FOREWORD
We try to find something in everything even it means finding something we hate. Everything is an art-form to us.
If we treat the random as an art form or as if it were some very unclear communication – if it can be called that at all - we get a sense of meaning. Scientists look at rubble in space and find themselves awestruck and almost lifted up into some kind of semi-transcendence. Stars might be pretty but they are still junk. Meaning is indistinguishable from interpretation and reinterpretation. Who says something needs to be intended or designed in order to be meaningful and to give us a basis for enjoying life and helping others to do so? In theory an accidental brushstroke on a canvas can make it better than the intended painting. There is real strength in the one who loves their life despite or because of the universe not in any way being about them.
It is not obvious that something has to be beautiful in order to help with meaning. Persons who want us to hold there is a God who loves us see no beauty in the atheist valuing her life and her people on the basis that amazing luck brought them about. But there is.
THE ESSAY
What is the
good? It can be defined as a kind, or subset, of beauty, a concept deeply
rooted in classical philosophy known as kalokagathia—the unity of the
beautiful and the good.
Here is how this relationship works across
different philosophical perspectives:
The Classical View (Plato and
Plotinus)
The Good as the Source: Plato viewed the Form of the Good as
the ultimate reality.
Beauty as the Manifestation: Beauty is the visible, attractive radiance of the Good.
The Subset Relationship: In this view, anything that is morally good possesses an inner, spiritual beauty. Therefore, moral goodness is a specific, higher subset of universal beauty. Our assessment of evil is too tied to our dislike of what we find ugly, not what is really ugly.
We mistake discomfort for depravity and judge by appearance rather than intent. True evil rarely wears a grotesque mask; it is often sterile, polite, and beautifully packaged.
When we condemn malice we are hiding how we are just offended by the
aesthetics.
The Functional View (Aquinas and Kant)
Thomas Aquinas: He argued that the beautiful and the good are fundamentally the same thing in a physical object, just viewed differently. Goodness satisfies our desires, while beauty satisfies our visual or intellectual perception.
Immanuel Kant: He stated that beauty is the "symbol of morality." Recognizing beauty trains our minds to love the good without selfish desire.
Summary of the Concept
If you define beauty broadly—not just as physical appearance, but as harmony, proportion, and spiritual perfection—then goodness is simply beauty expressed through actions, character, and choices.
COMMENT: It seems there is something artistic or beautiful about everything regardless of what we think. We know we can learn to find bread mold pretty. So something can be beautiful while our subjective impressions also make us read beauty into things. Hypothetically, if there were really no beauty there we would manage to make ourselves see that there is.
Virtue is very ugly when it gets you hung, drawn and quartered.
Aquinas tried to say that the good is about our appetite and desire while beauty is about looking not wanting. This makes no sense for beauty as the radiant face of the good has to be wanted. Nobody wants a life in a cave with no light or sound.
A lot of discussion and noise is made over the subject of beauty and the
good in religious circles. Why? Because if morality comes from
beauty or is a subset of it then morality is subjective. St Thomas said beauty
is objective. That is not an argument but an assertion. The best he
could do was say that if you look at a beautiful sunset and see nothing
beautiful about it you have a defect. That is cheating. And it pressures
persons to say there is beauty where they see none. It leaves us at the
mercy of what society wants to say about what is beautiful. So much for
healthy until proven sick or innocent until proven guilty.