Wednesday, April 23, 2008

Truth, Beauty, and "Virtue"

{Note: I republish here--with a few changes--my online response to a general question about the relationship of Truth to Beauty. Hopefully it serves as a compliment to and elaboration on my "Life-Logic" post, which is in the archives...--I-P}

Truth, Beauty, and "Virtue"

{Note: I republish here--with a few changes and a postscript--my online response to a general question about the relationship of Truth to Beauty. Hopefully it serves as a compliment to and elaboration on my "Life-Logic" post, which is in the archives...--I-P}


Hello everyone,

"Is Beauty Truth (or Truth Beauty)?"

Well...Yes! to me a thing is True (with a capital "T" anyway) only to the extent that it is also Beautiful, and also Good (which means that it is an "ethically appropriate" conception/expression under the circumstances) Likewise I believe that a thing is Beautiful precisely to the extent that it partakes of and reflects Truth and Goodness ("ethical appropriateness).  And lastly I think that a good sign that an act  or gesture is Good is the extent to which it is a Beautiful act in the context of what is "ultimately" True. So these three things are kind of a trinity for me (a tetrad really, though I'll stick with the trinity here since since I kind of vacillate on which of a few things would be the forth term.)

Needless to say, there are a lot of things that might be considerd beautiful these days which from this point of view are merely "hypnotic" or worse.  Actually from this point of view a lot of  "Art" can be understood as an attempt (an intrinsically ugly but usually unconsious attempt) to dissociate Beauty from Goodness and Truth so as to make it a viable commodity in a sick culture. True Beauty in such a culture as is dominant today might even involve some illegality since, being also Good and reflective of Truth, it's creation would  be seen to constitute a serious challenge to the status quo.

I am into music and song a lot these days so I think of that. Which is more beautiful? the loud  off-key singing of songs (once secretly sung in defiance of the tyranny of Mao's regime) by two old chinese friends, reunited after more than 40 years, their voices  full of genuine affection, sorrow, and celebration of  the miraculous survival, not only of each other but of each others Spirit and Good Will,  or the pitch-perfect ornamentation of some Verdi aria in a concert hall? If the context of each of these events is not artifically narrowed and flattened in a dissociated manner ,the former should,in all likelihood, be considered the more beautiful music, though probably not so beautiful as it would have been 35 years ago. moveover, I think this difference in beauty is even something I should, with practice, be able to hear,  and hear even if i was not aware of the context around the events...

   Anyway I think that, by the same token that true Beauty is in danger of being replaced by "Art", so I think most science and philosophy can be seen as unfortunate results of the devils bargain of conceptually dissociatingTruth from Beauty and Goodness so as to secure some illusory "domination" and "control" of some equally dissociated conception of "Nature".  I Certainly don't think that vivasection and suchlike practices could exist in science if the Truth that science proposed to be seeking was such an Integrative Truth as I am suggesting is Truth, nor would I expect so much of the egregious  usurpations  of  the  results of  supposedly "value-free" and "pure" research by corporate and other enitities, for purposes quite clearly evincing, not only bad taste but ill will...

I am not saying that "facts" are irrelevant and have no relationship to Truth, whether in science or in anything else, its just that, unless the search for and choice of the relevant "facts" (there are always an indefinite number of "facts" in any situation") is informed and directed by a perception of this Integral inclusive Truth, such facts as are selected will function in the service of a Lie, and will from our point of view be Lies themselves. In this sense, and  "Honest statement", if  by this we mean simply relating something that is factual, can at the same time be an "Untruthful" one if the choice of which fact to express when is not informed by Good Will, Good Faith, and Good Taste and Good Sense....

In addition to what this kind of cognitive dissociation has done in terms of Art and Science, I think our conception  and experience of "religion" and "spirituality" also suffer from and are diminished by it ...this is where I would venture to add the Idea of "Life" or "Living Spirit" as the fourth element of what I said i thought of more as a tetrad than a trinity. Since, when the Spirit is gone from a given formulation of "Truth", because that formulation ceases to be ethically appropriate "Good" under the circumstances, then the physical expressions of that no longer Living "Truth" cease to be "Beautiful" (Beauty is also, somehow "Living Beauty"), and the  "Truth", having lost its Living Spirit is no longer the Truth...

I think that in "the west" the percieved separation and sometimes dissociation of "Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Life" seemed to hit its stride with plato's (and others) dissociation of Truth  from Goodness and Beauty. Plato says somewhere: "there is Truth, Goodness and Beauty: but the Greatest of these is Truth" (I have a sense that most "Sophists" would not have agreed with this, having probably had a somewhat less dissociated view of such things). Later this already dissociated "Truth"--which for Plato was a supremely subjective (I would say "hyper-subjective) "idea"--later became rather hyper-objectified (with Aristotle and subsequent "science"), as the sum of all objective "facts". Anyway I think the whole dissociation was a misperception and bad idea in the first place which probably came from folks spending too much time in cities (hyper-specialization and relatively dissociated life-styles going along with hyper-specialized and relatively dissociated forms of thought...)


I don't have the time to elaborate more on all of this right now but in my Blog there is a post called "Life-Logic" that elaborates somewhat...

take care,

I-P

post script:

I have considered calling the quality or manifestation that is both the source of this Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Life, and the singular manefistation of which these four qualities are different facets, by the term "Virtue". In the past I have rejected this word because of its historically gendered associations ("virtue" among the ancient Greeks meant something akin to the essense of masculinity, while--oddly enough-- it later came to mean something like the essense of "in tact" femininity). However, I think the word has probably also always had a non-gendered sense as well (for instance it is commonly used to translate the term "Te" the "Tao Te Ching", )  so maybe, by now, its alright to use that word "Virtue" in the "Te" sense, to decribe, in one word, the quintessential essence of Truth-Goodness-Beauty-Life in actual manifestation.

If so than, for the most part, I think the history of "education", both formal and informal, can be fairly well described as little else but the transmission of a sick culture in which the next generation is intimidated into trading this inherent four-fold, Individual-Personal Virtue(without even being fully conscious of its existence) for the fools gold of achievement within the dissociated and rootless, and intrinsically meaningless world of "facts", specialized fields, "Professions", "procedures" and"training".

All of which goes a long way in explaining why things are the way they are... 

--I-P

posted by: piankhy | 14:31 | comments