WHAT IS BEAUTY?

WORDS & ARTICLE BY PAZ REVILLA

If there is something that these uncertain years have taught me, it is to see beauty in everything that surrounds me. So much so, that it became a recurring concept in my daily life, so writing about it is just a natural step in this personal process.
So, what is beauty to me?: It’s everything.
François Cheng, chinese writer and philosopher says in his book, Mirar y pensar la belleza, that “thanks to beauty the world is not at all a neutral, insipid and insignificant space (...) It is precisely thanks to beauty that, despite our tragic conditions, we are attached to life”.
But to be honest and although I agree completely with Cheng, I know that this is an almost impossible question to answer. And if I write these words today, it is because such a simple, yet complex concept cannot be seen in a superficial way, as a simple addition.
The English philosopher and father of philosophical and scientific empiricism, Francis Bacon, pointed out that beauty is in the eye of the beholder. Does this mean that there will never be a unified concept of beauty? What is needed, then, to recognize it? It may be necessary to navigate the deep waters of philosophy to find an answer, and even there we would not find the solution, but what Bacon’s phrase does do is to look inward and take beauty out of that great unreachable altar of formal matter.
When I came across François Cheng’s Looking and Thinking Beauty, I was able to verify that what made so much sense to me, and what Bacon refers to in such a direct and honest way, was real: yes, beauty exists, but above all it is in you.
This book reminded me what I mean by beauty. It is what is found in everyday life, and perhaps for the same reason it is so hard to recognize it. However, I can say that I have seen it everywhere, in every street, light and movement... in life itself and, of course, in love. But also in pain, because beauty exists in the darkness that waits patiently to be discovered.
Everything is potentially beautiful by the mere fact of existing; that means that each of us is beauty and, therefore, we have the capacity to recognize and admire it.
And if no one questions that bucolic and natural beauty so characteristic of flowers, beautiful by essence, why is it so hard for us to accept that it is in us and, above all, its marvelous simplicity? According to Cheng, we tend towards the fullness of our presence in the world, just as a flower or a tree does, because “as

This book reminded me what I mean by beauty. It is what is found in everyday life, and perhaps for the same reason it is so hard to recognize it. However, I can say that I have seen it everywhere, in every street, light and movement... in life itself and, of course, in love. But also in pain, because beauty exists in the darkness that waits patiently to be discovered.
Everything is potentially beautiful by the mere fact of existing; that means that each of us is beauty and, therefore, we have the capacity to recognize and admire it.
And if no one questions that bucolic and natural beauty so characteristic of flowers, beautiful by essence, why is it so hard for us to accept that it is in us and, above all, its marvelous simplicity? According to Cheng, we tend towards the fullness of our presence in the world, just as a flower or a tree does, because “as a presence, each being is virtually inhabited by the capacity to achieve beauty and, above all, by the ‘desire of beauty’”.

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