What is Beauty?

According to the Divine Principle, love is “the emotional force that the subject partner gives to the object partner” (DP, 38), and beauty is “the emotional force that the object partner returns to the subject partner” (DP, 38). In cases where the object is a mineral or a plant, what comes from the object is a material force, but the subject (human being) can still receive it as an emotional stimulation. However, there are cases where, even though the object gives stimulation (force) to the subject, the subject does not receive it emotionally. In such cases, the stimulus can not become an emotional stimulation. The question, therefore, is whether the subject receives the stimulus coming from the object emotionally or not. If the subject receives the stimulus emotionally, then that stimulus becomes an emotional stimulation. Therefore, beauty can be defined as “the emotional force, or the emotional stimulation that the object gives to the subject.” Since beauty is one of the primary values―along with truth and goodness―beauty can be expressed in another way as well, namely, as “the value of an object that can be felt as an emotional stimulation.”

I have described the emotional force which the subject gives to the object as love, and the emotional force which the object returns to the subject as beauty. In reality, however, in the case of human relations, both subject and object mutually give and receive love and beauty. In other words, the object also gives love to the subject, and the subject also gives beauty to the object. The reason is that, “when the subject partner and object partner become completely one in harmony, love is found within beauty and beauty is found within love” (DP, 38). When an emotional force is sent either from the subject to the object or from the object to the subject, it is sent as love, and it is received as an emotional stimulation, in other words, as beauty.

In the discussion above, I have given the definition of beauty as understood in Unification Thought. In the past, beauty was defined by philosophers in various ways. Plato, for instance, explained the essence of beauty in terms of beauty itself, namely, the Idea of beauty existing in an object. Concerning beauty, he said, “Fineness is auditory and visual pleasure.” ⁶ Kant explained beauty as the “subjective purposiveness of an object,” or the “form of purposiveness of an object.” ⁷ What he means is: An object in nature has no intentional purpose. Yet, if a human being subjectively considers it as having purposiveness and receives a pleasant feeling from it, then that which gives that pleasant feeling to the human being is beauty.