Aesthetic Intelligence: The Ability To Perceive The Beautiful
It is not easy to describe the concept of beauty. Many thinkers and philosophers have tried with more or less success. Is it an aesthetic pattern? A combination of color and shape? A feeling? Or is it a spiritual joy? The Italian psychotherapist and philosopher Piero Ferruci, with his theory of aesthetic intelligence, proposes a better understanding of what beauty is from the reflection on ugliness and the effects it has on us.
Violence against animals, child abuse, wars, catastrophes and damage to nature. It is often necessary to deal with destructive ugliness in order to understand what beauty is and to stop it being understood as something superficial, sentimental or ambiguous. Whatever beauty is, it seems to possess extraordinary soul-healing power.
Aesthetic intelligence is a way of understanding the beautiful
At this point, the question is often raised as to why some people find something extremely beautiful and for other people that same something has no beauty. There are many occasions where someone finds beauty where someone else cannot. That is basically aesthetic intelligence: perceiving beauty where others see nothing.
Aesthetic intelligence differentiates three main components that define the degree of aesthetic perception. Basically they are the range of aesthetics, the depth of the experience and the ability to integrate beauty. These three variables are given in different ways and degrees in all of us.
The range of aesthetics
Those with a wider aesthetic range can experience beauty in more situations. For example, there are people who do not find beauty only in music, they can also find it in poetry, in a movie, a landscape, the decoration of a house or the sound of rain on the roof.
They are people capable of perceiving beauty in the thousand simple situations of everyday life. This way of understanding beauty is not common to everyone and perhaps from this fact derives the trivialization of beauty in general terms as something relegated to the physical appearance of people.
The depth of experience
The experience of perception of beauty also varies from one person to another. Experiencing beauty can vaguely “touch” someone who recognizes it, but hardly affects them. He lives it as something “external” to him and does not influence him in a significant way.
However, the same beautiful quality of something can move something very intense within other people. There are moments when beauty permeates our entire being, overwhelms us and instills in us feelings that are difficult to explain due to its intensity. We don’t know how to explain how it makes us feel. It is a very intense joyful emotion.
The ability to integrate beauty
The ability to integrate perceived beauty explains why there are beauties that “touch” and beauties that “change.” We talk about integrating beauty when beauty not only touches us, but also changes us : It alters our thinking:
The experience of beauty enriches our lives
In the concept of aesthetic intelligence there seems to be a clear differentiation. People with a narrow aesthetic range also have a poorer and more restricted world and a less flexible personality. There seem to be coincidences between this type of people and their ability to adapt to new environments and circumstances, they have more problems handling changes.
On the contrary, people with a wide aesthetic range develop more curious personalities, more inclined to learn and embrace new ideas and projects and have a great capacity to marvel and enjoy learning. They are much more flexible with circumstances, with other people and with themselves. They have more capacity to relate to others, higher self-esteem and a much more intense vital spirit.
For many people surrounding themselves with beauty is vital and necessary for happiness. Piero Ferruci in his book Beauty to heal the Soul assures that the deprivation of beauty can generate depression, restlessness, an inexplicable aggressiveness and a deep sense of futility.
