A tragedy of beauty has occurred in Western culture and perhaps worldwide: The importance of beauty for a flourishing and self-actualizing life is largely going unnoticed by both the general public and by psychologists. Philosophers, sacred scriptures, and a range of empirical findings point to the centrality of engaging with beauty for a meaningful life and suggest engagement with beauty as a means of pursuing self-actualization. However, not only American culture but humanistic psychologists have severely undervalued the fulfillment of aesthetic needs and a life engaged by beauty. We examined the relationship between the Engagement with Beauty Scale and the Short Index of Self-Actualization (N = 252). Very small, nonsignificant correlations were found between the Short Index of Self-Actualization and engagement with natural beauty, engagement with artistic beauty, and engagement with moral beauty. This indicates that persons high in self-actualization have no more interest in beauty than those low in self-actualization; this implies that those in our sample do not take the importance of beauty into account as they make choices to grow as a person. We conclude that American culture has been infected by a tragedy of beauty, which is a serious impediment toward fully self-actualizing, and to moving toward self-transcendence.
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