Beauty

Lately my Dad and I have been discussing whether or not beauty is objective or subjective. I tend to take the stance that beauty is objective and my Dad believes it is subjective.

When you say that something is beautiful, to me, it seems that you have to be comparing it to a certain standard. For an object to be beautiful, there must be a standard of beauty that something must fall under, in order for it to be beautiful. The reason I believe something may seem more beautiful than another comes down to preference. A lot of times the reason something may seem more beautiful than another is sometimes due to the knowledge you have of it, or you can relate to it in one way or another. An example that first comes to mind is this: to most guys, all girls are beautiful. However, what may draw a guy to a certain girl may be the fact that he can relate to her better than he could to someone else. They have more in common with each other and therefore are more attracted to each other. Thus making her seem more beautiful than any other girl who he may come in contact with.
As far as having more knowledge of an object, I'll use the example of me going to the Getty Museum. Like I said in the previous post, going to the Getty did not orginally sound exciting. Even during the first half hour or so of being there, it was not very exciting. However, after I began to converse with others about certain paintings, and learned more and more historical facts about the paintings, they became even more interesting. I began to see the beauty in them, because I had a better appreciation for them. Which seems to me that if you can teach yourself to find beauty in things that you did not orignally see but others did, then there must be some kind of attribute that they all have in common. Thus leading to a standard of beauty.

My Dad's arguement is this: If I find one thing beautiful but he does not, then to him it is not beautiful. He also raises the question, if there is a standard of beauty and God set it, where in the Bible does he say, "this is beautiful and this is not?" He also asks, "what about people who find war beautiful?" To him, just because I find something beautiful, doesn't mean that he finds it beautiful as well.
So as you can see, my reasoning for why I think beauty is objective, does not sufficently answer his questions. While I continue to search for better questions and answers, I'll be sure to keep the site updated!!