Beauty is mentioned alongside goodness and truth as something for which all men yearn; yet of the three, beauty itself is most enigmatic. We want to know the truth—that is, we want what we think of reality to actually correspond to reality—and we want to pursue or acquire the good—our actions should thus be ordered to this end. But what about beauty? We long for it, but not necessarily as guide for thought or action: rather, we only want to contemplate it and appreciate it. There is a certain sense in which beauty is a synthesis of goodness and truth, so that beauty rests upon goodness and truth as a foundation; and at the same time it is bound to love, perhaps more effect to cause than cause to effect.
Seeking Goodness and Understanding Truth
Often discussions of “the true, the good, and the beautiful” tend to focus on the first two and ignore the last of this trio (save perhaps discussions of art, architecture, or music). And why not? It seems to me that there are those who order their lives to the good and the true, and who then get beauty as a part of the bargain; and on the other hand those who go for beauty first to the exclusion (and often the inverse) of these, who then consequently lose all three, or else get a twisted and marred beauty [1].
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