Beauty for Truth's Sake Read online

  Within this general framework, and from the schools associated with great cathedrals, there developed by the thirteenth century communities of scholars bound together by formal charter—the first “universities” in the West: Bologna, Paris, and Oxford. A Master of Arts degree was succeeded (for those who could persevere for up to twelve more years of education) by a Doctorate in higher studies. The earliest such university, that of Bologna, began as a faculty of law, Paris came to specialize in theology, while Oxford developed a concentration on mathematics and natural science.

  In the East a variety of institutions devoted to intellectual study had already emerged as successors to the great center of learning at Alexandria conquered by the Muslims in 642, both in Byzantium, where the Palace School functioned essentially for a thousand years from 425, and within the Islamic world, most famously Baghdad’s “House of Wisdom” founded in 813 by a caliph allegedly inspired to do so by Aristotle in a dream. These had accumulated a great treasure of texts from the classical world (Euclid, Aristotle, etc.) and commentaries upon them. The relatively easy flow of this information around and into Europe between and among Christian, Jewish, and Islamic scholars (especially in Salerno and Toledo) was a distinctive characteristic of the twelfth century and helped to lay the foundations of the modern world.

  Arguably, despite the great achievements of medieval civilization, in general the potential of the Liberal Arts for intellectual and spiritual integration failed to be manifested. Scholastic disputation certainly refined the power of thought. It led Aquinas to the important distinction between philosophy and theology, and this contributed to the emergence of a distinct department of philosophy within the faculty of Arts—a process that began in the thirteenth century. Furthermore his recognition that God causes creatures to be subordinate but real causes in their own right made possible the emergence of the natural sciences. Pope Benedict XVI writes:

  It is the historical merit of Saint Thomas Aquinas—in the face of the rather different answer offered by the Fathers, owing to their historical context—to have highlighted the autonomy of philosophy, and with it the laws and the responsibility proper to reason, which enquires on the basis of its own dynamic . . . Thomas was writing at a privileged moment: for the first time, the philosophical works of Aristotle were accessible in their entirety; the Jewish and Arab philosophies were available as specific appropriations and continuations of Greek philosophy. Christianity, in a new dialogue with the reasoning of the interlocutors it was now encountering, was thus obliged to argue a case for its own reasonableness. The faculty of philosophy, which as a so-called “arts faculty” had until then been no more than a preparation for theology, now became a faculty in its own right, an autonomous partner of theology and the faith on which theology reflected.14

  But the rise of nominalism among the Franciscans undermined a metaphysical vision of the cosmos,15 and the over-specialization of university faculties led to a breakdown in the essential conversation between disciplines. Apart from a few great thinkers and teachers such as Aquinas and Bonaventure,16 the medieval ideal was instantiated most perfectly not in the universities at all, but in the great cathedrals such as Chartres, Amiens, and Notre Dame—and in the liturgies they were designed to serve. Here the sacred sciences of the quadrivium were expressed in massed stone and statuary, rose windows and labyrinths, and in the interplay between light, music, and sacramental gesture.

  Meanwhile technological progress made in the Servile Arts, also known as the Mechanical Arts, coupled with the new notion that the purpose of “science” was to be useful—which had come to mean obtaining power over nature rather than wisdom17—was to reshape the world in ways that the ancient and medieval authors could hardly have conceived.

  Adapting the Medieval Model

  It is fairly clear that if the Seven Liberal Arts model is to become an adequate basis for education today, whether in colleges or in less formal settings, it needs to be broadened and adapted. Even by the thirteenth century the Liberal Arts were bursting at the seams trying to incorporate new knowledge.

  In The Crisis of Western Education and other works, Christopher Dawson argued that, while the universities should concentrate more on the Liberal Arts and less on the Servile Arts, a simple revival of the quadrivium would not be sufficient to bring about a return to right reason. Young people need to be made aware of the spiritual unity out of which the separate activities of our civilization have arisen, and his proposal was to do that by teaching culture historically, using the literature of medieval Europe rather than the classical sources the medievals themselves would have used. Teaching the story of Christian culture may be the best way to “maintain the tradition of liberal education against the growing pressure of scientific specialization and utilitarian vocationalism,” he thought. (Thinking like this lay behind the development of the “great books” program in many American universities and colleges.)18

  Symptoms of our educational crisis, such as the fragmentation of the disciplines, the separation of faith and reason, the reduction of quality to quantity, and the loss of a sense of ultimate purpose, are directly related to a lack of historical awareness on the part of students. An integrated curriculum must teach subjects, and it must teach the right subjects, but it should do so by incorporating each subject, even mathematics and the hard sciences, within the history of ideas, which is the history of our culture. Every subject has a history, a drama, and by imaginatively engaging with these stories we become part of the tradition.

  We also need to confront the secular mind-set that makes the cosmological assumptions of the quadrivium almost unintelligible today (I will write more about this later). The sheer amount of information available in every discipline is far too great to be mastered by one person even in an entire lifetime. The purpose of an education is not merely to communicate information, let alone current scientific opinion, nor to train future workers and managers. It is to teach the ability to think, discriminate, speak, and write, and, along with this, the ability to perceive the inner, connecting principles, the intrinsic relations, the logoi, of creation, which the ancient Christian Pythagorean tradition (right through the medieval period) understood in terms of number and cosmic harmony.

  In The Idea of a University, John Henry Newman, charged in the 1850s by the Archbishop of Armagh with the task of shaping a Catholic University for Ireland, defends the tradition of the Liberal Arts education and tries to adapt it to the needs of the modern world. The principle remains the same: knowledge is its own end—“worth possessing for what it is, and not merely for what it does.”19 It is not to be valued for the power it gives us over nature, or even for the moral improvement it may bring about in us (even if these things may flow from it). It is to be valued for its beauty. “There is a physical beauty and a moral: there is a beauty of person, there is a beauty of our moral being, which is natural virtue; and in like manner there is a beauty, there is a perfection, of the intellect.”20

  Newman writes that this perfection of the intellect consists in

  the clear, calm, accurate vision and comprehension of all things, as far as the finite mind can embrace them, each in its place, and with its own characteristics upon it. It is almost prophetic from its knowledge of history; it is almost heart-searching from its knowledge of human nature; it has almost supernatural charity from its freedom from littleness and prejudice; it has almost the repose of faith, because nothing can startle it; it has almost the beauty and harmony of heavenly contemplation, so intimate is it with the eternal order of things and the music of the spheres.21

  Almost “supernatural,” then, but not quite. (“Liberal Education,” he writes, “makes not the Christian, not the Catholic, but the gentleman.”22) Yet Newman, writing as he is about a Catholic university, insists that the supernatural must have its place, its entry point, in the circle of knowledge. After all, science, like poetry, begins with a search for unifying principles, and the unifying factor in creation is its relation to God. “I ha
ve said that all branches of knowledge are connected together, because the subject matter of knowledge is intimately united in itself as being the acts and work of the Creator.”23 That much could be said without a specific faith, yet as Newman argues, if revelation tells us something true about the Creator, that something has a bearing on all fields of study, and theology must be allowed a voice in the great conversation that is the modern university.

  By Newman’s time, of course, under the peculiar conditions of the Enlightenment, the earlier elevation of theological wisdom to the position of being the end and goal of a liberal education had resulted in a separation of theology from the rest of the curriculum—even from philosophy, which could be said to have arisen as a separate subject precisely to mediate between theology and the quadrivium. In the new secular universities theology had the lower status of a specialization for professionals (those in training for the priesthood), or could be dismissed altogether. Newman had to fight an intellectual battle to defend the key role of theology in the complete university curriculum.

  Theology, therefore, has an important place in the integration of the arts and sciences. Equally important, however, is a symbolic approach to number and shape—that is, the awareness that mathematics has a qualitative, as distinct from a purely quantitative, dimension. Mathematics is the language of science, but it is also the hidden structure behind art (the philosopher Leibnitz famously described music as the pleasure the human mind experiences from counting without being aware that it is counting), and its basis is the invisible Logos of God. We do not have to follow the ancient symbolic reading of mathematics slavishly, but only be open to the presence of meaning where the modern mind sees none. Then it may be that we will open up a lost dimension in which the disciplines themselves will discover their relationship to one another.

  Pope Benedict XVI, in another address to university professors, called for a “new humanism” based on a broader concept of the human (one that respects our transcendent vocation) and a broader concept of reason itself.

  A correct understanding of the challenges posed by contemporary culture, and the formulation of meaningful responses to those challenges, must take a critical approach towards narrow and ultimately irrational attempts to limit the scope of reason. The concept of reason needs instead to be “broadened” in order to be able to explore and embrace those aspects of reality which go beyond the purely empirical. This will allow for a more fruitful, complementary approach to the relationship between faith and reason. The rise of the European universities was fostered by the conviction that faith and reason are meant to cooperate in the search for truth, each respecting the nature and legitimate autonomy of the other, yet working together harmoniously and creatively to serve the fulfilment of the human person in truth and love.24

  He went on to speak of the urgent need to “rediscover the unity of knowledge and to counter the tendency to fragmentation and lack of communicability” that afflicts the academic disciplines at present. (The fracturing of knowledge is of course also of concern to secularists such as Allan Bloom.) An education worthy of the name would develop an awareness of the totality through art and literature, music, mathematics, physics, biology, and history. Each subject has its own autonomy, but at its heart it connects with every other.

  Beauty for Truth’s Sake

  If beauty is a key to that lost unity, it is because beauty (according to the medieval philosophers) is one of the “transcendental” properties of being, that is, properties found in absolutely everything that exists. These properties include being, truth, goodness, and unity. Everything, in other words, is true, good, and beautiful in some degree or in some respect. All that exists—because it gives itself, because it means something—is a kind of “light.” It reveals its own nature and at the same time an aspect of that which gives rise to it. Beauty is the radiance of the true and the good, and it is what attracts us to both.25

  Who will not admit that harmony is more beautiful than dissonance, health more beautiful than sickness, kindness more beautiful than cruelty? If you push the postmodern relativist, you will almost certainly be able to get an admission that he would prefer to look up at a gorgeous sunset than down into the latrine. Now why is that? Is it really just a matter of taste? The artist, architect, and designer Christopher Alexander once designed an empirical test to train people in their perception of beauty and of what he calls the quality of “life” in things.26 In comparing any two objects chosen at random, Alexander shows how different types of questions determine the level of our response to the objects. For example:

  Which is the more attractive of these two objects?

  Which do you like best? Why do you like it?

  Which gives you the most wholesome feeling?

  Which of them better represents your whole self?

  If you had a choice, which would you spend eternity with?

  Which of them would you be happier to offer to God?

  Questions 4, 5, and 6 evoke a deeper response, and he finds that ninety percent of his students end up selecting the same object when asked these questions, whereas they will rarely do so if asked the first three questions.

  According to Socrates, “The object of education is to teach us to love what is beautiful.”27 He meant, of course, what is objectively beautiful. We have been taught that beauty is a matter of feeling. That is not entirely wrong. The perception of beauty has to do with feelings, but this does not mean it is “purely subjective.” Feelings, if properly refined and educated, can help us tell the difference between true and false.28

  It is not just the artist who needs to orient himself in a dimension of objective truth and beauty. The same applies to the scientist, as I have already suggested. Physicist David Bohm emphasizes the relevance of beauty to science:

  Now, there is a common notion that beauty is nothing more than a subjective response of man, based on the pleasure that he takes in seeing what appeals to his fancy. Nevertheless, there is much evidence that beauty is not an arbitrary response that happens to “tickle” us in a pleasing way. In science, for example, one sees and feels the beauty of a theory only if the latter is ordered, coherent, harmonious with all parts generated naturally from simple principles, and with these parts working together to form a unified total structure. But these properties are necessary not only for the beauty of a theory, but also for its truth.

  Of course, in a narrow sense, no theory is true unless it corresponds to the facts. But as we consider broader and broader kinds of theories, approaching those of cosmology, this notion becomes inadequate . . . In the broad sense with which cosmology is concerned, the universe as a whole is to be understood as “true to itself”—a unified totality developing coherently in accordance with its basic principles. And as man appreciates this, he senses that his own response with feelings of harmony, beauty, and totality is parallel to what he discoveries in the universe. So, in a very important way, the universe is seen to be less alien to man than earlier excessively mechanistic points of view seemed to indicate.29

  Another quotation will emphasize why beauty is essential, and what happens when it is neglected. This is from Hans Urs von Balthasar, who has had the courage to rewrite the history of theology from the point of view of beauty in his seven-volume work The Glory of the Lord:

  We no longer dare to believe in beauty and we make of it a mere appearance in order the more easily to dispose of it. Our situation today shows that beauty demands for itself at least as much courage and decision as do truth and goodness, and she will not allow herself to be separated and banned from her two sisters without taking them along with herself in an act of mysterious vengeance.30

  Elsewhere he describes what happens when the relationship that should exist between nature and grace is destroyed, and beauty is lost after all:

  Then the whole of worldly being falls under the dominion of “knowledge,” and the springs and forces of love immanent in the world are overpowered and finally suffocated by science, technolo
gy and cybernetics. The result is a world without women, without children, without reverence for love in poverty and humiliation—a world in which power and the profit-margin are the sole criteria, where the disinterested, the useless, the purposeless is despised, persecuted and in the end exterminated—a world in which art itself is forced to wear the mask and features of technique.31

  Thus the person who sneers at beauty “can no longer pray and soon will no longer be able to love.”32 Prayer can only be motivated by a love that reveals the beauty we long for, denial of which cuts off at its root the ability to pray.

  Beauty on the Cross

  Both science and art operate and live in the depth-dimension of things, exploring aspects of beauty and truth.33

  For Christians, the place to look for answers to all the important questions is the Cross of Christ. In that Cross, read in the light of faith and tradition, we can find the keys to unlock the doors of the world. And what we see there is not a distant world of Platonic archetypes, but the Archetype of archetypes wedded to the world, and allowing itself to be crushed by the world in order to transform it.

  Perhaps a scientist would see on the Cross an answer to the question, What is science? For science is about the quest for knowledge, and here we have the image of knowledge, of ultimate realism about the world and the way it works. Jesus the Logos submits to that fallen world, he allows it to act upon him, in order to reveal its true nature. In a faint and feeble way, the scientific method finds its archetype here, albeit infinitely transcended.

  We can also read there an answer to the question, What is art? And we see that art is not necessarily “beautiful” in any superficial way. The figure on the Cross, covered in blood and spittle, has been made repulsive by torment. What we see, nevertheless, is the supreme work of art. We see a divine act that takes existing matter, the matter of history and prophecy, and weaves it into a new design, a fulfilment that could not have been expected or predicted but, seen by those who have the eyes and ears for it, is perfect, as though no stroke of the pen, no flick of paint, no note or chord, could be changed without diminishment. We see on the Cross an image that transforms the way we view the world. The passion of Christ the Logos changes the world and remakes it, creating something new of it, bringing life out of death.