The Apprehension of Beauty
Dorothy Hamilton
18 November 2015
We were delighted to welcome a member of the Group, Dorothy Hamilton, as our guest speaker to
give a talk called “The Apprehension of Beauty”
Dorothy’s research has developed out of her career as a psychoanalyst and her interest in religion
and theology.
The starting point for our discussion was the definition of ‘beauty’ as can be found in the Oxford
Concise Dictionary and as attempted by a number of philosophers, poets and theologians over time.
Could ‘beauty’ even be defined?
It was suggested that ‘beauty’ can be experienced on three distinct levels:
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Intellectual appreciation
A feeling/ sensation
A mystical experience
Beauty has been valued/ included in theological discourse through history, but has seen a change in
its fortune, from (the Old Testament, Plato, Aquinas) having been equated to the idea of truth/ glory
of God/ something to be valued and sought after, to (from the Reformation onwards) something
which cannot hold true value, something only skin deep/ transient/ deceitful even and finally to not
being mentioned at all! Group members suggested that this may have been because beauty was
associated with the material and sensual.
The Catholic theologian Hans Urs von Balthasar (1905–1988) is of particular interest to DH because
he has written extensively on the ‘theology of aesthetics’ and offers the consideration that beauty is
one of the transcendental ideals (along with truth, love, oneness) and relates to ‘circumincession’
(the reciprocal existence in one another of the three persons of the Trinity) therefore re-introducing
the word back into theological discourse.
DH went on to cite an experiment with babies where they appeared to gravitate more towards an
image of a typically “beautiful” woman; there was an inference here, then, that formal or objective
beauty may be confirmed. Group members did question, though, whether the results of the study
would have differed had the “ordinary” woman been the baby’s mother. Our discussion then moved
on to consider the relational analogy of a child to its parent as being the same type of relationship as
that of a human to God, leading us on to a discussion of the work of Donald Meltzer.
Donald Meltzer (1922-2004), was a psychoanalyst within the Kleinian school of psychoanalysis and
proponent of ‘object relations theory’ (the process of developing a psyche in relation to others in the
environment during childhood). DH is particularly interested in his work on the aesthetic conflict.
According to Meltzer, this is the foundation for normal development based on the internal motherbaby relationship (The Apprehension of Beauty, Meltzer and Harris Williams (1988). An aspect of this
is a recognition of transcendental beauty carried out in ordinary life; beauty is understood as a
nature rather than a mere opinion.
The University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire, SO22 4NR.
TheologicalPartnerships@winchester.ac.uk Telephone 01962 827068 and 07974 888834
The ensuing group discussions engaged with the difficulties in naming beauty, and also with
changing perceptions of beauty. Questions of perceiving beauty in music or art were raised; it was
suggested that modern art and music may destroy any received/canonised idea of “beauty”. Group
members also explored whether the opportunity to reflect on, rather than just recognise, beauty
was still present in contemporary society, particularly in younger generations. This tied quite neatly
into our next meeting wherein we will reflect upon religious art.
The University of Winchester, Winchester, Hampshire, SO22 4NR.
TheologicalPartnerships@winchester.ac.uk Telephone 01962 827068 and 07974 888834