The Metaphysical Analysis of the Beautiful and the Ugly

The subj~ct of this paper does not call for an exploration of the constituents of any particular beautiful object, whether in any of the fine arts or in nature itself The topic rather calls for an analysis of the beautiful as to its metaphysical constituents. At the level of being is to be sought the answer to the question: What constitutes a beautiful thing? And at the metaphysical level also we are to deal with the ugly. The telling of what a thing must be if it be beautiful is not quite.the same as saying that every thing is beautiful. To speak of the metaphysical analysis of the beautiful is not by that very expression to call beauty a transcendental. Indeed, to correlate the beautiful and the ugly in the same topic might appear to rule out beauty as a transcendental. If every thing is beautiful, how can anything be ugly? And yet are we to take the position that every judgment as to the presence of ugliness is merely a false judgment? The question of beauty as a transcendental and the analysis of ugliness are, then, quite correlated topics. The resolution of the apparent conflict will be developed after an appraisal of the meaning of the beautiful. Any explanation of the beautiful can be classified under one of three general headings: Ist, purely relative; 2nd, purely ob-