Cazeaux, C. (2010). „Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder‟, in P. Smithka and C. Lewis (eds), and Philosophy, Chicago: Open Court, 313–24.

Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder Clive Cazeaux

The are beautiful, aren‟t they? Their casings, I mean. Not the squid-like creatures inside. It‟s their shape, their combination of forms: lines, curves, domes, the semi-spherical head, and the way they glide. And the sound of the voice: while I wouldn‟t go so far as to call it “beautiful”, it nevertheless has a beauty to it. It is striking; it embodies their character, and does the job perfectly of telling us “here is an alien life form.” Isn‟t beauty applicable only to a narrow range of things: people, animals, landscapes, and certain works of art? Can it be applied to a monster from a science- fiction television series? An over-sized, elaborate pepper-pot, with a few grills, slats, and semi-spheres?

Beauty – that delight or pleasure we experience when looking at an artwork or a person or listening to a piece of music – is a complex phenomenon. It has occupied philosophy since Pythagoras and the pre-Socratic philosophers. Because perceptual delight stands out against the routine flow of experience, it poses a challenge to theories of experience. A phrase which frequently comes to mind when talking of beauty is that it lies “in the eye of the beholder,” which is taken to mean that beauty is subjective; what one person finds pleasing, another may not. If we take this approach, then I am on safe ground: I can call beautiful because what I find pleasing is down to me. But this is just one particular historical understanding of beauty from the eighteenth century when taste as something which discerning people might possess comes into being as a concept. If we return to the time of Pythagoras though, beauty is not a subjective idea but a facet of the numerical structure of the universe. If we move towards the present day, the question of whether beauty is subjective or objective is in actual fact part of a revolution in eighteenth century philosophy, initiated by Immanuel Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 2

Kant, which requires us to consider that mind and reality are linked in a fundamental way, with beauty being one of the experiences where this link is evident. Part of this debate includes the idea that any judgment of beauty has both a subjective and an objective component. In calling something “beautiful”, I am not just expressing an opinion, not just making a casual remark which I am happy for my friend to disregard. Calling something “beautiful” is an expression of passion, and I want my claim to hold for everyone. I find the Daleks beautiful, and I want the rest of the world to agree with me.

My interest is in the philosophical issues thrown up by the idea that the Daleks are beautiful. What philosophy can do is get to grips with the ideas responsible for a conceptual problem or knot. It also has a history of theories regarding the nature of beauty. The two combined will take the seemingly odd notion of the beauty of the Daleks and show that it draws on and implicates some of philosophy‟s central ideas, ideas that are not just to do with beauty but with the nature of reality itself. I won‟t reach a final, conclusive answer as regards whether or not the Daleks are beautiful. This is due to the complex and contested nature of beauty, and the nature of philosophy. But I shall demonstrate how the idea of the beautiful forces us to examine the definition of beauty, and the place beauty occupies in the history of Western metaphysics. I shall also show that this is a territory where the Daleks and Doctor Who are very much at home.

Earth versus

If we are to get to grips (or should that be “suckers‟) with the beauty of the Daleks, then we need to address the fact that they occupy two worlds: the Who universe, and our world. Why? Because it affects how we assess their alleged beauty. In the Who universe, the Daleks took refuge in 1930s New York, fought (each other) for the Hand of Omega in London in 1963, and attempted to invade Earth in the year 2150. For the beings who share this universe and know the Daleks or know of them, they are feared. Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 3

Cross a Dalek and you will die. Why am I pointing this out? Because in the Who universe, the Daleks are not creatures of beauty. Even on the two occasions when a Dalek becomes an exhibit – in “The Space Museum” (1965) and in “Dalek” (2005) – it is because of its scientific curiosity-value and not for its appearance. When Van Statten introduces the ninth Doctor to the “Metaltron,” as he has named the Dalek, at no point does he describe it as beautiful. He is more interested in it as a creature, as something with which he might communicate.

When I call the Daleks “beautiful,” I am not speaking from the perspective of the Who universe; I am not regarding them as real creatures. I am viewing them from the point of view of the everyday world in which Doctor Who is a television programme and the Daleks are a race of fictional beings created as enemies for by Terry Nation and Raymond Cusick in 1963. They are only real to the extent that they appear on television screens, photographs, posters, pencil cases, duvets, etc. There is a genuine philosophical reason for making the point. A key distinction in modern aesthetics is between beauty in art and beauty in nature. There is a big difference between seeing beauty in a human-made object, such as a painting, and seeing it in the natural world, as in the case of an animal or a range of mountains. In our terms, this is the difference between seeing the Dalek as a “work of art” by Nation and Cusick (in our world) and seeing it as a part of Skaro‟s natural environment (in the Who universe). The difference is due to the fact that modern aesthetics explains beauty in terms of the relationship between the human mind and the world. Immanuel Kant, the founder of modern aesthetics (at the end of the eighteenth century), argues that the perception of beauty in nature is higher than the perception of beauty in art because beauty, as he understands it, is about our becoming aware of the fit between the human mind and reality. But with beauty in art, our experience of it is indirect, due to the fact that what we perceive has been mediated by human design; that is to say, it has not come directly from nature. Georg Hegel, Kant‟s critic, has an entirely different world-view, and one which leads him to argue the opposite. Hegel asserts that mind and reality are not just interconnected but actually one and the same thing. Life is the process whereby we come to realize this. Beauty, for Hegel, is our becoming aware of this oneness through Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 4 the recognition of thought in matter.1 On this basis, beauty in art is higher than beauty in nature because art involves perceiving ideas through sensory form, for example, through clay, paint, or sound, whereas nature simply involves the perception of matter.

The embodiment of evil

What this disagreement shows is that competing theories and values are at stake when assessing natural and human-made objects of beauty. Because beauty is seen as something involving the relation between mind and world, it becomes significant whether or not an object of beauty is natural or something which is the product of a mind. I am looking at the Dalek primarily as a human artefact, a “work of art.” If I were to conduct this study from the point of view of a member of the Who universe, I would be talking about natural beauty, the beauty of another creature, and a specific set of questions would arise. Although Kant places nature higher than art, he also warns against “dependent” beauty, where something is admired for being a perfect example of a particular form. So I might be sitting having a coffee with a friend, and we see a Dalek glide by. I might exclaim “Wow, that is one good-looking Dalek,” if I thought it was a particularly fine specimen. This would be a limited form of beauty for Kant, since beauty which is dependent on a template, on a concept of what something should look like, is not free to experience the purposive fit between the human mind and reality. The same point covers the fact that the Daleks are in -designed casings. I might say to the Dalek (at my peril), “Nice bumps! Where did you get them?”. But as far as Kant is concerned, this beauty is limited, is “dependent”, because the Daleks‟ casings have been designed with a purpose: to make the creatures inside the supreme beings in terms of survival and power over others.

Hegel‟s take on the situation would be somewhat muted. Following his claim that beauty is the perception of thought manifest in matter comes the idea that the perfect

1 Georg Hegel, Aesthetics: Lectures in Fine Art (Oxford: Clarendon, 1975; original 1835). Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 5 form for thought is the human body. As he argues, the human body is the form it is because it has evolved “as the one and only sensuous appearance appropriate to spirit.”2 This is part of his account of the ancient Greek and Renaissance interest in the human form: classical art is beautiful because it displays the harmony between our inner, mental being and our outer, physical appearance. Strictly speaking, while the human body is the appropriate form for thought, it is only at its most beautiful when it is celebrated in sculpture. (In this regard, the Weeping Angels from “Blink” (2007) are an interesting creation. With their basis in classical sculpture, they are not so much a case of the beauty of monsters, but more a matter of being monsters of beauty.) So Hegel cannot help us, as occupants of the Who universe, in appreciating the “natural beauty” of the Daleks. However, we can question him as to whether or not the human body is “the one and only sensuous appearance appropriate” to thought. Hegel‟s history of beauty is based on the varying degrees to which matter is appropriate to thought, with the classical human form as a point of harmony at which mind and matter are balanced. But this account leaves room for the possibility that there may be different modes of consciousness, different ways of thinking which manifest themselves perfectly in different forms. From the Daleks‟ point of view, who is to say that their modified, squid-like nature, housed in an individual tank, is not the perfect expression of their mental life of hatred and universe-domination? Although the Daleks are living creatures and not works of art in the Who universe, if someone were to produce a sculpture of a Dalek, perhaps the sculptor on Necros who made that very good likeness of the sixth Doctor in “Revelation of the Daleks” (1985), then we might have a Dalek sculpture that would be judged “beautiful.”

Loving the alien

Let us turn to consider the beauty of the Daleks in this world. Talk of the beauty of the Daleks is odd because beauty and monstrosity are assumed to be opposites. But is this the case? The first point to make is that beauty itself is not a straightforward term. As

2 Hegel, Aesthetics, p. 86. Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 6

Anne Sheppard observes, “beautiful” in the English language has a narrow usage. “In English”, she maintains,

landscapes, women, horses, and flowers may be beautiful but men are described as “handsome” and cows or wine as “fine” rather than “beautiful.” Aesthetic appreciation would have a very narrow range of objects if it were confined to those objects to which “beautiful” happens to be applicable in English.3

The situation, Sheppard goes on, does not just affect the English language. While the French “beau” and German “schön” have wider application than “beautiful,” there are nevertheless occasions when these languages require alternative terms of aesthetic appreciation, such as “joli” and “hübsch.” Here then is one reason why my notion of the beauty of the Daleks is odd: I am applying a word which has a very narrow range in an unusual context. But this still leaves the wider field of what Sheppard calls “aesthetic appreciation”: the enjoyment we get from perceiving art, design, and nature at large. Other words are often used to acknowledge this wider sense of aesthetics, for example, “fine,” “elegant,” “handsome,” and “graceful.” Even if I give up the notion of the “beauty” of the Daleks and talk in terms of their “aesthetics,” this still leaves the aesthetics of the Daleks to be explained.

But I don‟t think I should give up referring to “beauty.” As we have seen from Sheppard, beauty shades into these other aspects, meaning there is no definite point at which “beauty” is swapped for an alternative word. More importantly, there is the view that we should actively encourage the broadening of our concept of beauty. Alexander Nehamas declares that the commonly-held notion of beauty described by Sheppard is in actual fact the narrowing of a much more worldly and passionate understanding of

3 Anne Sheppard, Aesthetics: An Introduction to the Philosophy of Art (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1987) p. 56. Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 7 beauty entertained by the ancient Greeks.4 Looking on something as beautiful for Plato, Nehamas asserts, was the beginning of the desire of wanting to become engaged with and care for that particular person or thing. In the Phaedrus, Plato describes a man who sees a beautiful boy for the first time. The man at first “shudders in cold fear” but then “his trembling gives way to a strange feverish sweat, stoked by the stream of beauty pouring into him through his eyes and feeding the growth of his souls” wings”, to the point where he feels that losing everything “would make no difference to him if only it were for the boy‟s sake”.5 Does this mean I am moving towards saying “I love the Daleks”? Yes, I suppose I am, except I am taking “love” not in the “sexual relationship” sense, but in the Platonic sense of being drawn in by something, being made to care for something, becoming attentive to the needs of another. Underlying all of Plato‟s philosophy is a commitment to the Forms. Existing in a higher, metaphysical realm, the Forms are singular, perfect versions of each and every thing that exists in our world, and act as templates for our world. Love is the process whereby each person tries to make the world around them and themselves better so that they move towards and eventually become their perfect versions.

To find the Daleks beautiful in the Platonic sense then is to be fascinated by them as things (not creatures – we are not in the Who universe) to be engaged with. They are things that we want to treat as creatures. Isn‟t this where the design of the Dalek succeeds so well: as the portrayal of an alien race, something that is distinctly different to ourselves, something with which we have to engage? Whereas most science-fiction aliens end up being a person painted an unusual colour with some additional knobbly bits on their face, the Dalek bears no resemblance to human form. They are wholly other. They are beautiful – the design works – because we see in them the possibility of another form of life, something that could move around and manipulate the world in a way that is wholly different from our own.

4 Alexander Nehamas, Only a Promise of Happiness: The Place of Beauty in a World of Art (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2007). 5 Plato, Phaedrus (Indianapolis: Hackett, 1995) pp. 251a-252a. Beauty is not in the eye-stalk of the beholder 8

Inferno

Beauty then can have different meanings, narrow and wide. So far, Plato has been the most helpful. The Daleks are beautiful in a Platonic sense because their design gives them the appearance of a way of life, a set of capacities, that is other than our own. But this still leaves us with the fact that we are finding beauty in something that is designed to be a monster. Notice I say “designed to be a monster.” It could be argued that, in our world, the Dalek is not a real monster, is not an evil thing, but merely something designed to be monstrous. But the very fact that a thing which has been designed to look monstrous nonetheless appears beautiful means that the beauty–monster contrast still stands. The problem is that beauty and monstrosity are taken as opposites. Is this necessarily the case? Conflicting accounts can be found in history. As Umberto Eco points out, beauty and monstrosity are opposites in ancient Greece. There is, he notes, a variety of creatures in Greek mythology, such as fauns, Cyclopes, chimaeras and minotaurs that “are considered monstrous and extraneous to the canons of beauty as expressed in the statuary of Policlitus or Praxiteles.”6 This confirms my problem. Yet, in the thirteenth century, in the Summa attributed to Alexander of Hales, monstrosity is seen as a necessary condition of beauty. This is on the understanding that the universe has been created as a whole, and that the presence of monstrosity is needed to balance the presence of beauty. The words of Alexander of Hales from the Summa will in fact be echoed by the at the end of “” (1975):

Evil as such is misshapen… Nevertheless, since from evil comes good, it is therefore well said that it contributes to good and hence it is said to be beautiful within the order [of things]. Thus it is not called beautiful in an absolute sense, but beautiful within the order; in fact, it would be preferable to say: “the order itself is beautiful.”7

6 Umberto Eco, On Beauty (London: Secker and Warburg, 2004) pp. 131-3. 7 Alexander of Hales, Summa Halesiana, quoted in Eco, On Beauty, p. 149.