For Denis
Dutton, the beauty has been a problematic concept during the history of humanity.
The first people who thought this concept as the Greece philosophies like
Platon in two thousand years ago. During that time the beauty has been thinking
in different areas, like psychology, aesthetics, etc, but has never reached a unique
concept of beauty.
For
that, Duton ask himself, how can things be considered
beautiful in one place to another? In other words ¿ exist a universal factor to describe what is the
beauty?, and the answer to Duton is categorical, the answer to that question
come from to the Evolutional Theories of Charles Darwin.
According
to this, the evolution
of man is related to brain growth, therefore, with the mastery of technique. From Homo Erectus (100,000
years ago) the man has manufactured
objects through technology such as Acheulean Handaxes, which for Denis Dutton are not just objects
with built-in game, also were the first objects of
aesthetic contemplation. For the
intelligence to make those axes,
motor control or coordination were
socially valued qualities
as beautiful (these qualities served, for
example, to attract women). So to throughout history, according to Dutton, beauty has been intimately linked to technology, to
this day we value the good
technical performance or "performance
skill" as "beautiful",
we find beauty in
doing something well.
Despite the interesting personally do not fully agree with the theory of Dutton. He does not consider, for example, the role of women as producers of aesthetic objects,
in that sense I think your position is
something sexist. It also does not consider that there are simple objects, without technical complications that can be
called beautiful. I think the beauty relate to the technical development is a bit reductionist.
