[lo_zamoyski]

I think the author confuses multiple issues.

Yes, what is beautiful does please. But why should it do so? Because beauty is good and true. Indeed, in classical philosophy, while truth is being as known (the epistemic stance; as it relates to the intellect), and the good is being as desired (the ethical stance; as it relates to the will), beauty is being understood as pleasing (the aesthetic stance; as it relates to perception and to contemplation).

In short: True -> known by the intellect; Good -> desired by the will; Beautiful -> contemplated with delight.

The trouble is not beauty, but the author’s lack of discernment. Is a sentence really beautiful if it is untrue? What about if it is written using beautiful calligraphy? Well, under the artistic aspect of handwriting, yes, it is truly beautiful and true in that respect; but the meaning of the sentence is different from its expressed form (which also has content). The two can vary in truth and beauty independently.

Perhaps this is why we take a certain kind of greater offense at lies told to use sweetly. A course vulgarian is already low and hideous in his speech, and his lies will more closely correspond to the coarseness of his manners in proportionality. But a lie spoken with refinement almost suggests duplicity, between the promise of truth in the beauty of the medium - an honor that is proper to truth - and the ugliness and untruth of the message. The truth should be honored with beautiful expression, but here, it is almost as if we’ve been lied to twice: in the content per se and in the form of the content as a promise of the truth of the content by implication. It is a perversion, which already reveals that there is a normative relation between truth, goodness, and beauty that has been violated. We presume it for this reason.

Now, if someone is undiscerning, he will fail to discern the various elements in play and fail to judge them accordingly as distinct elements. If a man lacks taste, he might even consider beautiful what is actually mediocre or gaudy or ugly. If he lacks what we might call perseverance or a kind of stamina - in short: if he is weak - then he might be unwilling to let go or refuse something pleasing or seemingly pleasurable that is attached to something that may not be so good (for instance, the glutton who cannot refuse the pleasure of good food, even though the excess is killing him).

It’s good that the author at least recognizes his own weakness, but the conclusion at the end simply does not follow. Ugliness is not “authentic” or virtuous or honest. Indeed, by casting it as a virtue, one falls into the same or even worse trap: the presumption of goodness or truth on the part of what is ugly. One will presume that a slovenly interview candidate must be good, because he is slovenly, which is ridiculously stupid. So now you face a new possibility: the slovenly mediocrity. A double blow. And if beauty can work in the favor of a candidate, then why can’t ugliness work against him? It goes both ways.

If we had more beauty - in dress, in manners, in speech, in our surroundings - I think perhaps the “seductive” power the author cannot seem to resist would be less, well, seductive. He would not be so starved for beauty. It would not be such a rarity that he would feel compelled to latch onto the occasional occurrence. What we need is more beauty not less. In the 1950s, no one thought a man in a suit was remarkable. Today, wearing a suit is much less common. In some industries like tech in the last couple of decades, suits may even be viewed with disdain and hostility. The “dress code” forbids them.

W.r.t. poetry and prose, in either case, a fully beautiful piece of poetry or prose does shine forth with truth. In the former case, the beauty of the form takes on a greater significance, but the meaning is still its lifeblood. The form is there to relay the meaning through skillful appeal to pathos and use of imagery, metaphor, simile, analogy, rhythm, and wordplay. The peculiarities of the language used to write it becomes a source of delight. There is more room for flirtation and play and implication. In the latter case, immediate clarity and directness of a more literal shade dominate. The particular purpose of each determines the basis for the beauty of each.

[bombdailer]

I have long viewed that the True and the Good require Beauty to make them appealable to the people. For since injustice is more profitable (in wealth) than justice, the good thing appears more hideous by compare. Plato makes quite well the case that the just person will be the recipient of much misgivings in their life, though still holds that the just life is still the best one. To do this he paints Socrates as a precursor to Christ, as the wisest man of all, of good character and honest word, and of being a man of virtue and love - though his physical appearance is markedly not beautiful.

Socrates as created by Plato acts as a sort of aesthetic beauty which adds strength to Plato's words by the seduction of Socrates. Just as Alcibiades is attracted to Socrates because of his character, so too are we the readers supposed to be. Plato attempts to elevate our conception of Beauty from the beauty of a particular (like the good looks of Alcibiades) to Beauty itself (as in the form).

In this way, Beauty is a tool which can make more attractive certain ideas by its association. The history of advertising is testament to such utility. In this way I do not think that beauty is linked to goodness or truth as a requirement, but bares only the right relation to them when it is used in their service. That is, the value of beauty is determined by goodness and truth, such that if something is beautiful but lacking in goodness and truth, though it remains beautiful, the value of beauty above all else is shown absurd. All values seem to work like this, where any value held as the highest value will in time negate its own value by the relative excess of itself to other values.

All that is to say, that the wise person utilizes beauty as a means of reifying the value of the true and the good. From this perspective, it is true knowledge that redeems the tactic of beauty (such as rhetoric) from sophistry. For the good word to not fall upon deaf ears, one must compete with the sophist and provide the same level of beauty but with right ideas. Of course, claims to true knowledge must be justified, and we should not appeal to beauty for their verification.

I think more that beauty is a sign of intellect, and intellect is a prerequisite for true knowledge. To create beauty requires knowledge of patterns and skill enough to weave those patterns together into something greater than the sum of those patterns. True knowledge cannot be known for certain we might say, but if one has it, it will be knowledge of true patterns of Nature, and so such a person would be in possession not only of true knowledge, but also of beauty since the patterns of beauty would be derivative of the patterns of Nature.

Thus, in writing of what is true and good, it is very likely to be beautiful, since the knowledge necessary to apprehend beauty is the same knowledge that is capable of producing it, and beauty flows most naturally where it is most welcome. But beauty fails in its virtue if the underlying content does not reflect reality.

I think we're mostly saying the same things but I find it a bit weaselly to say that something loses beauty when it loses truth or goodness, when what it loses is simply the truth/goodness. That our value of beauty changes in proportion to its relation to goodness/truth, does not mean that the beauty itself has changed. It is not beauty alone which will save the world, but goodness and truth delivered in the guise of beauty.