Why is beauty truth?
Channel: Ritorno a Itaca
Date: 2021-12-05

Why is beauty truth? This is a question for our understanding of what we are. E. Michael Jones, quoting on medieval writers has said: “Over the course of the Middle Ages, as Aristotle began to supplant Plato in the Scholastic mind, beauty began to acquire the status of a transcendental, “semi-consciously at first,” then more spe- cifically in the writings of Robert Grosseteste, who “attributed the name of Beauty (Pulchritudo) to God, and wrote, ‘If everything desires the good and the beautiful together, the good and the beautiful are the same,’” but while the same in terms of the order of Being, they appear as different to us according to the order of knowing. “For beauty,” according to Grosseteste, “is a disposition of the good in so far as it pleases the apprehension, whereas the good strictly speaking has to do with the disposition in which it pleases our affections.””. So what is beauty? Why it is important for us?
Aurelio Porfiri is speaking about these topics with E. Michael Jones.
E. Michael Jones received his Ph.D. in American literature from Temple University in 1979. After getting fired from his job as assistant professor of American Literature in St. Mary's College, Jones presciently got out of academe and founded Fidelity, now Culture Wars, magazine, which is now celebrating its 40th anniversary.
Dr. Jones is the author of over 20 books on topics ranging from metaphysics to horror films. His most recent book Logos Rising: A History of Ultimate Reality is being translated into Farsi. This past year he completed his book on aesthetics: The Dangers of Beauty: The Conflict between Mimesis and Concupiscence in the Fine Arts.
The Dangers of Beauty begins with Giotto's liberation of Italian art from the tyranny of Greek Models, moves on to discuss music in Germany, poetry in England and decline of all forms of art under the modernist interregnum.