On Beauty
This essay serves as part of the STSC Symposium for May: “Beauty”. A monthly collaboration from STSC's writers around a set theme.
“Greater love hath no man than this, that a man lay down his life for his friends.” – Jesus
“Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do.” – Jesus
Beauty is Goodness made manifest to the senses.
That’s it.
Of course, I’m going to elaborate. But I want that statement to stick with us. It’s of utmost importance in understanding why we seek and make beautiful things and what their practical value is in our life. Note well that I don’t mean “utilitarian” or “economic” or some other such end when I say practical. Asking what the value of something is in those terms is at best wrongheaded and at worst utterly destructive. I mean, once we have apprehended what is beauty is and behold something beautiful, it makes a claim on us. We are called to action of some kind. Grasping, if imperfectly, what Beauty really is helps us to deal with the beautiful things we encounter. And can give us some direction should we aspire to create such things.
Desire Against Goodness
Our lives are filled with desires. We can’t seem to help but to want things. However, we often don’t consider, especially in modern life, that what we want does not necessarily consist of what is Good. It may, but chances are that we have a great many desires that are contrary to the Good. I’d venture to say though that these days we’ve equated Good with our personal desires in a rather encompassing manner. Thus, for most, and for us all at some times, what is Good, and by extension beautiful, is simply “what I like”. I am going to argue that taste is a trainable attribute and we should be about the business of attuning our tastes to the truly Good, i.e. Beautiful, through proper thought and contemplation. This will inevitably result in altered actions and apprehensions as we develop our sense of taste to be more and more aligned with true Beauty. This practice will also steadily bring our desires in line with what is Good, effectively linking our emotional responses with the proper intellectual and artistic ones.
A basic example of the conflict described above can be found in the things we tend to find instantly attractive, things that engender cravings and strong desire. Two illustrative domains are advertising and our dealings with the opposite sex. Let’s take them in turn before we move on to considering nature and then finally the arts.
Advertising for the most part consists in ratcheting up desire and fashioning an artificial feeling of need in order to produce an ostensible solution. Practitioners are literally taught to magnify the so-called “pain points” in the audience so that they develop a craving for the product or service being hawked. Now, I do believe there are ethical ways to promote products and services but we should be sober about considering the clear fact that the vast majority of advertising is operating on a degraded moral level. Desires are not needs, but the bulk of the advertising field is set on honing the craft of transforming wants into perceived needs. We plainly do not need most of what is being sold. Advertising goes far out of its way to tell us that nothing we do is wrong, nothing wrong could possibly be our fault, and we merely need to fork over our hard earned dollars to make our problems go away. This, of course, is patently absurd, and yet advertisers are very good at producing their intended reactions and we all fall prey to this dubious trade at some point or another.
Advertising cannot ever be directly beautiful, even if occasionally aesthetically pleasing, for the reasons described above. Even if it is sometimes branded as art, it is what James Joyce called “pornographic art”. What he meant by this coinage is that the piece in question exists for the primary, if not sole, purpose of enticing us to indulge our baser desires. If not in action, at least in thought and contemplation. Calling it pornographic was a prescient act on Joyce’s part, modern society being steeped as it is now in the explicitly pornographic. No matter how aesthetically pleasing an adult film might ever be, it still serves no purpose but to vicariously satisfy craving in the viewer. There is no redemptive function, no link to any higher state in the human being. In the case of explicit pornography this is obvious and a moment’s reflection on this idea should turn us away from its consumption, moral issues aside.
We should also be on the lookout for this factor in pieces where the pornographic bent is more obscured. Does this piece develop characters in way that speaks to the human condition in a spiritually developmental way or is it simply vainly arousing (and I don’t mean only sexually)? The distinction is subtler than we might think at first glance and it serves us to dig a little deeper. I’m not interested in debating the technical ability of a writer like Charles Bukowski, but I would classify his work as soundly pornographic in the Joycean sense. It is primarily what some have called “vice tourism”. In his novels, people are bad, life is pointless, so we might as well drink and drug and do it all mostly naked and writhing. I find it all an ugly exercise in bad taste. But, he is an excellent prose stylist. There is some beauty in that per se for reasons we’ll get to shortly. Ultimately though, taken as a whole body of work, the value system rests on such a low level that the technical prowess doesn’t not do enough to lift it out of the mire of ugliness. This is meant to be an example for extrapolation, not just to pick on pitiful old Charles. I merely suggest a second look if you happen to enjoy his work greatly.
The second obvious example is in our dealings with the opposite sex. Being male, I’ll approach this subject from my fated vantage point, but I think the idea transfers fine between the sexes. Have you ever seen a woman who was very attractive on a surface level but not properly beautiful? I propose that this is because things that are Good come to us on a hierarchy, and that such a person is not reflecting the higher values in their appearance. Perhaps they’ve been blessed with a near perfect body, a stunning face, etc. Or perhaps they built their physical self through a combination of disciplined training and even skill in makeup and fashion. And yet they might be a selfish and mean-spirited person. There’s no amount of superficial gloss to cover over an ugliness that shines from the eyes. Perhaps you’ve also seen an old woman, practically shriveled by the ravages of time who is yet a gentle and giving soul. There is a light that somehow shows in her face that cannot be properly described as anything but beautiful. We will soon ponder why this might be. My main point here is simply that the attractiveness of a thing or person is not necessarily commensurate with good taste or true beauty and that this has something to do with metaphysical properties. We do well to consider our strong emotional reactions to such things and persons before we dwell on them in thought or pursue them in action.
What is Goodness?
I said at the outset the Beauty is Goodness made manifest to the senses. It serves us then to at least briefly investigate Goodness. There will be debate about such a lofty topic but I’ll give my view, which is inseparable from my religious orientation. So be it. I find much agreement in philosophical history and points of departure somewhat small. Not insignificant, but small.
The title of this publication is based off a statement in one of St. Paul’s letters:
“Finally, brethren, whatsoever things are true, whatsoever things are honest, whatsoever things are just, whatsoever things are pure, whatsoever things are lovely, whatsoever things are of good report; if there be any virtue, and if there be any praise, think on these things.”
That’s the language of the King James Version and rings a little antiquated in our ears. But I think the gist of it is clear enough, being that we do well to put our attention and focus on things which fall under the heading of Goodness.
I want to caution that I don’t mean anything sentimental or saccharine by this. The Truth is also Good. And the truth about life is that it is messy and dark and violent, as well as orderly, bright, and full of peace and contentment and wonder. It’s the whole mix of human experience. Anything that will tell of this straightforwardly can be Beautiful because it expresses the fundamental goodness of reality. Of course, I believe in a benevolent creator God who “works all together for Good for those who love Him”. Notice though that this quote, again from Paul, does not say that all things are Good. He says that in the final view, taken as a whole, that they constitute a complete picture that is in fact Good. That is why redemption is such an important factor in good stories or beautiful paintings. There needs to be some factor that lifts the work beyond a cynical and gritty telling of the horrors of life. Artwork and philosophies that proclaim that all is lost and dreadful and beyond saving are by this definition ugly. And I think most of us correctly perceive them that way. I say all this to indicate that I am not arguing that something like Hallmark movies are beautiful. They are not, primarily because they are untrue. And telling falsities is not Good, and by extension cannot be Beautiful.
So, to attempt a loose definition of Goodness: what is Good is that which expresses the Truth about reality, with a special focus on values that are highest on the hierarchy. Let’s take a stab at defining that hierarchy.
On Values
Trying to place values and virtues in hierarchy is perhaps a fool’s errand but I think we can make at least some progress here. I would place some of the traditional virtues lower on the list as a Christian, and I think we may as well take the ancient structure for our model here.
The ancient exploration of virtue settled on the so-called Cardinal Virtues. These are: Justice, Temperance, Fortitude, and Prudence. Christian tradition adds the Theological Virtues: Faith, Hope, and Love.
I would conceive of the Theological Virtues sitting at the top of the hierarchy, as the gleaming tower built upon the foundation provided by the Cardinal Virtues. I would also add to this foundation the idea of arête, or excellence.
For the purposes of saving space, I won’t detail every bit that can be said about these, for they are the subjects of a great many large books throughout the ages. I want only to argue that what we perceive as beautiful, if we are properly attuned, is expressing one or many of these values.
Beginning with the base of excellence, we can see the concept as purely technical. This is why there is some beauty in something like a Bukowski novel. The man was a good writer. And we can apprehend and appreciate that fact. However, I argue that for achieving the heights of beauty, a work, or a life, must ascend the loosely detailed ladder above. I find his work to fall flat in this regard. Contrast this with a writer like Dostoevsky. He didn’t dare shy away from the darkness in life. And he was as excellent a writer as any. Yet, his work always, at least implicitly, speaks to the theological virtues, grounded as he was in the Russian Orthodox tradition. There is a glimmer of Hope, Faith, and Love in his work that elevates it to sublime heights of beauty.
I think this is also why many “slice of life” stories or paintings, or simple songs about daily life, or narratives about unremarkable people rising to the occasion can be so intensely beautiful. Whereas the heroic story celebrates the man expressing the Cardinal Virtues in extreme, especially fortitude, or even strength as a form of excellence, the stories about more ordinary people show the deep beauty in the theological virtues. A simple painting of a peasant mother cradling her child conveys a profound Beauty, as an expression of Love, that rivals any epic story of courage and battle.
This is a somewhat imprecise analysis, but I hope my general meaning comes across, for we must move on.
Ascending to the Highest Beauty
I hinted that we’d deal a bit with nature and so we shall. I think the non-religious view of nature as something beautiful is primarily to do with Prudence in the viewer. In the secular view, nature is an impersonal thing and so the sense of smallness from standing atop a great mountain, or beholding a vast sea, or staring into an expansive chasm has to do with proper perception. For this is essentially the meaning of Prudence in the ancient sense. It means something like “to see reality for what it is”. So we are seeing the Truth of things, and our proper relationship to it, and that engenders the sensation commensurate with Beauty. However, I go a step further, seeing nature as a manifestation of the Love of God for all people - what we would call “general revelation”. The created world speaks of His excellence, for one, and of His Love for us in providing Life and sustaining it, and of His is commitment to rescuing it from the mess we’ve made of it. I see a great mountain and through it I see my great God and I am moved by its surpassing Beauty to worship Him. Any artist that can capture such things and render them to me in way in which I can have this experience when I am not able to physically be there, gives me a great and beautiful gift. He may also add his own excellence and love and hope and any number of values to his artistic work and elevate it to a higher realm of Beauty. It doesn’t serve much purpose to rank the mountain itself or a painting of it as more or less beautiful. They are both Goodness made manifest to our senses and it is right for us to have both.
I have placed Love at the top of this loose hierarchy and I do think that a work achieves the most Beauty as it incorporates all the lower levels as it climbs to the highest. So to me, the things of greatest Beauty express Love. Love is slippery word in our language and so I need to clarify that I mean agape in Greek. This word is a fixture of the language of the New Testament and can be partially defined as “God’s type of love”. Now, this Love is not an emotion. It is primarily an action and it finds its expression in forgiveness and self-sacrifice.
Think of the most beautiful stories or paintings or music or any great work of art. I think the most beautiful examples of these things deal in some way with forgiveness and self-sacrifice. This is based heavily in my worldview, but I think that we are all very much the fish swimming in the water of Christendom, even if we’re not believers. Think of the story of soldier dying for his country. Of the mother risking her life opposing someone attempting to harm her children. Of the addict letting go of her hatred for her parents. Of a man working fifteen hour days to feed his family and still having a smile on for the kids.
I think the most profound and moving and Beautiful art consists of retelling these stories of sacrifice and forgiveness that people live out again and again in some way that is excellent and attuned to the other virtues we’ve discussed.
And because I cannot do otherwise, I will close by meditating upon the most beautiful thing in all creation:
The world was Good. And we all collectively and individually set it and ourselves on a path to hell and ruin. The great Creator of that world Loved it so much that in his Justice and Prudence and Mercy entered into it as a man himself, to face a gruesome death with Courage and Faith and Hope.
He poured out his precious and perfect life in the greatest act of self-sacrifice ever known, forgiving all our wrongness in the process.
This Truth turned an instrument of death and torture into the highest Good possible.
And so we will continue to look upon this mystery as long as we have breath, painting it, telling the story, writing songs, infinite permutations of infinite Beauty, until Kingdom come.
When I survey the wondrous cross
on which the Prince of glory died,
my richest gain I count but loss,
and pour contempt on all my pride.
Forbid it, Lord, that I should boast
save in the death of Christ, my God!
All the vain things that charm me most,
I sacrifice them to his blood.
See, from his head, his hands, his feet,
sorrow and love flow mingled down.
Did e'er such love and sorrow meet,
or thorns compose so rich a crown?
Were the whole realm of nature mine,
that were a present far too small.
Love so amazing, so divine,
demands my soul, my life, my all.