There are an infinite number of discussions on the subject, centred primarily on whether beauty is something objective that everyone can recognise, or something subjective that changes depending on the era and place involved. I am convinced that beauty, like divine intervention, is indefinable, because its specific action is actually the contrary of defining something; it equates, if you will permit this neologism, to “infiniting” something: opening it up to the infinite. This is why, if we wish to say what beauty is, we do not have the words to express it, and the most intense aesthetic experiences are filled with silence. An aesthetic experience is always also an ecstatic experience. Nevertheless, we continually talk about beauty, and among its many descriptions, I recall this one from Plato: “splendour of the Truth”.2
Factories too are reflective of truth, of what is effective, of solidity. They produce things, they do so by using materials, and the material is always true. And the people who use it are sensitive to its quality. Manufacturing and beauty, the economy and aesthetics, thus come together in the material, because artists too are structurally sensitive to it insofar as there can be no art without material. The transformation of material is the basis for both the economy and aesthetics; it generates products and works of art, productivity and splendour.
Splendour derives from the Latin word splendeo, “to shine, to gleam, to shimmer”, with an obvious reference to light; whatever is splendid must necessarily also be shining. Light thus seems to be the principal constituent of beauty, which in mediaeval times not surprisingly was called claritas. Beauty is the special luminosity that the material generates, it is the splendour and loveliness of the truth, and as such it also points manufacturing in the right direction: a product that is authentically beautiful has all the guarantees needed to be genuine, trustworthy, and true too. The ancient Greeks at the beginning of our civilisation were the first to sense this, by establishing that the connection between beauty and goodness (kalokagathía) is the indicator that perfection has been attained. Goodness, in fact, should be understood primarily not in the ethical sense but in the physical sense: it means capability, strength, solidity, usability, functionality. In several Italian dialects too the adjective “good” means above all “capable”. We are talking of values to which a manufacturing plant is particularly attentive, but, if this is valid for its products, it cannot not be valid for its production sites also. For this reason, the more a factory is well tended from an aesthetic point of view, the more people will pay attention to the quality of its manufacturing and how good its products are. The link between beauty and a manufacturing plant appears to be not so much a somewhat affected luxury that people can happily do without, but rather an organic connection.
However, we need to take a further step forward by asking ourselves where beauty comes from. In relation to this delicate disposition of existence that we call beauty, I believe that it arises primarily from three sources: nature, art, and the human being. Here I shall focus on the last of these by saying that a manufacturing plant is not just technical, it is also a place of humanity: it consists of human beings who work together in close contact with one another day after day. In order for a factory to be a place that produces beauty, it therefore follows that the human beings inside it should also be beautiful. And when is a person, not as a natural phenomenon as such, but as a “human being”, beautiful?
As for the body with which we are endowed when we are born, nobody either deserves or does not deserve it; it derives from nature and as such belongs to the first of the three sources of beauty. It is rather the use of a person’s freedom that shows the authentic value of a human being, and therefore their particular beauty relates to their conscience, that is to say the use they make of their intelligence and their freedom. A human being is beautiful insofar as they are “human” when they are fair, good, intelligent, generous, courageous and loyal. Fairness, goodness, intelligence, generosity, courage and loyalty illuminate the face of a person who has these traits, rendering them beautiful. Putting these virtues into practice confers that special, typically human, beauty which goes beyond the surface and reaches the heart, and is the truest essence of each of us, making us “a beautiful person”.
My thesis therefore is that beauty is also produced in that special factory which is one’s conscience: beauty is its most precious product. If this interior beauty is missing, the beauty of the factory, however well it is tended, can end up being distant, cold, false and indeed hostile. In order for the manufacturing plant to become truly resplendent with authentic beauty, it needs to be fed by the even more necessary beauty of those human relationships, of those glances, of that empathy which regulates and modulates interpersonal exchanges. For this reason, as well as looking after the exterior of their manufacturing plant, the wisest entrepreneurs are those who also take care of its interior, by cultivating the authenticity of relationships and the ethical dimension, not just among their own co-workers but even ahead of that, obviously, within themselves.
The final step of my contribution is intended to warn people about something that constitutes perhaps the greatest risk that a manufacturing plant can face, especially if it is very well tended from a technical and aesthetic point of view: the celebration of technical excellence to such a degree that it eliminates all contact with nature and with humanity. To explain what I mean I shall quote a passage from the classic Taoist Chuang-Tzu dating back around twenty-four centuries and written as part of a polemic with the Confucianists. It tells how one of the most famous disciples of Confucius by the name of Zigong, having glimpsed an old peasant who was working in his vegetable garden on the bank of the river in a rather unproductive manner, said to him: “There is a machine to do what you are doing. In a single day you can irrigate an area one hundred times bigger, with little effort and a much better result. Wouldn’t you like to have it?”. The peasant first asked for some further explanations, then became indignant, laughed sarcastically and finally replied calmly: “I heard my teacher say that where there are machines there are mechanical problems; and where there are mechanical problems, there are mechanical minds. When the mind is mechanical, simplicity is lost”. He therefore bade Zigong farewell with these words: “I know about the machine of which you speak, but I would be ashamed to use it”.3
Today we all are experienced enough to know that there are some extremely useful machines to help us with our daily lives, that a manufacturing plant itself is a large machine composed of numerous other machines, and that often in turn it produces more machines. The proposal by Zigong should not be laughed at, far from it. Notwithstanding this, it is equally true that today there exist considerable numbers of “mechanical minds”, and that, despite the presence of many machines which simplify our lives both at work and in our homes, simplicity is often lost. The old peasant’s words are therefore worth listening to attentively. The relationship between a manufacturing plant and beauty, and therefore between a manufacturing plant and nature from which beauty principally derives, is essential to ensuring that our minds are not reduced to mechanical minds but remain human, that is to say free and creative.
1 Fyodor Dostoevsky, Demons, III,1,4 [1873], tr. by Francesca Gori, Garzanti, Milan 200815, p. 521.
2 See Plato, The Phaedrus, 250 B-D, edited by Giovanni Reale, Bompiani, Milan 20094, p. 119.
3 Chuang Tzu(Zhuangzi), n. 12, edited by Augusto Shantena Sabbadini, Urra, Milan 2012, p. 109.
Mancuso
Vito Mancuso (Carate Brianza, 1962), a lay theologian and philosopher, was a professor at San Raffaele University in Milan and Padua. He currently teaches as part of the Master’s Degree in Meditation and Neuroscience at the University of Udine. He founded and runs the “Ethics Laboratory” in Bologna. He is the author of numerous essays on topics such as Hegel’s philosophy, diseases and pain, the nature of God, the soul, love, thought, freedom, cardinal virtues, courage, fear and the meaning of life. In an extensive essay, he presented the figures of Socrates, Buddha, Confucius and Jesus in synopsis. His thinking can be defined as a “relational philosophy.” As regards the aesthetic dimension, he has published La via della bellezza (The road to beauty) (Garzanti 2018). His last book is entitled La mente innamorata (The enamoured mind) ( Garzanti 2022). He has been an editorialist for La Stampa since 2022.