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Is Beauty Truth?
If something is beautiful, is it true? Is a beautiful symphony as true as a scientific fact? |
If something is beautiful, is it true? Is a beautiful symphony as true as a scientific fact?
18 Comments Posted
Imho, the answer to that question is: No.
What is beauty? I would say that beauty is what is pleasing to you visually.
It's fair to say that most of us have life-experiences that tell us that truth is something other than that.
The question here might be: What does beauty in relation to truth have to do with Judaism and/or being Jewish?
It's fair to say as well that if you come from a background devoid of G-d, Torah, and yiddisheit, you are subject to viewing the secular world as beautiful and the Jewish life as repugnant instead. When you reconcile with your Jewish roots, along with the truth of it--that G-d and Torah are still relevant--your sense of beauty changes, too. At that point, 'truth' and 'beauty' stop becoming opposing questions, and instead become harmonious to each other.
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Beauty becomes an illusion once its transformed into the material world. Beauty can be superfical in all aspect of life. Once someone removes the thought that HaSHem has created beauty in everything and looks at beauty as: She\he has beautiful hair, shoes, face, armoni suit, etc. Then beauty becomes ugly. I believe once man\women has transformed their minds to see beauty in a material thought or idea, including someones vessel. The ugliness can creep out making that beauty an illusion. Beauty lies within all humans; the thought process and living process is beautiful, knowledge of all kinds can be beautiful and ones soul can be of complete beauty, when lived by G-d's Laws.
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I would say these answers leave me feeling confused. When I perceive something to be beautiful, then it makes me feel beautiful. When I perceive something to be true, then my "guts" resonate to that and feel that yes, that is my truth. But the two feelings that I just described are not the same. How then can they be compared?
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Only in G-d there is perfect beauity and truth, and only in Him they are identical.
It is true, as long as we live here in this world, we only sometimes are able to experience with our senses (seeing, hearing, feeling) real beauty. Truth I realize
with a part of my soul, my neshama.
Not so often we experience it as one and the same. Mostly I feel beauty and truth as
one and the same, when I am praying Psalms. The words are full of beauty, and
all I read or say is truth. No wonder it often brings tears to my eyes, because it is so
overwhelming.
Yes, they are windows to let us have a
look into infinity.
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Some people look for beauty. Some people look for truth. Beauty is found in youth. This is why some people are so hung up with holding onto their youth, because they had beauty. The truth can hurt.
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As with all things the answer lies in the question. What is the question really asking? It states/then asks by some assumption that beauty is the equal to Truth and such a thing can not be.
Truth Is. Nothing more need be said about it. To further explain or define Truth shades it into something else.
Now Beauty isnt. It needs to be created to have meaning, hence its complex nature--as evidenced by the complex answers attempting to describe the qualities that equal it. To speak plainy now:
Is beauty truth? No. Truth is Beauty.
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First, the concept of beauty lends itself to idolatry. At best it is, what the Kabbalist call it, the 'outer shell', one of the bottom rungs of the sefirot. Once you exalt it beyond that (and so much of the world does), it manifests itself often as a 'graven image' put before G-d, usurping G-d. They say that 'beauty is only skin deep', and when beauty becomes your g-d in place of G-d, your relationship with Him becomes as shallow and small. If you marry for beauty rather then because your spouse shares your commitment before G-d (a common pitfall nowadays), the beauty fades, vanishes, and then you are left to find your way back to G-d (if you can). This is not to say that beauty cannot be a blessing, just as long as you remember that G-d comes way first: The better part of the truth.
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It is our purpose in life to elevate anything and everything in order to see the true beauty within. Only by elevating the mundane and ugly can the truth be brought out in it. Our misconceptions of what beauty is causes chaotic ripples throughout the world. The best example of this is our miscontrued idea of body image. So many people are dying from obesity because of the lack of promoting good health. The other end of that spectrum is the deaths of people from anorexia and bulemia because of the need to be the thinnest. Beauty comes from the inside and only by changing the perspective of the beholder can we all see the beauty and truth within.
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Beauty is a pleasurable/positive emotional response to an image or idea. That's why different people can call wildly different things "beautiful" and others look at them as if they've lost their minds!. Truth can be beautiful when it evokes a pleasurable feeling in a person, but that same truth can be a heartache and misery for someone else. The truth hasn't changed, merely the response to it. It doesn't necessarily folllow that if one, several, or many people find a truth pleasant/pleasurable, that everyone will do so. The truism that "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" expresses this succinctly, as far as it goes: beauty is also in the heart of the beholder, latent, waiting to be touched by the external. Beauty itself is not a property of that external.
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To answer this you have to define What is the Beauty you ask of or about?
Is this the fallen Beauty that man produces throught his hands or offspring? Or is the Beauty you question the BEAUTY of G-d? For his Beauty is TRUTH/TRUE and everythings is a reflection of that Truth through man. We live in a reduced state or fallen and seldom look beyond the 4 dimensions we can easily see and know. True Beauty is Truth/True but are we willing to see it with eyes that look beyond the visual. Hear beyond the auditory and feel beyond yourself...
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I believe it is. G-d put all that we see on this earth, whether good or bad. Beauty in any form is one more expression of the truth of G-d's love for us all.
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Dr. Ahuva Goldenthal,sees the concept of there being an alternative reality in the universe that we cannot see. All religions believe in a higher power of some kind. Yet in many religions, the common person cannot see the higher power, or G-d, because they fail to focus on extraordinary powers. Some religions encourage their congregants to go into a kind of trance state, in order to get in touch with G-d, and to retrieve spiritual endowment. There have been prophets in most religions, who seem to see and hear things that most people cannot. In the more recent generations, most people have rejected the concept of there being prophets, even if we do accept the concept of “there being prophets” in the past. We must generate our mind to focus on a higher level, and reach out to the real world of holiness. The materialistic world offers evil.
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Ideally- yes.
Reality- no.
Proof: Two very old friends get into a heated business dispute. They bring the case to a court and the Judge sees immediately that one of them is clearly wrong. However, instead of issuing a verdict of true judgement, the Judge works tirelessly to convince the two parties to agree on a compromise. The Judge is a smart man, and knows that if he explains the actual truth, then the one who would benefit would not agree to a compromise. He also knows that the one who loses would never forgive his former friend. So after much work and patience, a compromise is reached, and the truth is never revealed. In essence, what has happened is a sacrifice of truth (i.e. true judgment) in exchange for beauty (a.k.a. peace).
Isn't it beautiful that the friendship was saved- albeit at the expense of absolute truth? More beautiful would be if they could both accept the true judgment with pure love, but in our world- beauty and truth are too often a contradiction.
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in short, one must ask what is truth? are we defining truth as something that has been proven either by science or courts etc. another way of defining truth is the idea of truth being what G-d defines as righteouss and good. another question to ask is "is beauty physical, spiritual, mental etc.
the answer to the question cannot be clear because we dont fully understand what is meant by TRUTH nor can we assume what beauty really is (physical, spiritual etc).
in short the question needs to be more clear.but if you want an answer that defies my very point, "physical beauty is in the eye of each person differently and it does not make anyone good or bad.physical beauty can affect how one acts for example it could make someone a jealous person if they are unattractive or if they are attractive it could make them proud and unkind but this is NOT the rule.
may we all judge by deeds and observance alone. it says that moshiach will judge not by his eyes but from the torah.
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In our world today we are constantly bombarded with the idea that beauty is the most important thing. Then we also think about how much we try for perfection and we wonder, is that truth? is that what we really want? When we look around at the world the G-D has created we see natural beauty surrounding us, and the truth behind it. I think if the world would pay more attention to beauty as it is created we would all be a little happier. People are beautiful not based off of what clothes they wear or anything. We shine our beauty through our actions. Mitzvas we do and our personalities, the light from our neshama that we share. If we all payed more attention to that and to the things that matter most, we all would be a but happier. So if we look at that, as beauty then yes, beauty could be truth.
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Beauty is a process when truth is at work
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Today's science is heading into new directions, positivism is losing its grasp on scientist minds and there are new standards on the search for truth, a very interesting one is beauty, but true beauty is truthful, it’s honest, it’s clean, it’s valuable. Beauty is not attractiveness; actually beauty can be repulsive to some. But beauty is everywhere something appeals to the spirit, it’s not about senses, which is the point, our senses can be easily fooled, but our spirits: that wonder inside our deeper self is beyond foolishness. We’ve been strongly dissociated from our inner being, the one that can realize beauty. The universe and its understanding appeals to mankind’s reasoning. Discovering it is Beautiful! Standing in awe of God’s creation, finding out about new things is beautiful. Old philosophers could not distinguish between science and art. Where they confused? Of course not. They knew that the best measure for beauty is truth and the best measure for truth is beauty.
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Truth often remains after the witness's story is crossed, word by tedious word. Then, depending on those surviving words' final arrangement in a Judge's mind, a beauty called justice sometimes results.
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