Essentials Of Unification Thought - The Head-Wing Thought

VIII. Types of Beauty

A. Types of Love and Beauty from the Perspective of Unification Thought

When subject and object engage in give-and-receive action centering on purpose, beauty is determined. Accordingly, beauty varies depending on the observer (subject), and also depending on the type of the object (a work of art, a natural thing). Thus, there is infinite diversity in beauty; however, the types of beauty can be established by grouping similar kinds of' beauty. So, scholars have tried to present what they regard as the basic types of beauty and to characterize the special qualities of each type.

From the Unification Thought viewpoint, as I have already mentioned, love and beauty are inseparable, and beauty cannot exist apart from love. The more the parents love their children, the more beautiful the children appear. In the same way, as love increases in quantity, beauty is also felt to increase in quantity. Love and beauty form a reciprocal circuit in the give-and-receive action between subject and object. That is to say, the subject gives love to the object, and the object returns beauty to the subject. In this way love and beauty form the two sides of a coin. Accordingly, in thinking about the types of beauty, the first thing to do is to think about the types of love.

God's love is manifested divisionally through the family, in which the basic patterns of love are the three forms of divisional love: parental love, conjugal love, and children's love. These basic types of love can further be divided into

(1) fatherly love, motherly love,
(2) husband's love, wife's love,
(3) son's love, daughter's love,
(4) brotherly love (eider brother's love, younger brother's love),
(5) sisterly love (elder sister's love, younger sister's love), and
(6) adult's love, adolescent's love.

Here, fatherly love and motherly love, or husband's love and wife's love, are in a correlative relationship; each can be called "one-sided love" with respect to the other.

Fatherly love has the qualities of strictness, magnanimity, broadness, solemnity, profoundness, awe, and so on. Accordingly, fatherly love is manifested in the forms of strict love, magnanimous love, broad love, solemn love, profound love, awesome love, and So on. On the other hand, motherly love is mild and peaceful, and is manifested as graceful love, noble love, warm love, delicate love, gentle love, passionate love, and so on.

Next is conjugal love. Husband's love is masculine love, and so it is manifested to the wife as active love, trustworthy love, courageous love, resolute love, and so on. Wife's love is feminine love, and appears to her husband as passive love, supportive love, obedient love, reserved love, and so on.

Children's love appears to their parents as filial love, obedient love, depending love, youthful love, comical love, cute love, and So on. In addition, an elder brother's love for his younger brothers and sisters, an elder sister's love for her younger brothers and sisters, a younger brother's love for his elder brothers and sisters, and a younger sister's love for her elder brothers and sisters-each of these types of love has its own special characteristics. The three basic forms of love are diversified in this way, and come to appear as love of innumerable colors.

In correspondence to the three basic forms of love, three basic forms of beauty are established, namely, parental beauty, conjugal beauty, and children's beauty. These can be further diversified as

(1) fatherly beauty, motherly beauty,
(2) husband's beauty, wife's beauty,
(3) son's beauty, daughter's beauty,
(4) brotherly beauty (elder brother's beauty, younger brother's beauty),
(5) sisterly beauty (elder sister's beauty, younger sister's beauty),
(6) adult beauty, adolescent beauty, and so on.

These can be further subdivided into the beauties of the accompanying diverse characteristics. They are as follows:

Fatherly beauty: strict beauty, magnanimous beauty, broad beauty, solemn beauty, profound beauty, awesome beauty
Motherly beauty: graceful beauty, noble beauty, warm-hearted beauty, delicate beauty, gentle beauty, passionate beauty
Husband's beauty: masculine beauty, active beauty, trustworthy beauty, courageous beauty, resolute beauty, brave beauty.
Wife's beauty: feminine beauty, passive beauty, supportive beauty, obedient beauty, reserved beauty, tender beauty.
Children's beauty: filial beauty, obedient beauty, depending beauty, youthful beauty, comical beauty, cute beauty.

The love a father gives to his children is not always quiet and warm. When children do not obey his instructions, he scolds them severely. On such occasions, the children may feel bad, but later they feel grateful. Not only spring-like, warm love but also winter-like, strict love is a form of love. Such strict love can be felt by children as beauty, which can be called strict beauty.

Or suppose a child has made a mistake and comes back home seriously expecting to be scolded severely by the father. Then, suppose the father unexpectedly forgives the child saying, "That's all right." That child would feel an ocean-like, broad beauty from the father on such an occasion. This is magnanimous beauty. Thus, when children receive various kinds of love from their father, they feel beauties with various nuances accordingly. Mother's love is different from father's love. Mother's love is always mild and peaceful. Children feel such love from their mother as graceful beauty and gentle beauty.

A husband's love is felt by the wife as masculine and sturdy. That is masculine beauty. In return, a wife's love is felt by the husband as femininity and tenderness. That is feminine beauty.

It is the original nature of children to try to please their parents. Children try to somehow please their parents by, for example, drawing pictures, dancing around, or doing other things. That is children's love, and parents perceive their actions as cute beauty. Or sometimes parents may feel it as very comical. This is called .comical beauty." Moreover, as children grow up, beauty corresponding to their age comes to be felt by their parents. Unique kinds of beauty are manifested among children, namely, among brothers and sisters, corresponding to fraternal love.

The above-mentioned types of beauty are further compounded and transformed, and innumerable kinds of beauty are manifested. When these are extended and transformed to the realm of the natural world or to works of art, the beauty of nature and the beauty of art works come to be manifested. Various forms of beauty formed in human relationships based on the family are transformed to the relationships between the human being and nature and between the human being and works of art.

For example, when watching a towering mountain or a waterfall dropping from a high cliff, a person feels a soleirin beauty, which is an extension and transformation of fatherly beauty. When admiring a quiet lake or a calm meadow, the beauty we feel is an extension and transformation of motherly beauty. The loveliness of the offspring of animals or sprouting plants is the extension or transformation of children's beauty. The same can be said about works of art. Paintings and statues of die Holy Mother Mary are die expression of motherly beauty, and Gothic architecture can be seen as the extension or transformation of fatherly beauty.

B. Traditional Types of Beauty

In the history of aesthetics, the basic types of beauty were regarded to be grace (Grazie) and the sublime (Erhabenheil). Grace is the type of beauty that gives pleasure quite affirmatively and directly; it is a well-balanced beauty of harmony. On the other hand, the sublime is the type of beauty that gives a sense of wonder, or a feeling of awe-as the feeling one has from looking at a tall mountain or surging wave.

Kant, for example, held that in beauty (grace) there are the components of free beauty (Coreie Sclidnheit) and dependent beauty (anhangende Schinheit). Free beauty refers to the beauty felt in common by anybody, and not restricted by any particular concept. Dependent beauty refers to the beauty that depends on a certain purpose (or concept), and which is felt beautiful because of its appropriateness, such as appropriate for wearing or appropriate as a place in which to live.

In addition, pure beauty (Reinsemne), tragic beauty (Tragische), comical beauty (Kimische), and other types are generally mentioned in theories of art.

These traditional types of beauty, however, have been specified through human experience, and the criteria for their classification are ambiguous. By contrast, the types of beauty in the Unification Theory of Art are based on clear principles.

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