Tag Archives: Laura Sewall

beauty is participatory

“People argue about beauty. Is it in the eye of the beholder or is it a property of the beholden? From a relational perspective, the question is clearly dualistic, cast in either/or terms. If there is an answer, it is clearly both. Beauty is in the thing seen, and we grant beauty, making that with which we identify, in some resonant way, beautiful. Beauty is the experience of a shared vibration resonating between the thing seen and the one who sees … Beauty, then, might best be named in terms of resonance, a vibration that moves us, that makes us see and do differently. We bow, cry, or give thanks. We want more and soften in order to get it. We participate. Beauty becomes a call for engagement.”

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*text from: Sewall, Laura. Sight and Sensibility: the Ecopsychology of Perception.