Beauty, Goodness, and Truth. In that order.
Virtual visit to the Sistine Chapel (accompanied by Palestrina): http://www.vatican.va/various/cappelle/sistina_vr/index.html |
Few philosophers would arrange the three attributes
of Wisdom—beauty, goodness, and truth—in that order, as it presumes a hierarchy
that ranks them in the reverse of intellectual seriousness, or turns them
inside out in terms of moral purpose. However, during this (hopefully) brief
papal interregnum, I thought it wouldn’t be out of place to offer a lonely
voice for the importance of Beauty.
Of course, the Romantic poet Keats proclaimed
“Beauty is truth, truth beauty,” but that equivocal conflating of the
two gets us nowhere. And if, for St. Paul, “the greatest of these is love,”
both truth and beauty must take a back seat to goodness in any discussion of
our life’s ends and means. But need beauty be relegated to last place in every
case, where most moderns would put it? Many, indeed, would leave it off the
list altogether, like an arch-neoclassicist shunning the Corinthian order. But
if a preference for truth can lead us to a false choice between orthodoxy or
apostasy, and for goodness can valorize the merely sincere, can’t beauty be
seen to have left us instead with the most enduring legacy of Western Christian
culture of the three?
Is it wrong that so many go to Rome not to see the
pope, but the Sistine ceiling? Isn't the problem there that the experience
ends with mere aesthetic satisfaction, which is a long way from Michelangelo
Buonarotti’s transcendent reasons for Beauty?
For all of Michelangelo Merisi da Caravaggio’s human
weaknesses, his Madonna di Loreto
(with its dirty-footed pilgrims) resonates more profoundly for so many with a
tenuous grasp on their faith than any theological truth. And it is not the
artist’s sincerity that made it so, but his ability. Surely he had affection
for the image of simple devotion that he depicted; but he made that image
transcendently beautiful. It is through that illuminated window that the light
of revelation passes.
North transept of Ss. Martina e Luca the church of the Roman academy of artists |
If we privileged Beauty, as we once did, we would
make a more humane world. We could resolve irresolvable differences, inspire
affection and devotion, and be confident of a lasting effect on the world. If
we valued Beauty we would want to know it as well as make it; we would indeed believe
it was knowable, possible, and necessary. If Italy and Rome make any sense as
the home of the papacy, it is not for any particular locks on truth or
goodness, but because of their beauty. It is a beauty that encouraged artists
and academies to emulate the best; public beauty made the divine an accessible
thing, freely available to all; greengrocers patronized their collegiate church
with ornament and art, celebrating their pride in producing what everyone
needed to survive.
We might think that beauty is over-valorized in our
superficial culture, but what passes for beauty today is simply the attractive.
Instead, how often do we read the word “ornate” as saddled with implicit
condemnation? To “embellish”—which means to make more beautiful—is usually
considered pejorative, a masking of the sincere and plain. By equating beauty
with truth we have burdened it with moral weight it was never meant to bear.
Beauty is not truth, and truth is not goodness. They are all important for the
good life, but they should not be conflated. If we suffer the lack of any of
them today, I would argue it is the former.
Madona dell'Orto in Trastevere, Rome the church of the greengrocers and other trades from the wikipedia page: gli Ortolani e Pizzicaroli, fondatori; i Fruttaroli; i Sensali di Ripa, mediatori dei commerci locali; i Molinari - e si capisce, data l'importanza dei mulini sul Tevere nel rifornimento di farine; i Vermicellari, produttori di paste alimentari; i Pollaroli; gli Scarpinelli (ciabattini); i Vignaioli; e i "giovani", garzoni e lavoranti di diverse università |
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