Beauty and Lack
( A is B)
The Thesis and Method.
The attempt here is to explicate the paradoxical nature of Beauty as something that is “lacking”, resulting in a fulfilling experience. The method to which we will confine ourselves is etymological and phenomenological. The use of these methods will hopefully elucidate such a thesis adequately. Possession in contrast to responsibility will be the essential words to create the opening that we wish to inquire, can beauty be possessed? Or does beauty demand response?
Possession
Rooting as early as the 13th century in Latin as possessus, “to have and to hold”, is a grasping without intent to release. “ To have in one’s control”, is another definition that further expands our inquiry. Can beauty be controlled? To what extend do we control beauty? Or have we fooled ourselves in believing that we can control beauty? I will leave these questions in abeyance for the time now.
Responsibility
In 15th century obsolete French, responsibility is defined as “answerable” and if we go further down in 13th century Latin ,“respondere” is to promise in return or answer to. The etymology of this word magnifies this as a movement that is visible or invisible. When are we ever not responding in the course of are daily lives?
The Intertwining
Knowing what we know now through etymology, we can feel confident to assert that possession is a kind of response and responsibility is all things that are are answerable. Therefore, responsibility can be placed above possession in a the schemata of all things that can be responded to. Where as possession is a particular response that no longer leaves open any other response to be given. It may help to conceptualize responsibility as a dynamic movement that leaves open the exit and entrance of all possible responding and possession as a static and sterile grasping. For those that are still unclear at what we have unveiled, possession is a particular form of responsibility.
Original Question
Can be beauty be possessed? Or does beauty demand response? References become necessary here, specifically the essay “ On Beauty ” by O.G Rose in order to expand and address the complexity of beauty itself. However, there is one concept I will borrow which is conditionality. Beauty demands conditions to be met in order to witness beauty. I will not go into the rabbit hole about what is the standard for beauty? or can beauty be standardized? Whether, these are man-made standards via media portrayal of what beauty should be like or simply relative to the culture, society and individual, are not the scope of our inquiry. But what can be elucidated is that beauty still demands conditions to be met even in the “maintenance” of the object itself. Beautiful art and literature also demand conditions such as the capacity to perceive and to be literate.
Our responding to beauty is by meeting and/or maintaining the conditions demanded. Though, the examples are few, I believe it is enough to point that beauty demands response. But the question still remains can beauty be possessed? If possession is to “have in one’s control and hold”, the very existence of conditionality counters this response because it is the conditions themselves that hold and control us. The reversal is then true, it is beauty that possess us rather us possessing beauty.
Beauty as Lack
The responding to beauty as a lack is a fulfilling experience in contrast to the attempt of possessing beauty which paradoxically possesses the individual. The more one attempts to possess beauty, the more “empty” one feels by creating an affect of persisting anxiety. To leave beauty as a lack is to witness beauty rather than possess. The A is B shows itself as then having beauty through accepting this lack. To have beauty is to let beauty hold you rather than you attempting to hold beauty. One can meet the conditions for beauty without attempt to possess beauty. This is the importance of responding as a witness to beauty where it can decide to arrive and to depart. This paradoxical intertwine is perhaps not quite easy to understand at the onset. However, this field of inquiry now opens a new set of questions that extend beyond beauty.
New Questions
If nothing can be possessed based on the existence of meeting/maintaining conditionality, then is it only the objects of desire that can possess us? Can a human being ever truly possess anything if these propositions are true? Or are we then mere receptacles to the movement of responses that are demanded from us?
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