Similarly emphasizing subjectivity, ibn al-Haytham offers a paradigm of
beauty rooted in manifold possibilities that can only be differentiated
through subjective experience:
That it is these particular properties that separately produce beauty–and by
‘producing beauty’I mean that they produce in the soul an effect such that the
form appears beautiful–will be evident from a brief consideration. For light
produces beauty, and thus the sun, the moon, and the stars look beautiful, without
there being in them a cause on account of which their form looks beautiful and
appealing other than their radiant light. Therefore, light by itself produces beauty.
Color also produces beauty. For every bright color, such as purple, purpure,
vegetable-green, | rose...and the like, appeal to the beholder and please the eye.
Similarly, dyed clothes and covers and utensils, alsoflowers, blossoms and mea-
dows, are felt to be beautiful. Therefore color by itself produces beauty.^56
Ibn al-Haytham continues, citing distance, motion, rest, roughness,
smoothness, transparency, opacity, shadow, darkness, similarity, propor-
tion, and harmony–many of which are contradictory, and emerge as
beautiful in combination with each other. Then, he offers a consideration
of the ugly:
As for ugliness, it is a [property of the] form from which all beautiful properties are
absent. For it has been shown that the particular properties produce beauty but not
in every situation nor in every form, but in some forms rather than others.
Proportionality also exists not in all forms but in some rather than others.
Therefore, beauty will be lacking from forms in which no particular properties
produce beauty either singly or in conjunction, and in which no proportionality
exists among the parts. Thus ugliness of form is the absence of beauty from it.
There may exist in one and the same form both beautiful and ugly properties, and
in this case sight will perceive their respective beauty and ugliness once it has
distinguished and contemplated the properties in the form. But sight will perceive
ugliness from the privation of beauty when perceiving forms from which all
beautiful features are absent. And likewise for all ugly things.^57
Beauty and ugliness emerge from the tautological limits of the other,
drawing on the rhetorical method of understanding through opposition,
referred to by ibn Arabi astanzih.^58 Ibn al-Haytham can only offer a list of
qualities through which beauty may be apprehended, but ultimately the
ability to distinguish between the beautiful and the ugly depends on the
soul in which sensation is produced. Sabra notes that ibn al-Haytham
continues the understanding of beauty (al-husn) adopted from Platonism
(^56) Sabra, 1989 : 200. (^57) Sabra, 1989 : 206. (^58) Akkach,2005a: 30.
The Competition between Zeuxis and Parrhasius 181