That's a wonderful article! And a great apologetic for living life beautifully. I guess it's easy for people to go to either extremes -hate beauty or love it too much. But as always, the virtue is in the mean. Thanks 😊
Dare I say 'beautiful piece,' because in reading it my thoughts have extended further into the mysterious garden of existence, just as you mentioned gazing at a cathedral might.
When our sensibilities are misled and perception is skewed, beauty can become poison, so that “that which, when perceived, pleases” no longer is pleasing.
Thanks to Postmodernism, truth is reduced to a construct and the good to subjective value. Beauty then becomes trivialized into functional utility, which is what pornography does to the intimate relationality of sex, reducing it to a lust for selfish physical pleasure.
With the ancients, we need to relearn that beauty must be safeguarded by the good, and what is good by that which is true or real.
Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s multi-volume work The glory of the lord is an in-depth (though pricey) work on theological aesthetics.
Likewise Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s two Volume Aesthetics is a go-to for approaching and understanding beauty.
I’ve you haven’t seen it, Roger Scruton made an hour long documentary, “Why Beauty Matters” and wrote a book on beauty which are both useful and accessible.
Umberto Eco’s History of Beauty doesn’t ground itself theologically, but is an interesting overview of changing conceptions of beauty over time.
Saw this comment and thought it is worth mentioning the book Ethics of Beauty by Dr Timothy Patitsas. I’m not even Orthodox but this book was/is incredible and although 700 pages, it reads like a long interview.
That's a wonderful article! And a great apologetic for living life beautifully. I guess it's easy for people to go to either extremes -hate beauty or love it too much. But as always, the virtue is in the mean. Thanks 😊
Dare I say 'beautiful piece,' because in reading it my thoughts have extended further into the mysterious garden of existence, just as you mentioned gazing at a cathedral might.
That is a very “on topic” comment in that sense, thank you.
I just read that the beauty of Seattle is dying under extreme liberal politics. https://smilink53.substack.com/p/seattle-is-dying-and-thats-very-sad
When our sensibilities are misled and perception is skewed, beauty can become poison, so that “that which, when perceived, pleases” no longer is pleasing.
Thanks to Postmodernism, truth is reduced to a construct and the good to subjective value. Beauty then becomes trivialized into functional utility, which is what pornography does to the intimate relationality of sex, reducing it to a lust for selfish physical pleasure.
With the ancients, we need to relearn that beauty must be safeguarded by the good, and what is good by that which is true or real.
Well said. This is why grounding values outside of subjective sources is necessary; everything else flows from this stable footing.
Nicely put.
Great piece. Do you have any reading recommendations going further into learning about beauty?
Hans Urs Von Balthasar’s multi-volume work The glory of the lord is an in-depth (though pricey) work on theological aesthetics.
Likewise Dietrich Von Hildebrand’s two Volume Aesthetics is a go-to for approaching and understanding beauty.
I’ve you haven’t seen it, Roger Scruton made an hour long documentary, “Why Beauty Matters” and wrote a book on beauty which are both useful and accessible.
Umberto Eco’s History of Beauty doesn’t ground itself theologically, but is an interesting overview of changing conceptions of beauty over time.
Saw this comment and thought it is worth mentioning the book Ethics of Beauty by Dr Timothy Patitsas. I’m not even Orthodox but this book was/is incredible and although 700 pages, it reads like a long interview.