Nothing is beautiful, man alone is beautiful

Man mirrors himself in things

Friedrich Nietzsche 1844 · 1900God is dead: new values must be created.

What it claims

Nothing is beautiful in itself: man alone is beautiful, and all aesthetics rests on this naivety, which is its first truth.

Why

Humans find beautiful whatever reflects their own image back: the judgment "beautiful" is about us, not about things.

The same idea through history

Voltaire1764Voltaire shows that the beautiful changes with the being who looks; Nietzsche gives the reason: man takes himself as the measure.

Friedrich Nietzsche1888In Twilight of the Idols, Nietzsche writes that "beauty in itself" is only a word and that man finds beautiful whatever throws his own image back at him. He adds that the ugly is a sign of decline.

In short

"Nothing is beautiful, man alone is beautiful" is an argument by Friedrich Nietzsche (Twilight of the Idols, 1888, "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man", § 19-20, 1888) on the question "Is beauty in the eye of the beholder?" (answer: it is all relative). Its claim: Nothing is beautiful in itself: man alone is beautiful, and all aesthetics rests on this naivety, which is its first truth. According to AskPhilosophy's logic check (Z3 solver), the argument is valid only if one grants a premise the author leaves unstated (P4). AskPhilosophy presents 3 objections, 3 of them with a documented reply, and the original text behind each premise, checked word for word.

Twilight of the Idols, 1888, "Skirmishes of an Untimely Man", § 19-20

Valid with an implicit premise

When we say of a landscape, a face or a painting "it is beautiful", we think we are talking about the world. Nietzsche thinks we are talking about ourselves. Man puts himself at the centre: he finds beautiful whatever throws his own image back at him, and ugly whatever reminds him of illness, tiredness and death. Beauty does not come from things: man put it there, then forgot he had. Hence the formula: "Nothing is beautiful, man alone is beautiful".

click a premise to reject it

If you accept every premise, logic forces you to accept the conclusion. So the debate is about the premises.

Checked by a logic solver: the premises cannot all be true while the conclusion is false.
Without the implicit premise: Without P4, the computer finds a case where the judgment "beautiful" reflects man and his instincts, and yet beauty would be in things: for example if our instincts had been shaped to detect a real quality (as the eye is shaped to detect light). Nietzsche rules out this case by saying that "beauty in itself" is not even a concept.

With P4 the argument is valid: beauty in itself is not a concept (P1), the judgment "beautiful" reflects man (P2) and comes from his instincts (P3); so, by P4, beauty is not in things.

Analogy. A child draws a sun with a smiling face. The sun has no face: the child put it there. Nietzsche says the same of the beauty of the world: we put our own in it, then forgot that we had.

Objections

Each objection is a conversation: click to see who replies and where the debate stands.

Immanuel Kant 1790 · attacks premise 2

Taste is the faculty of judging an object by a satisfaction entirely free of interest. If we find beautiful whatever flatters the image we have of ourselves, or what is good for us, we have an interest: we are in the pleasant, not in the beautiful. The pure judgment of taste therefore requires putting aside what we want.

Nietzsche replies

see the argument

Nietzsche 1887 · Nietzsche's reply (On the Genealogy of Morals, III, 6)

Nietzsche quotes Kant's definition ("the beautiful is what pleases without interest"), then sets it against that of Stendhal, a real spectator and artist: the beautiful is "a promise of happiness". He writes that Kant's definition lacks subtle personal experience, and that Kant thought about the beautiful only as a spectator.

The debate goes on (our summary) Nietzsche answers Kant's definition, not this exact objection. Kantians reply that a judgment may arise from desire without being proved by it: recognizing a thing's beauty is different from desiring it. Nietzsche thinks this separation is a spectator's illusion.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point. Basic disagreement: can aesthetic pleasure be separated from all interest (Kant), or is it always tied to desire and to life (Stendhal, Nietzsche)?

Plato 380 BC · attacks premise 1

There is a Beautiful itself, eternal and always the same: neither beautiful in one respect and ugly in another, nor beautiful to some and ugly to others. The beautiful things of this world are only reflections of it. Man climbs, from one beautiful body to the next, up to the sight of this Beautiful.

Nietzsche replies

see the argument

Nietzsche 1888 · Nietzsche's reply (anticipated, on "beauty in itself")

Nietzsche writes that man imagines the world itself to be overflowing with beauty, but forgets that he is the cause of that beauty: he alone has endowed it with it.

The debate goes on (our summary) Nietzsche does not quote Plato in this passage. Platonists answer that the origin of our taste (the instinct of the species) does not tell whether that taste is right, just as how we learned mathematics says nothing of its truth.

Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point. Knowing where our idea of the beautiful comes from (Nietzsche) does not settle whether it corresponds to anything (Plato).

Ronald Hepburn 1966 · attacks the conclusion

Before a landscape, a storm or a starry sky, which nobody made or composed, we feel beauty without finding our own image in it. Aesthetics, centred on art, has neglected this natural beauty: it cannot be explained as a mirror held up to man.

Nietzsche replies

Nietzsche 1888 · Nietzsche's reply (the "humanised" world)

Nietzsche asks whether the world is really beautified simply because man thinks it beautiful. Man has only humanised it: nothing proves that man is the proper model of beauty. Who knows what figure he would cut in the eyes of a higher judge of taste?

The debate goes on (our summary) Nietzsche targets the idea that the world is beautiful "in itself"; Hepburn need not defend it. Hepburn only claims that the experience of nature is not reducible to self-love. The debate is about this: can we feel the beauty of a landscape in which man has no place without having put it there by imagination?

Where the debate stands (our summary)Open point. No widely accepted answer: the aesthetics of nature remains a field where philosophers are divided.