Can a particular experience/object be universally beautiful based on the fact of us solely being human? For instance, something such as an ideal natural landscape.
As a human being, we obviously have developed in our evolution certain adaptations into classifying, or at least, invoking particular feelings towards objects. Does this mean that, without a knowledge of an authoritative idea of taste, we would find things beautiful ‘in the raw’ so to speak. That is, would our minds illuminate things based on a survival instinct? I would think yes to a degree. Although the article we read discussed “disinterestedness” within the confines of beauty, which I took for, if I’m correct, pleasure without desire.
Setting aside sexual desire, symbols of fertility are among one of the first things to be produced in artifacts during early human development. Would the idea of fertility in itself, suggesting big breasts and wide hips for example, be a finding of beauty? For once this idea is registered in our mind we clearly would impose it on particular females with these properties. This is though also inferring that their is at the most basic level, a form of social structure put in place. Evidently man has evolved as a social creature, for surely an infant could not fend for itself and grow up (or it’d be extremely unlikely).
Going back to my original question then, could a natural landscape be seen as beautiful within the experience of a human just being human? I would say no. Surely the man would find wonder in what is around him, almost to the sense of magic, but without a background for comparing something experiences/objects would be determined merely on pleasure, for that would be all he would have to go on without contact with others of his kind. The man would only have himself to agree with, thus no universal concepts, so he could not make an aesthetic judgement and define beauty for himself.
