Philosophers always struggle with the concept of beauty. Defined as pleasing to behold, the next question is pleasing to whom? An old Latin proverb says that there is no accounting for taste, and I certainly understand why the black coffee that pleases me is repugnant to others. But if we say that beauty is simply subjective, like ones taste in food, we lose the right to pronounce something ugly.
If someone were to tell me that a sunset were ugly, I would not say that he has a right to his opinion; I would say that he is wrong. Despite the near impossibility of articulating a complete definition of beauty, we find within ourselves a conviction that beauty is not ultimately a matter of opinion.
As an example, consider this stanza from Byrons well-known “She Walks in Beauty”:
Had half impaired the nameless grace
Which waves in every raven tress,
Or softly lightens o’er her face
Where thoughts serenely sweet express,
How pure, how dear their dwelling-place.
One who can read English well sees immediately that Byron wrote unusually well and created a poem of great beauty describing a girl of great beauty. This is not a matter of opinion.
Now consider this from Maya Angelou’s “Momma Welfare Roll”:
Too mad to work,
Searches her dreams for the
Lucky sign and walks bare-handed
Into a den of bureaucrats for
Her portion.
They dont give me welfare.
I take it.
Ugliness. Ugly writing about an ugly woman. If a high-school junior turned that in as homework, I would not consider her to have any unusual writing talent.