Lord Henry

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In The Birth of Tragedy, In The Birth of Tragedy, Friederich Nietzsche describes that only matter is real and exists in a primordial unity that lust for the contemplation of the aesthetic. For Nietzsche, existence is just a phenomenon that occurs from waves of matter crashing together. Because everything exists as a phenomenon, there is no such things a final good or purpose (telos) and no formal truth, and thus the final justification of the world is beauty. Therefore, time should be spent celebrating and contemplating the aesthetic. However, in “On the Standard of Taste”, David Hume presents a very different view on the connection of the transcendentals. Hume believes that all tastes and judgments are rooted in the sentiments and are inherently …show more content…
For example, Lord Henry claims “philanthropic people lose all sense of humanity” (26) and that he “can sympathize with everything except suffering . . . it is too ugly, too horrible, and too distressing . . . one should sympathize with the beauty, the joy of life” (29). For Lord Henry, altruism is not a positive quality – it is actually extremely detrimental. Wotton believes that all humans should be narcissists because the true realization of one’s humanity lies in reflection on the self. Therefore, he explains that helping the self is preferable over helping others because altruism prevents one from living the beautiful life because it is associated with goodness. Furthermore, Lord Henry’s obsession with developing the beautiful self leads him to a view that the surface of life is the most important – he claims that “experience [is] of no ethical value” (57). Lord Henry is concerned with beauty for only beauty’s sake; therefore experience has only aesthetic value. Ideas are considered aesthetic objects that have beauty as their only parameter, not truth or goodness. Therefore, he thrives off of skimming life on the surface – for him; society is something that has forgotten how to live for beauty. Lord Henry, in his philosophy on life and beauty, tries to separate it …show more content…
Lord Henry’s worldview already has some gaps in it because he believes in pure sensation; he says “ one [can] never pay too high a price for any sensation” (42). This idea devalues Lord Henry’s unwavering belief in pure aestheticism and surface because if beauty is cut off from truth and goodness, then it is only worthwhile because it is pleasant. Therefore Lord Henry’s belief in the beautiful is actually less concerned with beautiful surfaces than the experience that these surfaces give him. Therefore, the aesthetics of surface is not as absolute and objective experience– it can be reduced to subjective feelings, and is rooted in sentiments. Therefore, when living based off of an aesthetic worldview that is rooted in the sentiments, Dorian’s pursuit of the aesthetic is also bound to collapse. He begins to search for a way out of the snare of aestheticism, as he remarks, “though forgiveness was impossible, forgetfulness was possible still, and he was determined to forget” (135). A sense of morality starts to creep into Dorian, but he is determined to sweep it under the rug. However, it is ambiguous whether Dorian truly feels bad about his actions and wants redemption or whether he is trying to save face and run away from an unpleasant feeling.
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