A beautiful life

I welcomed the children last Monday and it was wonderful to see everyone back at Embley after the holiday. I explained to them, as we gathered for the first assembly of the year, that the topic is something I find tricky.

It is easy perhaps to begin with the notion that we talk of resolutions, that we strive to do better and that we make earnest promises that we may not keep past next Friday. Anyway, I wanted to do something a bit more out of left field. No surprise eh?

So, guess what? I settled on asking “if Beauty could in fact save the world?” You didn’t see that one coming did you reader? Neither did they. A certain stunned silence prevailed, odd way to begin, broken only by the arrival of some latecomers trickling in. 

The question is posed by Dostoevsky in ‘The Idiot’. Beauty as the saviour of the world seems a bit out of tune with the more utilitarian and perhaps less helpful or successful methods presented to us these days as solutions for the world’s ills. But as I warmed to my theme a challenge began to emerge from the audience… surely beauty is in the eye of the beholder they began to ask! Isn’t it? Well, is it? Taste and opinion certainly are, but is Beauty a matter of taste or do we simply disagree on where we see it? If we enter into conversation about Beauty there seems to be a sense of agreement about what Beauty is; how else could we converse on the topic? It has to have shared meaning to communicate any understanding. But as we look more closely, that agreement begins to fracture – perhaps because we need to understand what the criteria for Beauty might be?

I wondered if Thomas Aquinas might be able to help? Not available as much as I might like him to be these days on a YouTube channel, but his time as a social influencer persists (well it does if you know where to look). He seems to be trending anyway. I set out in a modified form three criteria for Beauty. It involves integrity; the thing is itself and only itself, it has authenticity if you like. It has proportion; balance, a harmony of the parts exists. And where integrity and harmony exist, it exhibits splendour. So, three qualities: integrity, proportion and splendour.

I worked through a few examples, some among the audience nodding appreciatively, others seething in subjectivist disagreement. No harm in that, I invited the challenge and that will come back to me. I reiterated my question about whether Beauty could save the world and concluded that nope, it couldn’t. Stunned silence. The argument had ebbed and flowed in what seemed an inexorable direction to a supporting conclusion, but it was not to be. A cliff hanger? OK maybe not.

Beauty in and of itself cannot save the world, only people can do that. Could people be Beautiful? Now here I make a sudden departure from the Insta’, Cosmo’ and Hello versions of what passes as beauty in its photoshopped and corrected/edited/reimaged/brushed/polished version. I suggested that where we as individuals live authentically, we fulfil the first criterion. We have integrity. The capacity to be tellers of truth, effortlessly and with confidence; that we are authors of our own story and responsible co-authors of the stories of others; that we avoid being Homeric tellers of tales and living vicariously; and that in so far as we live a balanced life, we avoid extremes of pleasure and pain and live the ‘via media’ it seems to me we fulfil the second criterion. We are in proportion. Given that the third quality follows from the first two we must then exhibit splendour. 

Not so hard then to be Beautiful, to live a Beautiful life, just relax into being who you are without pretence at otherness, and not only will you realise the Beauty intrinsic to you as a human being fully alive but you will find happiness as well. Thomists go further and quite rightly regard Beauty as an integral quality of all life. The origin of this thinking comes from their Christian belief in a creator God who as author of all creates a Beautiful world. Plato took a slightly different view. He explained that the object of education was to teach us to love what is Beautiful. What he saw as Beautiful was Truth and Goodness. I think I will go into the detail of these qualities in another piece. Qualities of character create Beauty and it is these ‘character-full’ qualities that save the world.

Can Beauty save the world? In and of itself, maybe not, but as Beautiful characters we can. As resolutions for the New Year go, embracing Beauty, actually living it, seems doable, has longevity, will make a difference and persist beyond Friday. It doesn’t involve a gym or a diet but will probably change you and the world together. How hard can it be? Happy New Year.