- Beauty is rooted in the mystery of the Trinity. By this I mean that beauty finds its warrant in the mysterious reality of the Trinity in its immanent relations. This mystery is one of unity and diversity, being and becoming, subjectivity and objectivity. Those planes define the tensions inherent in beauty.
- God’s design of all of reality is rooted in this mystery, and so is our observation of beauty. The objectivity of beauty is rooted in its “fittingness” with God’s being as integral to all of reality. The center of beauty is the consonance between the structure and order of the Trinity and the structure and order of the human being in its desire.
- Beauty is an awareness in both our sensory, physiological being as well as our observational and contemplative nature. Beauty is not just observed; it is felt in our senses. Beauty is the sensory and affective response to the fittingness of phenomena with divine design and being.
- Beauty is rooted in the concept of fittingness. A thing is “beautiful” as it fits with the integral nature of reality as designed by the Trinity to reflect itself. This design is rooted in the inherent tensions of objectivity and subjectivity, being and becoming, and unity and diversity.
- Beauty, in light of those tensions, is love. There is the love that desires to be in and with the other (unity and diversity, erotic love). There is the love that desires to admire and enjoy the other (subjectivity and objectivity, enraptured love). There is the love that desires to share and invite others outside the relationship of love (being and becoming, expansive love). These tensions form the basic backbone of the sense of longing and desire found in all that is beautiful.
- Beauty relies on impulses ingrained in humankind to be intelligible. The trinitarian image of God in humanity produces impulses toward divine love in the forms of generativity/fertility “be fruitful and multiply”, union/community “male and female, multiply”, and cultivation/expansion “fill the earth and subdue it.” The beautiful finds its home in these impulses, as they are in their base form reflected in the divine image.
- The tensions of beauty are irreducible by design as vestiges of the Trinity. There is necessary for beauty both an affective, engaged observer and an objective “other” who is observed. If the “other” is consumed, degraded, or destroyed (or assumed to only be in the subjectivity of the observer), the tension is lost, and beauty becomes lust. If the other, conversely, finds no subjective home in the observer (by a claim of “disinterestedness”) the observer themselves ceases to be a subjective, affective self (as designed), and beauty becomes a soulless formula.
- Beauty is gradated along divine design and the degree to which what is observed accords to the mystery of the Trinity. In this vein, the highest created being on the hierarchy of beauty is the human being, as it so closely accords with the divine mystery.
Some Very Short (and by no Means Clear) Thoughts on Beauty
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[…] I couldn’t fit all my somewhat disjointed thoughts on beauty in this post, so I’ve compiled them here: Some Very Short (and By No Means Clear) Thoughts on Beauty […]
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