Research Paper on:
Beauty and Virtue

Unformatted Sample Text from the Research Paper:
are evil. (Hollywood plays with this stereotype all the time, much to the delight of audiences who seem to enjoy sexy bad guys and charming anti-heroes.) But why  do we believe this? This paper traces our instinctive reaction to beauty in others, and why we seem to believe there is a positive relationship between beauty and virtue.  Discussion One theory that might help explain our belief is advanced by the philosopher David Hume, who "proposes that feeling, not thought, informs us that an object is beautiful  or ugly, or that an action exhibits virtue or vice" (Gracyk, 2003). It is the feeling itself that "contributes our praise or admiration" (Gracyk, 2003). Furthermore, the feeling is  in itself "an aesthetic or moral discrimination" and it occurs prior to "any subsequent expression of praise or admiration" (Gracyk, 2003). In other words, Hume posits that when we  look at someone beautiful or handsome, we have an immediate emotional reaction to them, and that feeling comes first, before any expression or remark we might make. Further, Humes  words suggests that we discriminate in their favor. Hume also says that "sentiment is the beauty of the object and it is the virtue of desirable human action" (Gracyk,  2003). Restating that: sentiment is beauty and virtue; and if the sentiment we feel when we see beauty is instinctive approval, this helps explain why we believe beautiful  people to be truthful. Hume also makes a cogent observation about our thought processes when he says that what were actually discussing when we describe someone as handsome or  virtuous is not the person, but the response they cause in us (Gracyk, 2003). That response, he says, is essentially meaningless, "but that from the constitution of your nature