The Aesthetics of Every Day
Take a moment to look around you. What do you see?
Depending on where you are reading this. you will answer differently of course.
If you are in an office, you may see the contours of a keyboard, the shape of walls and shelves, the formal feel of the device in your hands.
Or if you are home with your family, you may see the form of your spouse or children, or the countertop, or feel the shape of the seat pressing against you.
We could go on and on with this kind of thinking.
While we may answer differently based upon our context, it quickly becomes apparent that while the shapes may change from place to place, all life and place has a form.
From the subatomic particles to peering into the vast Milky Way galaxy in a clear night sky, every aspect of our experience with reality yields form.
Another word for form is aesthetic.
Whether we realize it or not, the aesthetic of a thing shapes how we use a thing.
Function follows form.
Now some might challenge this assertion, thinking that it is the other way around. But because something has a form, a use (or many uses) will be found for that form.
This “function follows form” principle even pertains to our inner life.
We recognize the validity of this when we use a phrase like “Let us form a thought.” The form of thinking affects what the outcome of thinking is.
Aesthetics are important because they are utilized in a way that produces a function…a function that leads us somewhere.
Aesthetics also have something to do with what we might say the beautiful is, but the form is beautiful only if the function is utilized for what we may say is “good”.
Think about a sword for a moment. A sword has an aesthetic, we might even say it can be “beautiful” if that form has splendor and made in the hands of an expert craftsman, is a centerpiece of enjoyment, if it is used to promote camaraderie, or even used to protect a life against unjust action against it in self-defense.
But used in the hands of someone intent on murder, the function of the aesthetic can not be said to be beautiful because it is a distortion of the good.
There is more I wish to say about this, but will save it for a later post.
The point I am making is this: you and I live in a world of shapes that create boundaries for how we think, live, and be. But this form, this aesthetic of reality if you will, is producing something itself.
As Aidan Nichols puts it (in commenting on Hans Urs von Balthasar’s thought):
The form of a thing may tell us more than just about itself. It may also tell us something about the world in which it is situated, about the universe.*
The form of living is leading us toward the Ultimate.
*Aidan Nichols, A Key to Balthasar: Hans Urs von Balthasar on Beauty, Goodness, and Truth, Grand Rapids: Baker Academic (2011), 17.
