Beauty and Life

On the Meaning of Beauty and the Survival of Earth

This essay unfolds in four parts. First, I introduce a terminological distinction that clarifies the aesthetic experience of the beautiful. Second, I explain why this experience — especially the experience of wild beauty — is necessary for the survival of life on Earth. Third, I consider the politics of placing this experience at the very center of our lives. Finally, I turn to philosophy itself, proposing that it can once again guide us toward a vision of society grounded in beauty and truth, taking into account the truth of conservation biology.

Part 1) The Meaning of Beauty

People often regard beauty as “subjective,” meaning that it does not exist in the world in the same way that a color, shape, sound, smell, or physical sensation does. On this view, beauty is “in the eye of the beholder” in order to stress that its reality depends entirely on human perception. There is no beauty “out there,” only in how we see or experience things. Disagreements about beauty, then, seem pointless, since what pleases one person may not please another. Any shared judgement that something is beautiful, or not, is explained as a product of convention, cultural conditioning, or consensus.

Opponents of the subjective view argue that some things truly are beautiful, meaning that beauty is an objective property or quality of things, perceived by some and missed by others. Beauty is not a particular color, shape, sound, smell, effect or sensation, but the arrangement of these elements into a harmonious whole. In this sense, beauty concerns the Form of reality: when the parts are symmetrical, proportionate, rhythmic, and balanced, the thing is beautiful, whether or not there is agreement about it. Beauty is not “in the eye of the beholder,” but in the objective Form and discerning judgement of a perceiver capable of recognizing it.

This long and seemingly endless debate about whether beauty is subjective or objective can, I contend, be resolved by distinguishing between “harmony” and “beauty.” Harmony describes something whose objective properties form a symmetrical, proportionate, rhythmic, and balanced unity; beauty names the feeling we have when we experience that unity. In other words, the harmony of a great work of art or wild nature is objectively real, and it becomes beautiful when we subjectively feel that harmony within ourselves. When we say, “This is beautiful,” we mean: I feel within myself the harmony that exists “out there” in the real world. By keeping the two terms distinct, we see that beauty does not exist apart from human experience, yet neither is it merely “in the eye of the beholder,” for it depends on the objective harmony of what we encounter. To hear a Mozart violin concerto or to walk through an old-growth forest is to experience beauty — a pleasure rooted in both the world and the perceiver.

We often say, “This painting is beautiful” or This lake is beautiful,” which is acceptable in the discourse of ordinary language. But philosophically, it is important to be precise: beauty is neither wholly in the object nor wholly in our mind. It arises in the special relationship between harmonious Form and human beings, when we allow ourselves to be pleasurably transformed by that Form. Since human beings, as far as we know, are the only creatures who take delight in the experience of harmony, it follows that if there were no humans, there would be no beauty — though the harmony itself would still remain in the world. For philosophy, clarity requires that we distinguish what belongs to the object (harmony) from what belongs to us (beauty).

Part 2) Why Beauty Matters

I draw attention to the twofold nature of the aesthetic experience of beauty because it entails nothing less than a radical transformation of human nature. This is not a mere exercise in the philosophy of language or conceptual analysis, though it does begin there. The clarification of terms serves a deeper purpose: it illuminates why beauty is so central to human life — namely, it shapes perception and has the power to transform our very nature. A great novel, painting, poem, waterfall, or river valley possesses harmony whether or not we perceive it; the harmony is in the work itself. If we never open Goethe’s novel, “The Sorrows of Young Werther,” or never set foot in the Hudson River Valley, their harmonious Form still exists. If we enter into this harmony — adopting a disinterested, aesthetic perspective — it brings about a profound reorganization of our faculties: our sensibilities are stimulated, the imagination is set free, and contemplative reason is awakened. The objective power of harmonious Form can radically transform us subjectively — if we adopt a disinterested perspective toward it. This is Kant’s great insight in the Critique of Judgement, but note that his use of the term beauty is not always terminologically clear.

The aesthetic experience of beauty is vitally important because it changes us inwardly, releasing us from the domination of instrumental reason and the propaganda it serves. During the experience of beauty, the defensive-controlling ego-structure relaxes, allowing new intuitions and ideas to surface. Nowhere is this truer than in wilderness, whose big harmony surpasses anything achievable by even the greatest works of art. It overwhelms us. This harmony is intrinsic; it is the very Form of wilderness, a living order in which every part communicates and cooperates with the whole. Such harmony alters us inwardly in a way that no other experience on Earth can do, because it dissolves the frame of civilization: no traffic, no intrusions, no boundaries — only an endless horizon of the wild. We feel oneness in the presence of the non-human world, which is the most complete release from civilization that humans are capable of.

It is not only the vastness of wilderness that remakes us, but also its complexity and depth, containing an inner necessity that has been built up over eons. Through this slow shaping, wilderness attains a kind of perfection far beyond the capacity of art to imitate or equal. This is not to deny the revolutionary potential of authentic art, yet its Form is always, to some degree, conditional by the hand of humans. The Form of wilderness, by contrast, is entirely free from human designs and determinations, and it is precisely this freedom that lends greater power to the human imagination and original thought.

Going back to Aristotle, we know that every human experience contains both form and content, but an aesthetic experience is primarily concerned with Form — how the content is arranged into a harmonious whole. Almost any subject matter can be made into a beautiful work of art if is it subjected to proportion, symmetry, rhythm, and balance. Only the aesthetic experience of wilderness is “pure” in a way that no human-made art can be, for it contains no trace of ideology or propaganda. Our experience of its harmony as beauty frees human subjectivity from the conventions and value-systems of human societies, allowing us to feel and think beyond the limits of history and culture.

In an Age in which we are nearly enclosed by sophisticated scientific propaganda, we need an opening into a true realm of freedom, and the aesthetic experience of wilderness provides it. Our receptivity to the Form of the wild reorients us in the direction of life. Far from passive, this experience sets in motion a life- affirming culture.

Part 3) The Politics of Beauty

In a world without wilderness, a genuine wilderness experience is no longer possible. If, as I have argued, the experience of harmony felt as beauty — and above all, the harmony of wilderness — is essential for radical subjective human emancipation — then we must adopt a strategy for rewilding the Earth. Otherwise, we will perish by our own restless hands, which continue to eradicate wilderness everywhere. To destroy the harmony of the wild world, and our opportunity to participate in it, is to pass a death-sentence upon ourselves.

The task of placing the aesthetic experience of wilderness at the center of our lives has both an objective and subjective requirement. Objectively, wilderness must be restored to the Earth in its autonomous, harmonious Form, so that humans can truly perceive and appreciate it. Subjectively, we must adopt a disinterested or completely non-violent relationship to this reality, so that we are profoundly affected and activated by it. The experience of beauty — which we urgently need to survive and flourish — is the subjective experience of objective harmony. Without both the autonomous Form of wild nature and our willingness to perceive it for its own sake, we are disconnected and lost.

The existential dilemma of our times is that the two requirements for an aesthetic wilderness experience — an experience that could save life on Earth — appear to be locked in stalemate. We need more wilderness to awaken perception of its beauty, yet we need deeper perception of wilderness to secure more wilderness. Worse still, as wilderness disappears, our capacity to perceive and value it diminishes, and this impoverished perception further accelerates its destruction. In this way, the vicious circle becomes a death-spiral.

On every continent, people are working to rewild the Earth, and genuine progress is being made, but when we consider the rate of progress with the far greater rate of destruction worldwide, the death-spiral of civilization remains firmly in place, turning ever downward. If the fate of the Earth depends of recovering wilderness and re-centering human life around the experience of its harmony as beauty, then we must ask: can philosophy once again guide us toward this end, as it has always sought to envision the good society and orient humanity toward it?

Part 4) The Relevance of Political Philosophy

Western philosophy begins with Plato, whose magnum opus, “The Republic,” presents a utopian vision of a good society. In this dialogue, Plato explores metaphysics, ethics, aesthetics, language, logic, and other inquiries insofar as they bear on this matter. He does not root his model society in the historical circumstances of 4th Century B.C. Greece, which is a valid criticism of his theory, but this abstraction testifies to the power of pure reason to give people a better idea on how to live, even if it identifies no tendencies in the established society toward realizing this goal. Ideas and Forms of truth, beauty, and goodness contribute to their eventual realization, even if they are not presently embodied in empirical reality.

Today, we are severely cut off from wilderness, and thus from our most fundamental needs and desires. Living in a civilization with a lot of isolation, traffic, noise, and ugliness, we need a clear Alternative that philosophy can help articulate, by appealing to whatever cognitive power and imagination still survive within us. Philosophy alone cannot change the world, but it may serve as the memory and refuge for repressed and forgotten ideas and ideals — if it remains true to its original purpose of envisioning a good society.

What passes as philosophy today, along with most of intellectual culture, is largely confined to the halls of academia, and is overwhelming useless in revealing the long-range goals of humankind. If philosophy is to become relevant again, it must reclaim its former conviction that awareness of a better life can help bring it into being — an awareness that embraces the new potentialities for freedom and happiness revealed by evolving science, technology and culture. Today, this means grounding itself in the science of conservation biology, or risk regurgitating ideas and arguments endlessly.

We do not need more and better scholars on Plato, Aristotle, Kant, Hegel or Marx, but mature philosophers, who can assimilate the great ideas of the past and offer realistic social solutions to our pending existential demise. Across philosophy departments in America, numerous professors devote their careers to overly detailed exegesis of a particular philosopher or issue, rarely attempting to relate their knowledge to the human condition and to how it can be improved. This is a betrayal of the essence of philosophy — since Plato — which is political philosophy. A dismissive shrug of the shoulders and mutter, “we’re screwed,” is morally indefensible, and a form of intellectual elitism. It is not enough to know what a great philosopher says; we must also see how his or her thoughts assists us to improve the world, especially in the present social situation of threatening global collapse.

Conclusion

Observe two young women on a seashore helping one another tie up their hair; two old friends at a gathering gazing and nodding in quiet recognition; a mother and child beneath a tree catching the falling leaves. Reality contains an infinite number of such beautiful moments. A life filled with them is a good life. Science and technology — including AI — are valuable insofar as they reduce pain and suffering, and extend life, so we may experience more of these moments. Without seeing the beauty of wilderness, we are blind to at least half of what reality has to offer. The pleasures of civilized life, deprived of contrast, diversity, and otherness, soon grow pale and monotonous. If we do not understand this, then we do not understand that utopia — indeed even a livable world — is rooted in a Wild Earth. . Assuming that every sane person wants to live on a planet we experience as beautiful, we must recognize that beauty is twofold: it is objective in the harmonious Form of independent nature, and it is subjective in the receptive power of human perception. Wilderness needs civilization to be seen and valued for its harmony and civilization needs wilderness to reach its ultimate end of an artistically beautiful social organization. Real wilderness — as scientifically explained by the principles of conservation biology — and high civilization are the inseparable poles of a flourishing Earth.

A flourishing Earth is a place where at least half is wild — as conservation biology has shown — see the work of Michael Soule, Reed Noss, Dave Parsons and hundreds of scientists connected to the Rewilding Institute under John Davis. On the other half we can build high civilization grounded in contemplating the harmony of wilderness and experiencing its beauty. The aesthetic relationship between wilderness and civilization is the key to genuine human freedom and happiness.

Building on these ideas, I have also argued in other essays on Medium that the proper dwelling place of humans on Earth is the Edge between real wilderness and high civilization. By living on the Edge, we can journey back and forth regularly between these two relatively independent worlds, so as to achieve a kind of wholeness and peace uniquely suited to our species, whose ontological nature, I argue, is The Passage Between Two Worlds. This vision reinforces the theme presented here, where the experience of wilderness as harmony shapes human perception for the realization of a future, free civilization. Honestly, we will never achieve high civilization, or the quality of human life that is the telos of our species, unless we awaken to the truth that wilderness exists for its own sake, and in this mode of existence, for us as well.