An Outsider's Idea of Beauty

In an earlier post, I mentioned the concept that many humans agree, in a general sense, on what is beautiful because they all share the important feature of humanity. However, I do not think that this vague, general-approval idea of beauty is superior to other ideas of beauty. Imagine, for example, if a species of extraterrestrial life forms intelligent enough to have a concept of beauty viewed earth and considered what they found beautiful there. Their concepts of what is beautiful would most likely differ dramatically from that common human model, I would think. Perhaps they would think the most aesthetically pleasing object on earth is a dining table missing one leg, and pass over the work of Da Vinci and Michaelangelo as uninteresting and every-day. This idea that the most common human idea of beauty is no more correct than that of a hypothetical extraterrestrial species highlights the possibility (the fact, I think) that people whose ideas of beauty do not, in some respect or another, or most or even all respects, match up with the norm have no less valid of opinions than those who agree with the statistical average one hundred percent. Someone who prefers the work of J. K. Rowling to that of Shakespeare is not wrong or right, they merely belong to a relative minority within the larger context of humanity.

Q&A 1, Second Answer

My question is: Must relativism be universal, or can a person's views be relativistic in only some aspects?

I think that relativism can absolutely be incomplete. A person could have a relativistic view of beauty, and thus believe that no one person's opinion on what is beautiful is more or less valid than anybody else's, and yet hold a strictly black-and-white view of morality, or possibly even vice-versa, although I imagine instances of the latter are rare. My own views on beauty are somewhat relativistic, but in a number of other ways I do not think that I view things relativistically at all. Thus, as relativism in regards to beauty need not imply relativism in regards to anything else, aesthetic relativism is not at all a hypocritical viewpoint.

Q&A 1, First Answer

My question is: Why can judgements of skill be correct or incorrect, but not judgements of beauty?

I think that the primary feature setting beauty apart from skill is the absence of a consensus on the particular non-aesthetic features which constitute it. An individual person may have very precise ideas about the nature and composition of beauty, but they would be hard pressed, I think, to find many others who agreed with them down to the most detailed level. Skill, on the other hand, is characterised by the same features for many, probably most, people. Such features include amount of requisite effort, ability to render details precisely, originality, popularity, and others. Popularity (over an extended period of time, and allowing for different amounts of exposure for different works) is, in my opinion, something of a measure of skill because it seems that a large portion of humanity agrees in a rather vague manner upon certain features which are beautiful. This is most likely due to the fact that all humans do share some similarities simply by virtue of being humans, and amongst these similarities may lie a very blurry, non-universal, yet noticeable consistency in aesthetic taste.