Beauty Will Save the World, Part I
The oldest email in my inbox contains a link to “The Educational Plan of St. Jerome Classical School”––a link which no longer works.1 The email also includes a PDF of the educational plan, a document which I apparently have been misquoting to myself. A modified version of the particular passage can still be found on St. Jerome Academy’s website.2 I will quote from the PDF, which as far I know, might only exist in my email inbox:
True education has always rested on two presuppositions. The first is that truth is desirable for its own sake. It is good not for what it does, but for what it is. The second is that knowledge consists not in bending the truth to ourselves, but in conforming ourselves to truth. We can only conform ourselves to truth by freely embracing and loving it, and we can only love truth if we are enticed by its beauty. Love of beauty has therefore always been integral to the discovery of truth and true education has always sought to form the heart and mind, reason and will, desire and knowledge. In short, education forms the whole person in light of truth, beauty, and goodness.
Somehow, I got it into my head that the passage read, “Beauty is desirable for its own sake. It is good not for what it does, but for what it is.” I also (incorrectly) remembered the passage describing beauty as the splendor of truth, and what makes truth desirable.
Soon after I was read through the education plan, I began writing my high school thesis on music and poetry. My advisor, an Anglican priest, introduced me to Prince Myshkin’s assertion, “Beauty will save the world.” To this day, I have never read “The Idiot.” Nonetheless, the assertion stuck with me.
Looking back, it is almost comical that my conception of beauty was influenced by these passages, one which I was citing incorrectly to myself and another which I had no context for. Nevertheless, my understanding of beauty owes a great deal to studying poetry under the ideas that a) Beauty is desirable for its own sake, b) that beauty is the splendor of truth and c) that beauty will save the world.
Propositions a and b may be interpreted as a contradiction (how can beauty be a predicate of truth and be desirable for itself), but I don’t think the contradiction is necessary. If indeed Beauty, Goodness and Truth are the three transcendentals, then they have the shared nature of permanence. At least from the time I encountered the passages above, I have understood the transcendentals to be parts of God’s character. This would help explain their permanence, but it would also suggest that three are manifestations of the same thing. God is perfectly true, God is perfectly good, God is perfectly beautiful. Perfect truth is also perfectly good and beautiful. Perfect beauty is also true and good. Perfect goodness is also true and beautiful.
A good friend recently objected to beauty’s status as a transcendental because of its apparent mutability or subjectivity. I understand the objection, because beauty does seem to be liable to subjectivity–– “beauty is in the eye of the beholder,” they say. Similarly, it is easier to be seduced by beauty than by truth. Beauty is more difficult to define than truth–– the latter lends itself to rational language, the former does not. It is easier to explain where a heresy goes wrong than where a film director becomes gratuitous. Socrates suggested that the most skilled poets were unfit for the guardians of his republic, because their poetic methods distract from the welfare of the city (the welfare depending upon the guardian’s contemplation of the good).3 In De Musica, Augustine expressed concern that melody may distract the singer from the sacred text.
Such ambiguity about the nature of beauty, I assert, does not have to do with the mutability of beauty, but with the mutability of man. If one is seduced to evil by beauty, he is not seduced by the truly beautiful. True beauty is not in the eye of the beholder. Just as someone can have a wrong opinion of truth, so one can have a wrong opinion of beauty.
The language of opinion recalls Socrates’ distinction between knowledge and belief in the Republic. Whereas knowledge corresponds to reality, belief corresponds to opinion; therefore, knowledge is always right, while opinion is always wrong. In the discussion, Socrates points to beauty as one of the examples of something that is known by few, although many have opinions about beauty. The opinions are about various manifestations of beauty, not about beauty itself.4
Plato compares human sight to human understanding: just as our eyes perceive objects by the light of the sun, so our mind perceives ideas by the light of goodness. True knowledge comes when our mind grasps the idea, fully enlightened by the light of truth. A similar analogy appears in the writings of the Puritan Jonathan Edwards:
Because God is not only infinitely greater and more excellent than all other being, but he is the head of the universal system of existence; the foundation and fountain of all being and all beauty; from whom all is perfectly derived, and on whom all is most absolutely and perfectly dependent; of whom, and through whom, and to whom is all being and all perfection and whose being and beauty are, as it were, the sum and comprehension of all existence and excellence: much more than the sun is the fountain and summary comprehension of all the light and brightness of the day.5
If we hold Edwards and Plato side by side, the overlap is nearly seamless. Edwards’ description of God sounds like Plato’s description of the Good––both God and the Good are compared to the sun. The sun, the Good, and God all allow us to perceive certain things, but are also themselves sources of life for the things which we see.
I have combined Plato and Edwards in such a way that, since God is the fountain of beauty (Edwards), and true knowledge depends on enlightenment from the Good (Plato––but adopted by Christianity, God is even further above the Good), true knowledge of what beauty is depends on a true knowledge of God. This depends on God’s grace. Further, as our knowledge of beauty is refined by our knowledge of God, our ability to recognize manifestations of beauty is clarified. This is why a definition of beauty as transcendental is important. If beauty is not transcendental, it is subject to change. If beauty emanates from God’s being, then it is an invitation to pursue God. Further, it is a call to seriously examine what things we find beautiful, and why.
http://www.stjeromes.org/documents_school/The_Educational_Plan_of_St._Jerome_Classical_School.pdf
https://stjeromeacademy.org/vision
See Plato, Republic. 398a. I have been reading from Allan Bloom’s translation: Plato, The Republic of Plato, trans. Allan Bloom. (USA: Basic Books, 1968).
Plato, Republic. 476-480.
Jonathan Edwards, The Nature of True Virtue. Available online: https://depts.washington.edu/lsearlec/TEXTS/EDWARDS/VIRTUE.HTM