Hume, in his work “Of the Standard of Taste,” emphasizes a universal perception of beauty. Hume says, “Beauty is no quality in things themselves: It exists merely in the mind, which contemplates them; and each mind perceives a different beauty. One person may even perceive deformity, where another is sensible of beauty; and every individual ought to acquiesce in his own sentiment, with out pretending to regulate those of others. To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an inquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter. ” Essentially, Hume is saying that one’s initial feeling is what informs him if an object or work of art is beautiful or ugly. Hume holds that this sentiment or feeling, that precedes any audible expression of praise or disgust, is itself the beauty of the object. Furthermore, Hume holds that beauty is not a quality of an object, but rather, beauty is a perception in the mind. “Of the Standard of Taste” is, at its base, a subjective work that provides subjective ideas for the standard of taste. Hume, while trying to discover the standard of taste, concludes that the standard of taste is the consensus of true critics, but he goes on to say that it is not true that the same set of critics will serve as the standard for every work of art. So the judgments of better critics will trump the judgments of lesser-qualified critics. Even the worst critic cannot profess a falsity in deeming one work of art as better than another, regardless of the obvious bias.
On the contrary, Giussani holds beauty as an objective truth that is given to us subjectively and individually. The teachings of Giussani manifest a love for Being, which includes a love for beauty. But for Giussani the love for truth was more intense because, according to Giussani, beauty is a concept derived from St. Thomas Aquinas: beauty does not exist apart from truth. Through a love for the truth one can rediscover a love for beauty. Giussani, unlike Hume, sees beauty as a quality of the object itself. Giussani is not so much interested in an idea or standard of taste for beauty, but rather in finding the truth of the origin of beauty. In his book The Religious Sense, Giussani states that, “The attraction to beauty follows a paradoxical trajectory: the more something is beautiful, the more it refers one on to something else. ” This is to say that beauty points us towards the One who gives us beauty itself, who created beauty itself.
Giussani was a man who was truly wounded by beauty. Throughout his life he insisted on our need for beauty because it has the power to awaken the heart. His father would invite musicians home with him on Sundays in order to experience music played live. Giussani said, “The greater the art (let us think of music), the more it flings wide open, does not confine desire. It is a sign of something else. ” The experience of beauty in art, for Giussani, pointed him towards something beyond himself – something that had the capacity to give answer to the needs of his heart.
“Given that my father liked Chopin the most out of all the others, I had heard Chopin’s fifteenth prelude (indeed that is called the “prelude of the raindrop”) at least a hundred times. Until one day, suddenly, I was in middle school or high school, I don’t remember any more (no, it was in high school, because it was connected with the problem of the existence of God) – I suddenly realized that the beauty of Chopin’s prelude was apparently determined, dictated from the melody of the foreground – which is beautiful, it has beautiful variations, but the attraction of the piece, the depth of the piece, the truth of the piece was not in the melody of the foreground: it was in a note that began to be heard lightly and then grew, and grew, and grew, so that the melody moved into the background and instead this note developed, always the same, always the same, – precisely “mono-tone” –, always one; and then it moved to the background and passed by again in the foreground. And when one begins to notice that note, he understands that the theme of the piece is that note and not the melody, and that note becomes like a fixation. So much so that at the third to last or penultimate bar it appears that this note has won: the melody takes over and dictates its notes slowly, almost dominating the field. But after four or five of these notes, which dominate the field, tac tac tac: the raindrop returns. And I have all of a sudden understood, hearing this prelude by Chopin – after I had heard it a hundred times –, that this is the sense of life: the meaning of life is like that note, always the same, uniform. All the color of life, all the variety of life is in appearance; but even if being the variety of life, the brightness of life, it’s all in the appearance, that’s not the theme of life. It’s not that man wants, it’s not that man awaits: rather there is that fixation there that is the desire for happiness, the desire for happiness. That note there in the melody that is in man it’s the desire for happiness, the need of the heart, i.e. the vanishing point. Listen to this prelude by Chopin and then you will see. After that I have understood this: that all pieces of music show me the same thing! ”
Giussani perceived the arts, especially music and poetry, as ways in which human beings could be together in communion. Giussani holds that we feel our sadness is expressed better by art than if we, ourselves, were to weave notes and words on the matter. In Chopin’s fifteenth prelude, the raindrop is the note of life – the thirst for happiness – and Giussani says that, “We need to recognize that note in ourselves, because the ‘I’ is like a piece of music made of that note, that has that note as its theme, though the things that make the most impression are the most superficial: instant pleasure, instant enjoyment, instant success, first impressions, reactivity, what is instinctive. That note continuously destroys what is instinctive, and prevents you from halting on the way, from coming to a stop, because what is instinctive in love, in beauty, in your taste for work, in success fossilizes you, turns you to stone. It is that dominant note that shatters the stones and moves the whole of reality that is the time of our lives; it moves it as water moves the pebbles in a brook, as the sea moves the sand. So all the questions that man may ask, all the expectations he may have, end up in this note: the thirst for happiness. ”
“In life man is struck by things that arouse his tenderness, by things that attract him more instinctively, that he likes, that put him at ease, that are to his taste. ” The experience of beauty aroused Giussani’s tenderness; it provoked him to seek the origin of beauty itself. Giussani had a preference for the poetry of Giacomo Leopardi. He often referred to Leopardi as his “friend.” Giussani quotes an excerpt that particularly struck him from Leopardi’s poem Alla sua donna (To His Lady).
Beloved beauty who inspires love from afar, your face concealed except when your celestial image stirs my heart in sleep, or in the fields where light and nature’s laughter shine more lovely; was it maybe you who blessed the innocent age they call golden, and do you now, blithe spirit, soar among men? Or does the miser fate, who hides you from us keep you for the future? No hope of seeing you alive remains for me now, (…)
Whether you are the one and only eternal idea that eternal wisdom disdains to see arrayed in sensible form, to know the pains of mortal life in transitory dress; or if in the supernal spheres another earth from among unnumbered worlds receives you, and a near star lovelier than the Sun warms you and you breathe benigner ether, from here, where years are both ill-starred and brief, accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.
“‘Accept this hymn from your unnoticed lover.’ Unnoticed lover. Man, unnoticed lover of this incarnate beauty that, if not on the paths of this world, must be somewhere, in some star in the sky, in some platonic world. Unnoticed lover: I, the unnoticed lover of You; You, God become flesh, unnoticed lover of me, ignored by me, not known by me, not remembered by me. This is, literally, the Christian message as I have known it, as it is objectively. What Leopardi expresses as the supreme need to be able to see and live the relationship with beauty with beauty become flesh happened two thousand years ago. ‘The Word was made flesh’ means ‘beauty was made man; justice was made man; goodness was made man; truth was made man…’ Quid est veritas? Vir qui adest: what is truth? A man present. Jesus was prophesied by Leopardi’s genius eighteen hundred years after His existence. Because every genius is a prophet; every genius, in any great genius there is prophecy. Look for it, and you will find prophecy. Leopardi is the prophet of the Word made flesh. ” Giussani spent his life searching for beauty and truth and they proved to be inseparable – where one was found the other was also present. Giussani concluded that the origin of beauty is God. Everything, every moment that Giussani experienced continuously pointed him towards this origin, this other who is outside of himself and outside of everything.
In conclusion, Giussani could never agree with Hume when he says, “To seek the real beauty, or real deformity, is as fruitless an inquiry, as to pretend to ascertain the real sweet or real bitter. ” This is because Giussani spent his life seeking the real, the beautiful, and the truth and he found that it pointed him to God as the origin of not only these three things, but of everything. Beauty was made man.