If beauty is in the eye of the beholder, in what eye is the beholder? All the furniture of the waking world looks back at you, contributes to the circles by which some thing like you is posited in the world, is in the world in a thing-like way. Objects in regard to which there is a strong emotional effect, beautiful objects, objects of desire, horrific objects, do this less so than neutral objects, than the merely supporting cast of things. When there is such a strong effect then you are reflectively aware of upwelling of feeling that creates it and of its internal source, so that such objects are experienced as more dream-like, more hallucinatory. The centre of gravity in such confrontations is closer to the self, or more accurately to the gut, or the liver. Oddly though there is less sense of autonomy in these cases; you are passive to the emotions which rise up from the unknown insides, and are more hostage to the associated objects. Hostage because something is required of you, something alienating, even though or precisely because the source of the attachment is felt as arising from within. If the purpose in desire was to prove something then there would be an illusion involved which could be dispelled by exposing its false logic. But the nature of desire is exactly what persists in the face of every unveiling, of every exposure. You know what the error is but you still desire, as much or even more than before. Desire does away with purpose.