Carla asked:

I have this question for my Theory of Knowledge class and I was wondering if you could help me out.
The question is: "Does one judge something to be true or beautiful, or does one recognize it to be
true or beautiful?"

============

Our relation to truth is different from our relation to beauty. Truth is something we take to be
independent of ourselves, but beauty is dependent on a subject with an aesthetic attitude. If truth is a
matter of fact, we would cognise, or recognise it. It is there, beyond us, to be found. Beauty, on the
hand, is relational and depends upon our attitude so it is not to be found or recognised. We judge that
something is beautiful.

Of course, we might want to say it is true that something is beautiful, but because of the relational
nature of the judgement, and the need for an aesthetic attitude, philosophers normally refer the truth
to the subject's reaction. Hume thought that a work of art is excellent if it is judged to be so by an
unprejudiced and experienced critic of refined taste. Kant thought something was beautiful if it gave
rise to the free play of the imagination. An opposite approach has been that beauty is a matter of
symmetry and can be mathematically calculated. So if there is something in object which gives rise to
a judgement of beauty it might be said that it has a form which can be recognised as beautiful. What
do you think beauty is?

As to truth, not all truth is a matter of external fact. If we are in pain, this is internal to us, and what is
recognised by others is physical damage or behaviour expressive of pain. And we don't say we
recognise we are in pain, or we judge that we are. We just know. There are many different sorts of
truths — about experience, about the beautiful, about fact, about other minds, about ethics, about
mathematics and logic, about God, the past and the future. Do we recognise God, or judge he exists,
or know? Do we make a judgement that 2+2=4 or not?

Rachel Browne