and thus we are no longer able to separate the perceiver from the
perception, but the two have become one. It is by losing oneself in perception are we able to
see beauty in every object, even in the presence of ugliness. The dichotomies have found a
way to marry each other when we become more inclusive and whole.
To be more precise in our intuitive understanding of beauty we shall now turn to Kant’s
Judgements of Taste (under Critique of Judgement) which set out to deal with aesthetics.
According to him when we regard something as beautiful it must bring immediate pleasure
and not by any process of cognition, i.e., not depending on concepts or knowledge. It is based
on feeling which he describes as ‘a quite separate faculty of discriminating and estimating’.16
The Judgement of Taste does not refer to what we generally mean by preferences but an
investigation to our claim when we pronounce something is beautiful. We often make
judgement such as ‘This is beautiful’ and Kant is interested to find out if this claim is well-
grounded. His fundamental concern is: ‘How are judgements of taste possible?’ He lists out 4
‘moments’ of this particular judgement. They are:
1) Disinterested
2) Universal
3) Purposive without purpose
4) Necessary
Aesthetic judgement must be disinterested, meaning that we judge an object to be beautiful
for its own sake and not because the existence of this object satisfy our desires. If I consider
Orkney Island to be beautiful, having believed it will be a great holiday destination for my
family, this is a judgement of good. If I find Stradivari violin beautiful because its sound
evokes a pleasurable feeling, this is a judgement of agreeable. These two judgements are
related to desire and derived from the actual existence of the object. ‘…in saying it is
beautiful and in showing that I have taste, I am concerned, not with that in which I depend on
the existence of the object, but with that which I make out of this representation in myself.’
He further explains that ‘Taste is the faculty of judging of an object or a method of
16
See Bernard, H. J., Dover Publications Inc, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (United States of America:
Dover Publications Inc, 2005), p. 28.

12. 12
representing it by an entirely disinterested satisfaction or dissatisfaction. The object of such
satisfaction is called beautiful.
The satisfaction that arises from the beautiful is universal. Although the judgement is
subjective as it is based on individual experience and feeling, it has a ‘subjective universality’
feature. In his Critique of Pure Reason, Kant argues every ‘normal’ human being possesses
faculties of Imagination and Understanding. As these two faculties interact, Imagination
unites the sense perceptions that are the inputs of experience and Understanding provide
concepts for the synthesis to be intelligible. Since the judgement is free from personal desires,
when we perceive something as beautiful we mean our delight is evoked by the quality of the
object only. ‘For since it does not rest on any inclination of the subject (nor upon any other
premeditated interest), but since he who judges feels himself quite free as regards the
satisfaction which he attaches to the object, he cannot find the ground of this satisfaction in
any private conditions connected with his own subject; and hence it must be regarded as
grounded on what he can presuppose in every other man’17
. The feeling of satisfaction is
subjective but the form of judgement is objective as all ‘normal’ human beings have the
interplay of Imagination and Understanding. Therefore in an ideal circumstance others ought
to agree with me when they experience the aesthetic delight and will inevitably arrive at the
same judgement.
When we judge an object to be beautiful we do not presuppose a purpose. Unlike an artist
who set out to paint the constellation and the painting will be deemed beautiful because it
fulfills the concept of a faithful representation, we think stars are beautiful not because they
fulfill any purpose. This judgement may happen in the absence of any particular concept yet it
is judged to be purposive. This purpose comes from their presentation which allows
comprehension by the faculty of understanding and leads to a judgement of taste. When we
respond to the appearance of stars without any determinate concept, we are responding
aesthetically as if their shapes and patterns possess significance and yet without definite
meanings.
Kant thinks the aesthetic judgement should be ‘necessary’ and by this he meant that an object
or situation could not have been otherwise. This is connected to ‘universal’ of the second
moment. He asserts that the necessity is ‘exemplary’ because the judgement neither rests
upon nor produces a concept but on ‘common sense’. He does not refer to the idea of
common sense that we know now. He uses it literally meaning we have a kind of sense in
17
See J. H. Bernard, Dover Publications Inc, Immanuel Kant’s Critique of Judgment (United States of America:
Dover Publications Inc, 2005), p. 34.

13. 13
common, the sense through which we become aware of the beautiful from the free play of the
Imagination and Understanding. The claim that ‘this is beautiful’ implies that ‘everyone
ought to give the object in question his approval’.
Kant’s Judgement of Taste is in sync with the B-cognition described by Maslow. It is only
possible to exercise these abilities in the 1st
reality as it is a reality where the human is not
motivated by needs and able to see nature ‘in its own Being (“endness”) rather than as
something to be used, or something to be afraid of...’18
. When we manage to see mud in itself
we are not comparing mud with anything else or judging it according to any benefit we can
get. When we exercise our B-cognition and realise ordinary mud can be beautiful, it is a
delight that is disinterested because we are not expecting to gain anything from its actual
existence but its representation. It is also universal as it is the free play of Imagination and
Understanding that lead to percipience of beauty. This ability is available to all ‘normal’
human beings and anyone who exercises theirs ought to make the same judgement. The
beauty of mud is purposive without a purpose and this unfettered form stimulates the
Imagination and Understanding ‘that is both lawlike and free’19
. As it is without purpose, it
allows the free reign of Imagination to stimulate the Understanding to inexhaustible thought
yet on the other hand the appearance of having a specific purpose beckons Understanding to
govern the Imagination’s activity. Since Imagination and Understanding are cognitive powers
present in everyone, anyone whose aesthetic delight is evoked by the representation of mud
has the same interaction at work between the two, ought to give the approval of the
judgement in an ideal circumstance.
Brief note on Beauty and Morality
The writing till this point has only considered objects and we have yet to consider morality.
Can we find any beauty in people or actions that are deemed morally wrong? According to
Standford Encyclopedia of Philosophy ‘morality’ can be used
1. descriptively to refer to a code of conduct put forward by a society or,
a. some other group, such as a religion, or
b. accepted by an individual for her own behavior or
18
See Abraham H. Maslow, Van Nostrand Reinhold, Toward A Psychology of Being (New York: Van Nostrand
Reinhold , 1968), p. 76.
19
See Oswald Hanfling, Black Well Publishers, Philosophical Aesthetic – An Introduction, (United Kingdom:
Blackwell Publishers: 1992), Pg 138.

14. 14
2. normatively to refer to a code of conduct that, given specified conditions, would be
put forward by all rational persons.20
The accepted code of conduct varies from individuals to individuals, cultures to cultures and
countries to countries. Trying to arrive on a universal morality is a tricky attempt as very
often it is accompanied with a qualifier. The idea of morality only exists in human and is
always a phenomenon. Therefore it is always subjective without the concept of the ultimate
God. For the purpose of discussion I shall consider this action that is commonly accepted as
morally wrong in contemporary societies - torture.
Although aesthetic experience is commonly linked with beauty, things which are ugly or
repulsive are also a judgement of the aesthetic perception. Many a time we find terrible and
gruesome things irresistibly attractive and sensational crimes or ghost stories often attract and
repel us at the same time. Pleasure and curiosity lurks just below the morbidity and perversion
as the forbidden challenges the laws decorum. Edmund Burke’s answer to the phenomenon
of delight in terror is that we are spectators with a certain detachment. In his A Philosophy
Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful he wrote:
“When danger or pain press too nearly, they are incapable of giving any delight, and
are simply terrible; but at certain distances, and with certain modifications, they may be, and
they are, delightful, as we every day experience.”21
This shares similarity in Aristotle’s idea of aesthetic pleasure made possible by the sense of
distance between the spectator and the tragic hero created by the fictional nature of the play.
Algolagnia may be uncommon during Burke’s time and his idea of delight derived from
getting up close and personal with terror ‘behind safety glass’ actually took away the point of
the pain. Seeing and feeling our own bodies or others inflicted with pain may bring about
pleasure and psychological comfort with the release of various hormones. It is not impossible
for sadists or flagellants to see beauty in torture if the thoughts and actions satisfy them. On a
similar note, Aristotle explains how the representation of tragedy brings the audiences
through a process of emotional cleansing, catharsis. Torture and tragedy in these cases are
solutions to psychological needs and responses to mortality.
20
The Definition of Morality, Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy, http://plato.stanford.edu/entries/morality-
definition/, accessed 10 May 2008.
21
Burke, Edmund, A Philosophical Inquiry into the Origin of Our Ideas of the Sublime and Beautiful, The
Harvard Classics Vol. 24, Part 2, http://www.bartleby.com/24/2/107.html, accessed 10 May 2008

15. 15
As mentioned before beauty is what we find aesthetically valuable. Aesthetic refers to sense
experience and the aesthetic value is the pleasure we derive from this experience that has to
do with goodness and truth. While a lot of things are aesthetically valuable to us, our values
are often a construct of the 2nd
reality, driven by our D-needs. This is where the ‘beauty lies in
the eyes of the beholder’. The sadists may consider torture as a form of beauty but either the
third party, victim or perpetrator, none is entitled to claim that there is beauty in this ill
treatment to oneself or others. Kant describes the judgement of taste to be free from morality
but it has to be free from desire as well. He has written two other characteristics and they are,
the sense of illimitability and our intimations of some sort of connection between the
beautiful and the morally good.22
In brief the latter reflects his belief that contemplation on
beautiful object should lead to reflection on the morally good. A beautiful representation is
also a rendering of moral goodness. It may not be unreasonable to expect Kant to agree that
the same applies to thought and action.
Conclusion
In our daily affairs we are only concerned with what we experience and feel. Very often we
are not precise and conscious with the reasons of our choices. Every morning when we open
our eyes, our habits and routines will auto-direct our activities with little changes. We enter
into a world that we have accepted as real, often consciously, while unaware that our choices
or preferences are frequently mediated and directed by various signifiers in our environment.
Language is our main spectacle that both sharpens and limits our vision when we forget it is
but an instrument. We are so used to it that we conveniently believe what we see as the world
out there instead of a world out there. How can we see any mediation in action when
phenomena is taken as the noumena? To repeat the question Morpheus asked:
What is real? How do you define real? If you are talking about what you can feel,
what you can smell, what you can taste and see, then real is simply electrical signals
interpreted by your brain.
We live in specific space and time and we have sense perceptions and thought to operate
within it. We are both in the realm of 1st
and 2nd
reality and capable of using our B- and D-
perception in our enquiry about our world as long as we are capable of cogitation. 1st
reality is
what lies outside of the 2nd
reality and not in the absence of. We are taught to organize our
world in certain ways after we are borne. Order, unification and control are part of the 2nd
22
See Oswald Hanfling, Black Well Publishers, Philosophical Aesthetic – An Introduction, (United Kingdom:
Blackwell Publishers: 1992), Pg 142.

16. 16
reality as they help us manage our world into the familiar and predictable. However as we try
to be precise and strive to build up our objective knowledge, we are at the same time
performing an abstracting and generalizing act. While ignorance is bliss and our finite mortal
bodies are just not capable of handling sensation and information in full-scale, we may settle
into another extreme of hand-to-mouth existence. The D-cognition and D-perception are
results of these innate needs, the D-need, and seeing beauty in mud (or any other objects
deemed ugly) will be impossible as it is kept at bay by our pragmatic concerns. In order to see
beyond we will have to enter into the 1st
reality vision where B-perception is activated.
In 1st
reality beauty and ugliness co-exist. Unlike the normal nomothetic way of handling our
world, inconsistencies and contradictions are accepted as inevitable and necessary. An object
can be ugly and beautiful at the same time as we are no longer perceiving and categorizing
objects according to our own interest. Mud may have physical qualities that are visually
displeasing and olfactory foul, if the ‘Copernican Revolution’ is once again returned to the
object, mud, we are making headway in seeing beauty in it. Although for Kant the beauty in
representation is its formal qualities, I trust that he will be sympathetic towards my
proposition that differs slightly from his. We shun away from mud because of our immediate
sense perception but if we use our B-cognition and perception and allow enough time to
contemplate on mud as it is, we will begin to see our relationship as inseparable and realize
our interconnected roles in the whole scheme of things. This transcendental, fresh sense
perception is where the beauty blossoms and according to Kant’s criterion, we are entitled to
this judgement of beauty. This ability is available to anyone who decides to side-step the hall
of mirrors and enter into the wilderness to discover beauty in unlikely place.

17. 17
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