Beauty Is In The Eye Of The Beholder Essay

Why Philosophical Ignorance Isn’t Bliss
To each his own; different strokes for different folks; beauty is in the eye of the beholder. All three of these phrases, common adages in society, serve to underscore the diversity of tastes amongst people, whether our preference is for ice cream over cake, black over gray, or cats over dogs. However, the last statement, “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” an explicitly post-modernist belief, does more than seemingly state the obvious. Rather, it declares the much deeper viewpoint that individuals dictate in their own terms what beauty is rather than recognizing beauty as an intrinsic quality. But do all who use this phrase view beauty in this light and believe this phrase to mean the same thing? It is my opinion that to interpret the adage “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” as an exclusively postmodern phrase is misleading as most who use it today are unaware of its original implications. Instead, most use the phrase to merely state the difference in preference amongst individuals, therefore making the phrase compatible with any philosophy pertaining to beauty—in my case, the Christian worldview.
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The first view that encourages a subjective interpretation of beauty is one that is difficult to hold as beauty in and of itself relies upon objective qualities to be felt. On the contrary, the latter view highlights the differences in beauty that are clear in society due to our inability to truly appreciate all works of art and to view things as God does. Therefore, by establishing “beauty is in the eye of the beholder” as an exclusively postmodern phrase, we are eliminating the possibility of the phrase to be seen in a light that rectifies its meaning with that of a Christian view of