ON THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BEAUTY AND POWER

Beauty “remedies the bad and improves the good” (Gracián, 8)[1]. In short, the entirety of beauty’s relationship to power is contained in that insight. Beauty is the action of improvement. So, one may ask, “what is improvement?” To improve is, surely, to use power. It might be said that the ability to improve is power. (Sigh), if only power and beauty were always talked about so positively. The following is a defense of beauty and power.

Power is correct judgment. Put another way, power is the ability to adjudicate truthfully—is it not? When the astronomer declares that one of Saturn’s moons has an atmosphere composed mainly of methane, and not nitrogen, she has found, or founded, a fact, and she becomes an authority. When the mathematician discovers a sound proof that certain infinities are smaller than others, instead of equal to them, she too has furnished a fact and is called distinguished. Furthermore, when the university professor determines that, according to the received rubric, one or another of his students has earned a “B” rather than an “A”, he, finally, fixes a fact and is recognized as sovereign.

This way of speaking might be called contrived. One might object to the way “fixing”, “furnishing”, “founding”, “discovering”, and “declaring” are conflated. The complaint is that these are not interchangeable actions. “Discovering” is not the same as “declaring”, and “founding” is not “finding”, and none are the same as “furnishing”. Of these actions certain are investigative, and certain are artistic. That’s not all. An objector might go on saying the meaning of such actions is not only obscured but concocted in support of a counterintuitive thesis. Is objective observation to be thought of as so robust an activity that it includes creation—and judgment as well? The objector's complaint is that there is some sort of intellectual slight-of-hand going on, that the actual world has somehow gone missing. Facts have been construed as creations, and decision-making has replaced proof, and this, simply, isn’t how things work.

Yet, when defining power, such complaints do not make sense. Consider, if the most powerful thing conceived, say, God, or Nature, displays power in the actual world, is it (the display) not merely adjudication between what is and what is not—the ultimate correct judgment? God or Nature may not be omnipotent[2] but, still, be the most powerful thing or things. There may simply be nothing that’s omnipotent. It follows that the authority, distinction, sovereignty, of God or Nature could be undermined, like that of the astronomer, mathematician, and professor. However, in actuality it is not. So, one may say, God, or Nature, holds supreme court, is the final decision-maker, and, regardless of the complaints you, or I, or others might have, we must agree with the final decisions. We must agree with them because we cannot undermine them. Their decisions decide what is, and any contrasting decisions simply are not. Therefore, their decisions, their judgments, are necessarily true. This is power (Voltaire, 177-178)[3].

Beauty, in relation, is the act of power. The simple way to think of it, beauty, is as a symbol of power or power's achievements. Put another way, beauty signifies the use of power. When a man measures his love for another person by how beautiful that person is, the person’s beauty is informing the man of the correctness, the truth, of his love for that person as opposed to another (Kramer, 20, 313-315)[4]. When a little girl accedes to the “accuracy” of being called ugly, she has, at least momentarily, been overpowered (Morrison, 73-74)[5]. And when a nationally renowned architect says his work resembles a “Cecil B. De Mille set”, he implicitly proposes that the quality[6] of his work betrays phoniness, artificiality, untruth (Speer, 159)[7].

This way of defining beauty might be called contrived; the preceding examples share a subtle but salient commonality. In each case beauty is defined negatively—an indirect way to convey a message, to say the least. In each case attention is not directed to the errorless, uncorrupted, necessary truth associated with power; instead, it is directed to cheap, degraded, unworthy things and persons. Might such indirection work to hide an irrational argument? The architect admits his work’s offense—its resemblance to the flimsy, lying, arch-permanency of a movie set (Speer, 147, 160)[8]. The insulted girl confesses to upholding the curse she is accused of (Morrison, 74)[9]. The man who measures his love for a person by their beauty deems ugliness a liability (Kramer, 349)[10].

An interlocutor might claim, in light of the preceding examples, that not beauty but a sort of cruelty symbolizes power. The architect has power over parts of his nation’s land and builds junk art on it. The little girl uses her own power of reason to conclude she is cursed[11]. The man uses his instinctual power, his concupiscent drive, to devalue others. That’s not all. Since cruelty is morally reprehensible, morally incorrect, such an objection threatens the definition of power proffered above. If power can be shown to cause incorrectness, earlier worries about intellectual slight-of-hand and the obscuring of facts by judgments become reasonable.

The objection raises a good point but not a point that works in its favor. Truly, the architect, the little girl, and the man are acting cruelly in the preceding examples. In each case, albeit to varying degrees, each character commits an immoral act. Moreover, cruelty is closely tied to beauty, and thus to power. In each case beauty, the symbol of power, draws attention to cruelty, an immoral act. Yet, immoral acts do not symbolize power. It must be kept in mind that the negation of beauty is what is presented in each case. Additionally, it must be advised that the negation of beauty is not immorality, but ugliness.

So, beauty is defined negatively. That is to say, its negation is presented in order to suggest what it (beauty) is. Ugliness is its negation. In each case ugliness uncovers the cruel, immoral, incorrect behavior of each character. Each character has missed the mark, sinned, erred in some way. Each character is guilty of something. Each character reveals their own guilt by involving themselves with ugliness. Ugliness symbolizes guilt. Therefore, beauty symbolizes correct action.

Consider an object of beauty, say, a work of art. It is meant to be displayed. Its place is in galleries, proud homes, or areas where the public gathers. It is looked at, evaluated; it stands among other things that are looked at and evaluated, the things of the world, and calls attention to itself. There is an intention, an open unfolding of intention[12], in a work of art. Consider, further, the connectedness a work of art’s exhibition revives. In purposefully drawing looks it inspires looks away, looks away at the things around it, things of the world that may not, without the presence of the work of art, activate such activity. The art stimulates interpretation of the originality of what surrounds it. Indeed, a work of art, an object of beauty, is notable for the space it creates. In such a space, where “light” is self-imposed and, in so being, reveals not only what imposed it but other things as well, honesty is at work. An object of beauty creates a space for honesty; beauty exists in a space of “unconcealment” (Heidegger, 178-181)[13].

Openness, “unconcealment”, is the surest display of true judgment. Beauty symbolizes this. In doing so beauty indirectly calls attention to false judgments. Insofar as false judgments are wrong they bear the guilt of damaging rather than improving, a result of doing something wrong. Doing something wrong is to act against power, to sap power, and to do so is cruel. The relationship between power and beauty is exactly that between right judgment and work against cruelty.




[1] “There is no beauty unadorned and no excellence that would not become barbaric if it were not supported by artifice. This remedies the bad and improves the good. Nature scarcely ever gives us the very best—for that we must have recourse to art” (Gracián, 8).

[2] Power, or force, this construct tied intimately to making, shaping, creating, and willing, is, in a causal-mechanical world, responsible for actuality, the totality of facts. Though, that’s not to say the actual world must have been a causal-mechanical one. It’s possible it might have been different. Things might have been different than they are. This just means that God, or Nature, the most powerful thing conceived, might not be all-powerful. If the most powerful thing conceived were omnipotent, then there would be no possibility of things turning out different than they are; there wouldn’t be the possibility that God or Nature’s adjudication, between what is and what isn’t, be other than what it actually is.

[3] “One must be very powerful, very strong, very ingenious, to have created lions which devour bulls, and to have created men capable of inventing weapons which can, at a blow, kill not only bulls and lions, but other men. One must be very powerful to have created spiders which spin webs to catch flies—but this does not mean that one has to be omnipotent, infinitely powerful… We can only conclude and avow that God, having acted for the best, has not been able to act better… This necessity settles all the difficulties and finishes all the disputes. We are not impudent enough to say: ‘All is good.’ We say: ‘All is as little bad as possible’… Try as you will, you can arrive at no other solution than that everything has been necessary.” (Voltaire, 177-178).

[4] “Oh, gorgeous Dinky… the conjunction of all parts… perfect… I love it!” (Kramer 20). “‘OK, buddy. You’re very beautiful to me… I’m just wondering when you’re scheduling us in for a serious try at [love]… I… want... marriage.’” (Kramer, 313-315). Marriage represents partiality to one person over and against others. These quotes are fragmented, but they are not misused; Fred Lemish measures his love for Dinky Adams by how beautiful he finds him.

[5] “‘I am cute! And you ugly!’ …We were sinking under… [her] last words… We were lesser… Dolls we could destroy, but we could not destroy… the Maureen Peals of the world.” (Morrison, 73-74).

[6] If we can agree that De Mille’s work turns on “the need to gaze into the mirror of the beautifying lie and to be moved to tears of gratification at one’s own reflection” (Kundera, 134), then we can agree that his work is kitsch. Kitsch is, of course, “junk art” (134).

[7] “But when I once again saw the color photographs of the model… I was struck by the resemblance to a Cecil B. De Mille set.” (Speer, 159).

[8] To illustrate the fraudulence or betrayal Speer’s architecture admits, the “Cecil B. De Mille” quote cited above should be coupled with these: “To this day I find it strange that a nation can have so right a sense of what is to come, so much so that all the massive propaganda by the government does not banish this feeling.”; “Had I been able to think the matter out consistently, I ought to have argued further that my designs… were following the pattern of the Late Empire and forecasting the end of the regime” (Speer, 147, 160).

[9] “If she was cute—and if anything could be believed, she was—then we were not… The Thing to fear was the Thing that made her beautiful, and not us.” (Morrison, 74). I include the last part of this quote because I think it emphasizes, more than the first part, the cowering present in an act of confession.

[10] “Oh, Dinky… Oh sadness of sadness. Grotesquerie. It was revolting.” (Kramer, 349). I take this to be the summation of Fred’s reasons for falling out of love with Dinky; the “sadness” is the love that could’ve been, the “grotesquerie” is the reason it will never be—Dinky’s public fist-fucking.

[11] I am construing Claudia’s affirmation that Maureen’s insult is true to mean that Claudia, herself, concludes she, herself, is ugly.

[12] This phrase can be replaced with ‘an intention to let its own intentions be left uncovered’.

[13] “The picture that shows the peasant shoes… [makes] …unconcealment as such happen in regard to beings as a whole. The more simply and essentially the shoes are engrossed in their essence, the more directly and engagingly do all beings attain a greater degree of being along with them. That is how self-concealing Being is cleared. Light of this kind joins its shining to and into the work. This shining, joined in the work, is the beautiful. Beauty is one way in which truth essentially occurs as unconcealment.” (Heidegger, 181).


Gracián, Baltasar. The Art of Worldly Wisdom. 1647. Trans. Joseph Jacobs. Boston: Shambhala, 2006. Print.

Heidegger, Martin. "The Origin of the Work of Art." 1971. Trans. Albert Hofstadter. Ed. David Farrell Krell. Basic Writings. 1977. By Martin Heidegger. Ed. David Farrell Krell. New York: HarperCollins, 1993. 140-212. Print.

Kramer, Larry. Faggots. New York: Grove, 1978. Print.

Morrison, Toni. The Bluest Eye. 1970. New York: Vintage International, 2007. Print.

Speer, Albert. Inside the Third Reich. Trans. Richard Winston and Clara Winston. New York: Simon & Schuster, 1970. Print.

Voltaire. "Philosophical Dictionary: Selections." Trans. H. I. Woolf. Ed. Ben Ray Redman. The Portable Voltaire. By Voltaire. Ed. Ben Ray Redman. New York: Viking Penguin Inc., 1977. 53-217. Print.