The title of this essay is admittedly a mouthful. It’s because I want to introduce a technical term in philosophy that goes back to the medieval theologian and philosopher, Thomas Aquinas. It is useful in understanding the beauty of performance, in both artistic and non-artistic contexts.
When someone is well-trained on an instrument or tool, people might say something like, “that person is one with their guitar” or “that scalpel is an extension of the surgeon’s body.” We say expressions like this because we know that the person has spent enough time cultivating habits that the tools really seem to become part of their bodies. Their instincts meld with the tools. Aquinas and others claim that the person has become co-natured with the tool (the nature of the person and the nature of the tool become one). And this they describe as connatural knowledge or knowledge by connaturality.
This knowledge arises through habits that develop instincts or intuition, usually in a particular context. Specifically, Aquinas applied this kind of knowledge to morality. There are two ways, so he thought, to judge the correctness of a behavior. First, one could use reason to discover the morally correct behavior, and then apply that reason to a given action, situation, or person. Second, one could acquire knowledge through habits, which we call connaturality. What this means is that a person through practice gains an intuition about the right things to do, which allow them to formulate a judgment about a course of action.
It is not rational knowledge, knowledge through the conceptual, logical, and discursive exercise of reason. But it is really and genuinely knowledge, though obscure and perhaps incapable of giving account of itself.
Jacques Maritain from Creative Intuition in Art and Poetry.
We may or may not accept Aquinas’s view of morality, but this idea of knowledge by connaturality is useful in the context of art and aesthetics. Consider a painter. One could have been trained in a formal setting or practiced over time. Either way, the painter develops instincts for applying paint to the canvas in a particular way. They may not always consciously think about what they are doing. This artist example is not different from an athlete that uses a bat, a chef that wields a knife, or a musician that plays a guitar. The paintbrush and paint become part of the artist’s body, in a sense.
In some contexts, philosophers have referred to these kinds of examples as performative beauty (or the beauty of the performance). Dance is the exemplary context for performative beauty. Someone could conceive of an idea for a dance, but it requires a dancer to execute that idea. Sometimes the dancer may be a little off, which might lessen the beauty. Other times the dancer might perform perfectly, heightening the beauty. But the beauty is in the performance.
With dancers, athletes, and others, we can easily connect the performance with beauty. But we often don’t think of other kinds of performances as beautiful that are more common. Our working lives provides a plethora of examples that are performances, and the ones that are excellent will more likely be remembered or celebrated. Lots of people have given presentations for their work, and some might provide good information but are forgettable. Others are striking, even if the information itself borders on the mundane. It’s often the difference between a beautiful performance and a boring or disorganized one.
Most people apply connatural knowledge to the “primary” actor, such as the artist, athlete, or worker. I think it also belongs to the beholder, which in a sense consists of everyone. But obviously not everyone is equally as practiced (and certainly not in all contexts) to have the same degree of positive instincts. One cannot be a wine connoisseur, for instance, after having one glass of wine, even if one is a scotch connoisseur. This example illustrates that specific contexts, like wine, painting, or music, require practicing and experience specific to that field.
But there is also a more general habit of experiencing the aesthetics of everyday. Some people walk by flowers, architecture, and so on without even a glance. On any given day, we might be distracted by the circumstances of our lives, especially when something is more extreme, like a family member in the hospital. But it takes a certain kind of habit and instinct to notice the aesthetic features of the world around you and be attuned to the subtleties of this beauty. While becoming completely connatured to the beauty of the world seems impossible, we still need to develop good habits to attend to the aesthetics of the world.
Developing and expanding our aesthetic sensibilities requires us to be intentional in our practices and habits. We could choose to accept a more passive approach, but we limit ourselves to what we accidentally come across, rather than seeking out new ways to create and appreciate art and aesthetics. Think about the comparison with physical taste. If you place food on your tongue, you will technically taste it. But it is by deliberately trying different foods and drinks that we expand our capacity to taste the various flavors. And we deepen our understanding of those flavors. And the same goes for aesthetic taste. Looking ahead, think about different aesthetic features, objects, and contexts that you want to experience. And develop good habits for experiencing them.