I’m a humanities student and my family has chosen to home school our kids in the classical method. As such one of the things that gets emphasized often is seeking “the true, the good and the beautiful” and this is something which, by the way, I am all for. Our society has become hopelessly shallow. People are easily entertained by worthless things just to turn around and be bored by something that has value. Truth is often relativized and the notion of any kind of absolute is offensive to the mind of many. Likewise our moral compass has come unhinged and is drifting further and further away as society distances themselves from a moral law giver (i.e. God). And rather than seeking beauty our society destroys it wherever it can, turning it into smut. Rather than producing fine art they produce obscene and meaningless images.
We desperately need a new generation that is disgusted by the relativistic, atheistic and perverse nature of this age. We must encourage people to seek after that which is true, not just for you or just for me, but inherently, objectively, absolutely true. We must push people to recognize good for good and evil for evil to be able to distinguish between the two. We must implore people to see what real beauty is, that an objective standard of beauty does actually exist and that perversions of that beauty are a crime unto themselves and not something to be cherished in the heart of mankind.
Yes, we need to pursue the true, the good and the beautiful. Even so, I see a trend that I also find disturbing that I wish to address, namely, that in pursuit of these things some have pursued them out of order and have fallen into grave error by so doing. There is good reason that truth, goodness and beauty are the appropriate order of things much like there is reason for the order of “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness.” That is to say the first in each list has primacy (i.e. is most important and comes before the others necessarily).
By way of example let’s consider the line mentioned above from The Declaration of Independence which more fully states “We hold these truths to be self-evident, that all men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the pursuit of Happiness.” Why is it that “life” necessarily take precedence over “liberty” and “the pursuit of happiness”? It’s simple when you think about it. If a person is deprived of life then they are necessarily deprived of liberty (freedom) and also pursuit of happiness. If you read these backwards into one another and ask questions like “what are the limitations of my pursuit of happiness?” the answer is that my pursuit of happiness is limited when it encroaches on someone else’s liberty or life. If it makes me happy to have lots of land, and so I take possession of as much as I can then that’s fine. But if my method of doing so is to take away from my neighbor what rightfully is his then I should be stopped. Or if I seek to kill people to take their land then I should be stopped. My pursuit of my own happiness is cut short when I infringe on other people’s pursuit of happiness, or their liberty or their life. So also my liberty is limited by the right that other people have to liberty and life. Life is primary because the other two depend on it, liberty is secondary because pursuit of happiness depends on it and the pursuit of happiness is third because although important it is only permissible insofar as it doesn’t violate the other two rights of the people.
I believe that this is essentially the same when it comes to the true, the good and the beautiful. Truth is first rank in importance and, indeed, it limits what is good and what is beautiful. If something is not true, it is neither good nor beautiful; rather it is evil and a perversion of true beauty. Some of the things that we may think are good or that are beautiful according to our own subjective standard, if held to the light of truth, will turn out not to be so after all. If you stop and think for a moment you can probably think of something that many may consider good or beautiful that are not true. If you stop and think harder and more honestly you may uncover something that you have thought to be good or beautiful that is in reality a lie and therefore evil and perverse.
I’ll never forget the first time I walked into a certain church and it was “beautiful.” The architecture of the building, the stained glass, the way the service was performed with various lights, sounds and even smells that highlighted different aspects of the service. I was moved by the “beauty” of it all. It was not hard to see what would attract people to this other-worldly experience that seemed so unique and different from our daily experiences. But at the end of the day this church still taught a false gospel. The fact that the gospel was perverted into something it should not be in turn voids out what otherwise might be good or beautiful about it.
It’s so crucial that truth be preeminent because if it is not you may follow a man-centered “good and beautiful” all the way to hell.
