Do you think it's rational to claim there is beauty in everything? (Why/why not?)
Yes. I don't mean that it's *necessarily* true or that it's irrational to claim there *isn't* beauty in everything, but I mean that it's not *irrational* to claim that there's beauty in everything.
I figured some people would think something to the effect of, "any word that describes everything means nothing," but that doesn't apply in this case because the claim isn't that everything is 100% beautiful, it's that there is beauty in everything.. so everything could have both beautiful, ugly, and whatever-else aspects--kinda like the yin and yang that are purported to run through everything.
Tweed addressed this idea and said that when people say they see beauty in everything, they really mean everything is beautiful, and that *everything* can't be more beautiful (or any other adjective) than average. I don't really agree with this, even *if* the claim is really that everything is beautiful (which I'm not htat sure of), it's not exactly equivalent to saying that everything is more beautiful than average. For example, some people would claim that everything is physical--does that really imply that everything is more physical than average? And it's also related to the point that anything that describes everything describes nothing (as Commons mentioned)--is it really that meaningless to say that everything is physical?
But it does still seem to be in question how everything can be beautiful, or anything else, on account of the fact that things seem to be defined through differentiation from or contrast other things, i.e. there is *some* validity to the statement that anything that describes everything describes nothing. But how much validity? What are its limitations?
Saying everything is beautiful is equivalent to a prescription for a certain *outlook* on that which is. So even though it frames absolutely everything you observe under the same attribute, it's in contrast to other possible ways of looking at the universe that frame absolutely everything under other attributes. Perhaps another way of saying this is that there's still contrast between what's regarded as real and what we can possibly imagine. If we can imagine things that aren't beautiful (which could be said to be equivalent to imagining looking at the same real things and deeming them not beautiful instead), then it has meaning to say that everything (real) is beautiful.
(The same logic applies to the concept that God is everywhere or God is everything--it's not meaningless because it colors the characteristic of *everything* as we think of it, in contrast to other possibly ways of thinking of everything. For example, it makes the universe at larhe more characterized by meaning, purpose, "reasons for things", life, consciousness, intelligence, magic, etc.)
Another issue that seems to be somehow relevant (even though I'm not quite sure how) is the possible precept that beauty is merely an abstraction, and exists only in the eye of the beholder, and is possibly even just an aspect of brainstate, etc. I'm not sure why it seems relevant, since all the above arguments hold even if this is the case, but I wanted to mention that beauty could actually be a fundamental characteristic of the universe, with intrinsic meaning, and that to see beauty in everything could actually be to have the capacity of perceiving this characteristic (or the many many characteristics of beauty that stem from one single trait of the universe). Relativity in what people perceive as beautiful could merely be differences in our capacities to detect beauty where it exists (perhaps to oversimplify the issue).
Commons, Tweed and Veronique all intimated that people who say they see beauty in everything (or that everything is beautiful) are kidding themselves or disingenuous. I can't argue with that, they probably are, though maybe they're only guilty of a little bit of exaggeration/misuse of language or not really thinking it through. Perhaps the real sentiment behind the claim is that they see beauty in most or many things, or things other people don't typically see beauty in, or that they *try* to see beauty in as much as possible (and often succeed). In which case it is still noble.