Tag Archives: Equality

The Revolutionary Figure of the Beautiful, Self-Improved Soul, by Justine Kolata

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Miniature room by Mrs. James Ward Thorne portraying a French salon from about 1780, ca. 1930’s, Art Institute of Chicago

In a global culture that appears increasingly obsessed with radical individualism, narcissistic presentations of self, and incendiary political rhetoric, it is hard to imagine that society once cared about the beauty of the soul. But, in the late 18th and early 19th centuries in Germany and across Europe, the pursuit of a ‘beautiful soul’ became a cornerstone of philosophical thought and popular discourse, advanced by some of the most important intellectuals of the time, including Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Friedrich Schiller and Wilhelm von Humboldt. To these thinkers, the pursuit of inner perfectibility responded to the horrors of the French Revolution’s irrational mass action culminating in The Terror of the 1790s. Nascent notions of democracy, they believed, could be developed only if each individual achieved liberation from what Immanuel Kant described as the ‘self-incurred tutelage’ of intellectual immaturity by developing cognitive and emotional faculties through aesthetic experiences.

At the core of the beautiful soul is the idea that the individual possesses an innate cognitive potential. Subject to the right environmental and educational conditions, this latent potential can be developed to reach a more perfect state of intellect, morality, character and conduct. The beautiful soul is an aesthetic concept focused on developing human capacities and advancing knowledge and culture. It entails the pursuit of personal cultivation to create a convergence of the individual aesthetic impulse with a collective ethical ideal. The beautiful soul is a virtuous soul, one that possesses a sense of justice, pursues wisdom, and practises benevolence through an aestheticised proclivity for the ‘good’.

Inspired by ancient Greek philosophy, the beautiful soul reflects Plotinus’ imperative to cultivate the self in the same way that the sculptor works:

Withdraw within yourself, and examine yourself. If you do not yet therein discover beauty, do as the artist, who cuts off, polishes, purifies until he has adorned his statue with all the marks of beauty. Remove from your soul, therefore, all that is superfluous, straighten out all that is crooked, purify and illuminate what is obscure, and do not cease perfecting your statue until the divine resplendence of virtue shines forth upon your sight …

Sculpting the soul and creating what Goethe referred to as ‘a more beautiful humanity’ is achieved through the internalisation of the Platonic triad of beauty, truth and goodness. Beauty is conceived as the integration of intellectual and aesthetic faculties in the encounter with art and nature. Truth is the result of the logical exercise of rational faculties and the elevating sense of curiosity derived from experiences in the world. Goodness is found in the human capacity to feel compassion for others and thereby contribute to the betterment of society.

The Platonic triad is realised within the soul by exploring ideas through lived experiences, not by blindly following abstract principles or dogma dictated by a church or political system. The concept requires that the individual actively engage her senses to navigate the material world in which beauty acts as her guide. The ineluctable indeterminateness of aesthetic, sensory experience is precisely what makes it valuable in expanding one’s consciousness in order to explore the ultimate questions of reality. Watching a lark’s parabolic trajectory in the sky, observing the fractal patterns found in nature, contemplating the concentric circles produced by rain droplets in pools of water become opportunities to understand the universe and reach a heightened cognitive-affective state. As Goethe observed: ‘A man should hear a little music, read a little poetry, and see a fine picture every day of his life in order that worldly cares may not obliterate the sense of the beautiful which God has implanted in the human soul.’

The concept affirms that, in its universality, beauty offers a means of engaging with the world, providing a common basis upon which positive social relationships can be developed, acting as a lexicon for communicative exchange. Since it is a natural human inclination to share sensory experiences, beauty provides an opportunity to bond individuals in a moment of ultimate meaning, conveying ineffable feelings that cut to the core of existence. By opening one’s perceptual horizons, a person is elevated beyond ego and self-absorption into a realm of universal concern and contemplation. Beauty achieves the good by strengthening faculties of empathy that induce deeper compassion for others and attentiveness to the wellbeing of the social collective. Thus, the marriage of the beautiful, the true and the good is for the beautiful soul more than the metaphysical meditations of antiquity but the very basis of a more just and equitable society.

Although the philosophy was never realised in the way that its theorists envisioned, the beautiful soul is far more than a beautiful idea. In turning towards aesthetics, the philosophers of the German Aufklärung (Enlightenment) did not naively evade political realities. Instead, they offered a holistic theory that recognised the long-term horizon for the flourishing of reason and human understanding. In doing so, they developed a poetic conception of politics that took inspiration from ancient Greek notions of an aesthetic state. In working towards her own self-improvement and fearlessly venturing into society, the beautiful soul was a revolutionary figure, at the vanguard of Enlightenment progress.

Self-cultivation was not an idle, vainglorious pursuit of the wealthy, but rather a radical reformulation of what it meant to be human and how to harmoniously exist in society. The beautiful soul anticipated the problems of instrumental reason, overcoming the dangers of mere utility, disenchantment and social isolation by offering an aesthetic world view that facilitated positive human interactions and a multidimensional understanding of human experience. She epitomised Enlightenment values of equality, fraternity and rationality, serving as the model of a citizen who lived up to the responsibilities associated with democracy.

The contemporary turn towards nihilism that lionises the individual at the expense of the collective has made the idea of cultivating a more beautiful soul appear hopelessly idealistic and disconnected from ‘hard realities’. In a realist’s world, we seek utilitarian ends under the guise of pragmatism, turning away from the illusiveness of an immaterial and ultimately unattainable ideal. The mystery and poetry of human nature has been stripped from our daily experience at the expense of our imaginations and our will to envision a more beautiful world. Yet, the social and environmental ills induced by our unfettered economy of instrumentality are proving anything but pragmatic for the long-term sustainability and wellbeing of our species. If we still harbour hope in the human propensity for goodness, then we ought to contemplate anew the poetic, revolutionary figure of the beautiful soul that might once again provide a vision for deepening our intellectual, moral and emotional faculties in the service of a more just and progressive future for us all.Aeon counter – do not remove

This article was originally published at Aeon and has been republished under Creative Commons.

~ Justine Kolata is the founder and director of The Public Sphere, and the co-founder and co-director of The Bildung Institute. She is currently pursuing a PhD in the German department at the University of Cambridge on enlightenment salon culture.

~ Ordinary Philosophy and its Traveling Philosophy / History of Ideas series is a labor of love and ad-free, supported by patrons and readers like you. Please offer your support today!

You Can Still Call Me Feminist

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 Many women don’t like to be called ‘feminist’ anymore.

Some think the term’s outdated and no longer useful, because when we use it we remind people of, and thereby perpetuate, silly notions about women from the bad old days. Others think it’s too divisive, highlighting the differences between between men and women instead of emphasizing our much more important similarities, which was the whole point of feminism in the first place.

I understand the distaste for the f-word. Second-wave feminists, continuing the fight for equality that the first wave had only partially achieved, sometimes overshot the mark in their zeal. Some thought men had to be taken down a peg or several; others thought that greater separation of the sexes, rather than less, was what it would take to liberate women from men’s intransigent misogyny. Many even thought, and continue to think, that men and women are so fundamentally unlike in the ways they think and feel that they will never achieve true friendship and equality.

I, like those who object to the term feminism, think that these separatists are wrong about human psychology, and am more optimistic about the improving relations between the sexes, especially as gender roles are losing some of their rigidity throughout the world. Though the recent flap over Cannes Film Festival’s kicking women off the red carpet for not wearing high heels might put a damper on this view, the fact that this raised such a huge outcry makes the whole story seem more like a point in its favor. Like the first wave feminists, I hold the view that the similarities between men and women so far outnumber the differences as to render them largely irrelevant, especially when it comes to human rights and political equality. The term feminism itself is a first wave feminist invention.

There are many meaningful terms which make sense because of the history behind them, not because they make literal sense anymore. Take the term film as it’s used in ‘Cannes Film Festival’: it’s used to refer to movies in general. Yet actual film, that specially prepared plastic on which a multitude of images are imprinted to be played back later as a moving picture, are only sometimes used in movie-making today. Movie aficionados who now refer to movies as films don’t mean to imply that actual film was used in any given movie; whether or not it was, they wish to emphasize the craft and history behind the art of movie-making that they all share.

The term under question here also has a meaning that’s evolved over time. Feminism expresses, in the words of that great old tongue-in-cheek slogan, ‘the radical notion that women are people’. Just as humanism was coined as a rallying word to promote the idea that human beings and their achievements are valuable for their own sake, feminism was coined to rally people to the cause of equal rights for women, since women possess the same defining qualities of humanity as men. At one time, it was necessary to prove that point. Now that we take women’s equality for granted in much of the world,  feminism might seem antiquated or divisive. But I don’t think that’s really the case. Almost everyone is familiar enough with the current usage of the term film to know that what we mean now is not exactly what we used to mean, but we still like to use it because of the history it alludes to. Likewise, most people should be familiar enough with feminism to know it’s now generally used in the context of critiquing the more entrenched and obscure problems of sexism in our society, not to demonstrate the basic humanity of women or the depravity of men.

So I still like to identify myself as feminist. Despite the blemishes some put on the term over the last century and a half, I value it because of the way it connects the current pursuit of equal rights and dignity for all to the brave and noble women (and like-minded men) throughout history who fought for their freedom, and mine, under its banner.

Equal Opportunity Vs. Equal Outcome

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How many pundits and political candidates have you heard express this sentiment over the years: ‘I believe in equality of opportunity, not of outcome!’?

But wait a minute! If the outcome is usually or always unequal, where’s the evidence that the opportunity is equal?

Saying that a society should worry only about opportunity but not outcome sounds a lot like a scientist wanting to proclaim a theory true without wanting to worry about the findings of experiments that seek to prove it.

What do you think?