The Beauty of Being

If one were to stand on the cliffs of Moher on the west coast of Ireland, he would be faced with one of the most breathtaking sights of the Emerald Isle. If one were to listen to one of Vivaldi's Harmonic Inspirations, he would be elevated by its intricate, ascending melody that raises one's soul to the height of tears. Likewise to attend a High Mass in an ancient French Cathedral where the Gregorian Chant, mingled with incense, ascends in sweet savor to the echos of liturgical aesthetics. One may also sigh with satisfaction at an El Greco or read the “Ballad of the White Horse” by G.K. Chesterton and be invigorated by the courage of a king with a lost cause, who cheats death and betrays fate. All of this and so much more can be summed up in one word: beauty.

The tragedy of the modern day is that beauty is an outlaw or a fugitive, fleeing from the “self-expression” of artists or the morbid philosophies of the Immanual Kants and David Humes, who believe that the objective order of being is relative to individual perception. Such beliefs revolt against God's nature and take their idea of beauty over that which has been designed and presented by God. Very few people even bother to seek the true meaning of beauty and its manifestations and prefer to distort and twist the word to meet their own ends. Therefore a Thomistic analysis of beauty is necessary.

St. Thomas defines beauty as "Id quod visum placet”, “That when seen pleases.” If a person has ordered passions and a properly informed intellect, he will be pleased by truly beautiful things. In fact, he should see all being as beautiful, for God only creates that which is properly ordered and points to His Divinity. Even snakes and insects are beautiful in the sense that they exist and are creations of God. To put it in a more metaphysical sense, beauty is a transcendental property of being, being is inherent in the substance, and therefore firmly founded in the objective order. To be is to be beautiful. This would be contrary to the modern opinion that beauty only exists in appearances and therefore someone who is not attractive is not beautiful. The Catholic Church is the only institution that has reprimanded such a position by looking deeper into the person and seeing the invaluable beauty of the soul as a potential member of the Mystical Body of Christ, created to be united with the ultimate source of beauty, which is God.

Another sense of beauty is the beauty of art, something that has been violently attacked in the modern world. A fine piece of art is beautiful in the sense that it is a works of human hands that truly imitates nature, the creation of God. One may prefer this or that piece of art more than another, but the important function of art is that it imitates reality and does not dictate it. Art also must comply with certain rules of nature to be considered beautiful art and those three are integrity, harmony, and clarity. Integrity is the element that forms the work of art as a comprehensive whole. It makes sure that all of the parts are there, not leaving the spectator hanging with an incomplete impression of the work. A sparrow without wings would lack integrity because it lacks something that should be there and is, therefore, incomplete. Harmony is concerned with the interrelationship of the parts. The work of art must not be merely a whole but an ordered whole with all of the parts fitting together in a complimentary fashion. St. Thomas also refers to harmony as “due proportion.” If that sparrow had his beak off to the side of his face, there would be disharmony in that the position of the beak and not proportioned to the figure of the sparrow. Finally, clarity is the element that reveals the beauty of a thing in its form, making it identifiable. Clarity is what reveals to us that a sparrow is a sparrow.

These three elements are the foundation for natural beauty just as they are for artistic beauty and if an object lacks in any of these three criteria, ugliness is born. So in imitating nature, artists should accomplish their work in light of the source of beauty, which is God, and give Him the due reverence and respect by following these rules of nature that He has gifted to reality. Chesterton, El Greco, the Medieval Monks, and Vivaldi realized this in their poetry, art, and music, using their talents to show the beauty of being and give glory to God.