Beauty as Persevering in the Good

“To give this form, however, to the product of fine art, taste is merely required.  By this the artist, having practiced and corrected his taste by a variety of examples from nature or art, controls his work and, after many, and often laborious, attempts to satisfy taste, finds the form which commends itself to him.  Hence this form is not, as it were, a matter of inspiration, or of a free swing of the mental powers, but rather of a slow and even painful process of improvement, directed to making the form adequate to his thought without prejudice to the freedom in the play of those powers” (Kant)

I like this because it informs us that beauty is not just a "free swing of the mental powers", it is something that you not only have to work for, but have to be able to recognize when you make mistakes so that you can learn from them.  Beauty is never finished you have to keep working at it.  I remember sitting in my kayak trying to think of an art object that I could present to the class, but all the things that I felt like were most beautiful to me were the things that took time.  The relationships you build with friends and family.  The personal struggles and mistakes, the bad habits and the ruts we put ourselves in and the hard work and arduous journey it takes to overcome this stuff.  Patrick Quinn, in a presentation on musical narrative describes a man who is all alone, crying in his apartment, “screaming against the rut he’s put himself in”.  We all have these experiences in our life that are powerful, memorable.  Experiences that we don’t want to forget because they were moments of understanding that allowed us to move on and continue our search for beauty.  In a way, these ruts we put ourselves in inform us of the need to continue our search for beauty.  We can all relate to this idea of putting ourselves in a rut.  The beautiful thing about a rut, is that you have to open yourself up to change if you want to get out.  You have to seek for answers and re-examine your values.  You have to persevere in the good.