Sep 23, 2022·edited Sep 25, 2022Liked by FFatalism
Br. F-
Beautifully written and much to think about. I am certainly guilty of using the line in a vaguely aspirational way. It is good and useful to think on it more deeply.
I also take this question in a Platonic sense a la The Symposium. Which is not the metaphysic of choice these days, to say the least. That there is a practice of beauty that goes beyond--way beyond--mere aestheticism. The latter uses beauty, as you suggest, as a kind of stimulant or even as a palliative. What does it mean to be raised up to *Beauty Itself*? Does that even make sense to us anymore? Probably not for most people. Though we may still get intimations of it when something beautiful does make us less self-centered and shallow, even if only for a fleeting moment.
It's been a while since I read The Idiot, but I think this question in the novel is made more complicated still. Prince Myshkin contemplates a decidedly unbeautiful painting, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein. He does so at the residence of Rogozhin, an atheist.
Myshkin says the one could lose one's faith looking at such a painting. Rogozhin responds that he has, in fact, lost his faith. It is safe to say that no Orthodox Icon painter would depict Christ in this manner. An icon painter would always paint Christ as beautiful. Christians believe Christ is God and therefore Beauty Itself. What does it mean to contemplate Christ as bearing what looks like nothing more than a brute, animal and therefore senseless death? What does it mean to confront that for any of us, Christian, atheist or otherwise? It is indeed a religious question, but not only that.
A quote from another atheist character, Ippolit, who says in reference to the painting:
"Nature appears to the viewer of this painting in the shape of some enormous, implacable, and dumb beast, or, to put it more correctly, much more correctly, strange though it is—in the shape of some huge machine of the most modern construction, which has senselessly seized, crushed, and swallowed up, blankly and unfeelingly, a great and priceless being—such a being as by himself was worth the whole of nature and all its laws, the whole earth, which was perhaps created solely for the appearance of this being alone! The painting seems precisely to express this notion of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subjected, and it is conveyed to you involuntarily."
So this brings up a deeper question about the meaning of our lives. It isn't merely about aesthetics, in the limited sense of the word. It asks what is beauty in a purely materialistic universe? Is it nothing more than a trick of the brain that can alleviate for us--for reasons we can never begin to explain let alone understand--the pain of the brute meaninglessness and absurdity of human existence? Or even why the universe exists at all rather than nothing? Does the deeper sense of beauty that we all experience and appears to connect us to the transcendent become a lie and a cruel joke?
It is worth considering. Though I don't see a simple way to answer any of those questions. There may not be an "answer" if we mean that in a kind of syllogistic, propositional sense. It is the question and answer of our whole life. This is what makes Dostoevsky so powerful to read.
Anyway, thank you for your beautiful and deep reflection. A lot to meditate upon. I hope you are well. -Jack
P.S. I wonder what Kierkegaard would have thought of all of this?
Thanks for the additional commentary. I shied away from going too deeply into Dostoevsky's own position because I think that's a question a Dostoevsky scholar, which I am definitely not, could grapple with for years.
I disagree with both Myshkin and Ippolit about the painting because I think that it is beautiful. I am, however, far less Christian even than Ippolit. I don't think that heaven using us as straw dogs indicates any particular meaninglessness or disorder in the universe. We're just not centrally important to the great dao. My response to that is pretty much 'so what?' I have also spent a lot more time in the company of corpses than most, which is probably a factor in my response to the painting.
You have my number with the comments about Platonism. As the reliance on Weil hints, this is a completely Platonist piece. Kierkegaard was probably the greatest Platonist since at least the Reformation, so I feel he would be vaguely onboard from that point of view, although he would express it both better and less directly. I don't think beauty, as I am discussing it here, easily maps onto his aesthetic/moral/religious 'stages', as I'm not really talking about completely enveloping worldviews in his sense. I think his edifying works would be the place to really get into where he would stand on this, but its been awhile since I spent time with him, and he's so subtle you really need him fresh in mind before you start trying to interpret him!
Have you ever looked into Neoplatonism? The parallels between it and say Taoism and Zen are fairly striking. And of course Plotinus wrote famously On Beauty.
I haven't been able to find all that much material on the Neoplatonist and Taoist parallels directly, but it seems unmistakable. I think it is a fruitful connection to make.
Based on my second-hand knowledge, I would have thought he would be closer to a Confucian position than to the Daoists. The Confucians (with Xunzi complicating things a bit) saw the dao of heaven and dao of humanity as relatively harmonious. Laozi is unconvinced, and Zhuangzi, especially in the inner chapters, attacks that assumption from more or less every possible angle.
Of course, that's one interpretation, and Zhuangzi's irony means that more or less every position you can ascribe to him appears to be definitively refuted, in a brilliant argument, by ...Zhuangzi.
There's also the issue of the role of intellect. As I understand it, it has a fairly exalted place in Neoplatonism, although perhaps less so in some of the Christian inheritors of that tradition?
I think a big commonality between the ancient Daoists and Neoplatonists, though, is in treating reality itself as having intrinsically normative elements (ways and forms being the two obvious examples). That is an important point of difference with mainstream materialism in Western philosophy.
Anyhow, that's top of the head stuff by someone who knows little, especially about Neoplatonism. I wonder if you would be better looking for a secondary literature on overlaps with Confucianism/Ru though? One possible problem even there is the tendency of some Western comparative scholars to misrepresent both sides of the equation so that they can use an idealised Orient to beat up a caricatured West. Slingerland's fairly recent 'Mind and Body in Early China' is a good, painstaking, deconstruction of that tendency, by the way.
Sep 26, 2022·edited Sep 26, 2022Liked by FFatalism
My knowledge of Confucius is pretty basic but it never occured to me to compare it to Neoplatonism, which is apophatic to its core. As best I can tell Neoplatonism isn't nearly as concerned with correct behavior in social relations or anything close.
It is occuring to me that this is the hidden undercurrent of the West. I am still trying to fathom this, so bear with me. But Neoplatonism entered into Christianity via a few major figures, i.e., St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyssa. But it did so in a big way with St. Dionysius the Areopagite. The latter most likely a 5th century Syrian monk and not the figure from the Book of Acts. The pseudonym, however, allowed him to be taken as an apostolic figure. He was therefore influential in both the East and the West.
In the West he has influenced some interesting thinkers who frequently got themselves in trouble with institutional Christianity. John Scottus Eriugena an Irish Theologian and Poet who translated Dionysius into Latin. He was unique for his time in that he knew Greek. He ended up branded a heretic but was protected by the French Court.
Meister Eckhart also got himself in trouble and was eventually partially condemned. Though he conveniently died before any punishment could be doled out. Marguerite Porete--who was an influence on and/or influenced by Eckhart--got herself burnt at the stake a decade or so earlier.
The Cloud of Unknowing, which was written anonymously for *some reason* , was also heavily influenced by Dionysius. By the way, scholars don't know who the author was but speculation is that he was a monk in the north of England. For what that's worth.
Scholarly opinion seems to be that this tradition ended with the death of Nicholas of Cusa. Someone who plays a prominent role in the thinking of Iain McGilchrist.
Dionysius was much more integrated into Eastern Christianity, which would account for some of the big differences between East and West. He is, however, heavily cited in the Summa Theologiae, but it is unclear how much he has really been influential via Scholasticism. He also pops up with the Carmelites in the 16th-century.
The reason I bring this up is that it is becoming clearer to me what the absence of a deep, consistent contemplative tradition in the West has done and is doing. The focus in the West on preserving dogma up to and through the Reformation strikes me as the cultural roots of political correctness. We are still doing it.
It also might explain why so many of us have turned to the East, i.e., Buddhism, Daoism etc. Whatever one thinks of Tibetan Buddhism, it certainly doesn't lack a fully articulated and worked out contemplative tradition. It has many such traditions, in fact.
Forgive my rambling here, but I have to wonder if a recovery of Neoplatonism--Christian and otherwise--could put us on a less erratic path. The Church play a big role of squashing it, even if it eventually accepted some of it. There can be a deep contemplative practice with a full worked out and consistent philosophy as well as a practical contemplative. psychology.
Obviously I am still thinking this through. But if the above hasn't turned you away in derisive laughter, it might be worth looking into. If you can get your hands on Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite by Eric D. Perl it is excellent. It is a purely philosophical argument that lays it all out clearly and goes into Plotinus and Proclus as well.
The metaphysics are almost entirely implicit in the Analects, but even by Mengzi I think they are more obvious (although still much less so than in the Laozi). Later, the tradition, partly in response to Buddhism and Daoism, became far more expressly metaphysical.
In particular, accounts of Li - 'pattern' - became very sophisticated, and I think there is some overlap there with platonic forms. The other point of contact is that self-cultivation is absolutely central to the Confucian tradition, compared to classical Daoists ambivalence.
The Cloud of Unknowing is excellent. This apophatic tradition often got derailed in the West. By the Church for a long time. Luther very much distrusted Dionysius. Both being high recommendation to my mind. This derailment was to our loss.
Now that we are at the end of a certain tether, i.e., nominalism, Enlightenment Rationalism, Utopianism etc., I am inclined to think that a recovery of an explicit Neoplatonism is not only possible but would be beneficial. I tend to look Eastward (both Near and Far) to fill in the gaps and to clarify our own lost contemplative practice, psychology of practice, etc. Particularly in Hesychasm, Zen, Philosophical Daoism and Tibetan Dzogchen. But given time this can become home-grown.
As an aside from the aside, John C.H. Wu makes a case for Confucianism, particularly Mengzi, as a kind of Natural Law practice. But as I said, my understanding is basic. Wu also translated the prologue of the Gospel of John into Chinese as, "In the Beginning was the Tao..." For what that's worth.
“the pain of the brute meaninglessness and absurdity of human” - this speaks to me today as I was feeling that much in my soul and though it is not a comfortable state, I appreciate the company of reading someone else feeling that way. Whatever meaning there is always seems to me to start from acknowledging the meaninglessness. The core paradox of the human condition? The mystery is the “meaning” that comes with accepting “meaninglessness”? Thanks to you both for the very provocative essay and response 🙏🏼
I read this lovely piece twice, so thanks for that.
Perhaps you are a little hard on the moorland observer, whose humility when truly *seeing* (including his place in the scene) I recognise from my own best moments of ‘shrinking’. If that makes sense.
Perhaps I can follow the thread. The path down the valley suggests the way. Recognition of the beautiful can be like a visitation, sometime episodic and not easy to repeat. Recognition though can insert the beautiful into time. Recognise another form as beautiful, and it can sit up and take notice of you, which is a strange experience with implications for responsibility. (Anecdotal evidence.) Human minds nevertheless can insert different conversations, an internal mirror into reality. I like your illustration of Narcissus. We find ourselves often enough in the Hall of Mirrors, the mirror of words. The experience of being recognised by the beautiful nevertheless has a persistence and if we have the facility I would follow Simone Weil.
I don’t know if beauty will save the world but it definitely makes it more livable. It seems in late capitalism the objective is to turn everybody into quantifiable units. Beauty has the potential to cut through transforming the the world into a more qualitative experience. 
Br. F-
Beautifully written and much to think about. I am certainly guilty of using the line in a vaguely aspirational way. It is good and useful to think on it more deeply.
I also take this question in a Platonic sense a la The Symposium. Which is not the metaphysic of choice these days, to say the least. That there is a practice of beauty that goes beyond--way beyond--mere aestheticism. The latter uses beauty, as you suggest, as a kind of stimulant or even as a palliative. What does it mean to be raised up to *Beauty Itself*? Does that even make sense to us anymore? Probably not for most people. Though we may still get intimations of it when something beautiful does make us less self-centered and shallow, even if only for a fleeting moment.
It's been a while since I read The Idiot, but I think this question in the novel is made more complicated still. Prince Myshkin contemplates a decidedly unbeautiful painting, The Body of the Dead Christ in the Tomb by Hans Holbein. He does so at the residence of Rogozhin, an atheist.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Body_of_the_Dead_Christ_in_the_Tomb
Myshkin says the one could lose one's faith looking at such a painting. Rogozhin responds that he has, in fact, lost his faith. It is safe to say that no Orthodox Icon painter would depict Christ in this manner. An icon painter would always paint Christ as beautiful. Christians believe Christ is God and therefore Beauty Itself. What does it mean to contemplate Christ as bearing what looks like nothing more than a brute, animal and therefore senseless death? What does it mean to confront that for any of us, Christian, atheist or otherwise? It is indeed a religious question, but not only that.
A quote from another atheist character, Ippolit, who says in reference to the painting:
"Nature appears to the viewer of this painting in the shape of some enormous, implacable, and dumb beast, or, to put it more correctly, much more correctly, strange though it is—in the shape of some huge machine of the most modern construction, which has senselessly seized, crushed, and swallowed up, blankly and unfeelingly, a great and priceless being—such a being as by himself was worth the whole of nature and all its laws, the whole earth, which was perhaps created solely for the appearance of this being alone! The painting seems precisely to express this notion of a dark, insolent, and senselessly eternal power, to which everything is subjected, and it is conveyed to you involuntarily."
So this brings up a deeper question about the meaning of our lives. It isn't merely about aesthetics, in the limited sense of the word. It asks what is beauty in a purely materialistic universe? Is it nothing more than a trick of the brain that can alleviate for us--for reasons we can never begin to explain let alone understand--the pain of the brute meaninglessness and absurdity of human existence? Or even why the universe exists at all rather than nothing? Does the deeper sense of beauty that we all experience and appears to connect us to the transcendent become a lie and a cruel joke?
It is worth considering. Though I don't see a simple way to answer any of those questions. There may not be an "answer" if we mean that in a kind of syllogistic, propositional sense. It is the question and answer of our whole life. This is what makes Dostoevsky so powerful to read.
Anyway, thank you for your beautiful and deep reflection. A lot to meditate upon. I hope you are well. -Jack
P.S. I wonder what Kierkegaard would have thought of all of this?
Thanks for the additional commentary. I shied away from going too deeply into Dostoevsky's own position because I think that's a question a Dostoevsky scholar, which I am definitely not, could grapple with for years.
I disagree with both Myshkin and Ippolit about the painting because I think that it is beautiful. I am, however, far less Christian even than Ippolit. I don't think that heaven using us as straw dogs indicates any particular meaninglessness or disorder in the universe. We're just not centrally important to the great dao. My response to that is pretty much 'so what?' I have also spent a lot more time in the company of corpses than most, which is probably a factor in my response to the painting.
You have my number with the comments about Platonism. As the reliance on Weil hints, this is a completely Platonist piece. Kierkegaard was probably the greatest Platonist since at least the Reformation, so I feel he would be vaguely onboard from that point of view, although he would express it both better and less directly. I don't think beauty, as I am discussing it here, easily maps onto his aesthetic/moral/religious 'stages', as I'm not really talking about completely enveloping worldviews in his sense. I think his edifying works would be the place to really get into where he would stand on this, but its been awhile since I spent time with him, and he's so subtle you really need him fresh in mind before you start trying to interpret him!
Have you ever looked into Neoplatonism? The parallels between it and say Taoism and Zen are fairly striking. And of course Plotinus wrote famously On Beauty.
I haven't been able to find all that much material on the Neoplatonist and Taoist parallels directly, but it seems unmistakable. I think it is a fruitful connection to make.
Plotinus has been on my to read list for years!
Based on my second-hand knowledge, I would have thought he would be closer to a Confucian position than to the Daoists. The Confucians (with Xunzi complicating things a bit) saw the dao of heaven and dao of humanity as relatively harmonious. Laozi is unconvinced, and Zhuangzi, especially in the inner chapters, attacks that assumption from more or less every possible angle.
Of course, that's one interpretation, and Zhuangzi's irony means that more or less every position you can ascribe to him appears to be definitively refuted, in a brilliant argument, by ...Zhuangzi.
There's also the issue of the role of intellect. As I understand it, it has a fairly exalted place in Neoplatonism, although perhaps less so in some of the Christian inheritors of that tradition?
I think a big commonality between the ancient Daoists and Neoplatonists, though, is in treating reality itself as having intrinsically normative elements (ways and forms being the two obvious examples). That is an important point of difference with mainstream materialism in Western philosophy.
Anyhow, that's top of the head stuff by someone who knows little, especially about Neoplatonism. I wonder if you would be better looking for a secondary literature on overlaps with Confucianism/Ru though? One possible problem even there is the tendency of some Western comparative scholars to misrepresent both sides of the equation so that they can use an idealised Orient to beat up a caricatured West. Slingerland's fairly recent 'Mind and Body in Early China' is a good, painstaking, deconstruction of that tendency, by the way.
My knowledge of Confucius is pretty basic but it never occured to me to compare it to Neoplatonism, which is apophatic to its core. As best I can tell Neoplatonism isn't nearly as concerned with correct behavior in social relations or anything close.
It is occuring to me that this is the hidden undercurrent of the West. I am still trying to fathom this, so bear with me. But Neoplatonism entered into Christianity via a few major figures, i.e., St. Augustine, St. Gregory of Nyssa. But it did so in a big way with St. Dionysius the Areopagite. The latter most likely a 5th century Syrian monk and not the figure from the Book of Acts. The pseudonym, however, allowed him to be taken as an apostolic figure. He was therefore influential in both the East and the West.
In the West he has influenced some interesting thinkers who frequently got themselves in trouble with institutional Christianity. John Scottus Eriugena an Irish Theologian and Poet who translated Dionysius into Latin. He was unique for his time in that he knew Greek. He ended up branded a heretic but was protected by the French Court.
Meister Eckhart also got himself in trouble and was eventually partially condemned. Though he conveniently died before any punishment could be doled out. Marguerite Porete--who was an influence on and/or influenced by Eckhart--got herself burnt at the stake a decade or so earlier.
The Cloud of Unknowing, which was written anonymously for *some reason* , was also heavily influenced by Dionysius. By the way, scholars don't know who the author was but speculation is that he was a monk in the north of England. For what that's worth.
Scholarly opinion seems to be that this tradition ended with the death of Nicholas of Cusa. Someone who plays a prominent role in the thinking of Iain McGilchrist.
Dionysius was much more integrated into Eastern Christianity, which would account for some of the big differences between East and West. He is, however, heavily cited in the Summa Theologiae, but it is unclear how much he has really been influential via Scholasticism. He also pops up with the Carmelites in the 16th-century.
The reason I bring this up is that it is becoming clearer to me what the absence of a deep, consistent contemplative tradition in the West has done and is doing. The focus in the West on preserving dogma up to and through the Reformation strikes me as the cultural roots of political correctness. We are still doing it.
It also might explain why so many of us have turned to the East, i.e., Buddhism, Daoism etc. Whatever one thinks of Tibetan Buddhism, it certainly doesn't lack a fully articulated and worked out contemplative tradition. It has many such traditions, in fact.
Forgive my rambling here, but I have to wonder if a recovery of Neoplatonism--Christian and otherwise--could put us on a less erratic path. The Church play a big role of squashing it, even if it eventually accepted some of it. There can be a deep contemplative practice with a full worked out and consistent philosophy as well as a practical contemplative. psychology.
Obviously I am still thinking this through. But if the above hasn't turned you away in derisive laughter, it might be worth looking into. If you can get your hands on Theophany: The Neoplatonic Philosophy of Dionysius the Areopagite by Eric D. Perl it is excellent. It is a purely philosophical argument that lays it all out clearly and goes into Plotinus and Proclus as well.
-Jack
The metaphysics are almost entirely implicit in the Analects, but even by Mengzi I think they are more obvious (although still much less so than in the Laozi). Later, the tradition, partly in response to Buddhism and Daoism, became far more expressly metaphysical.
In particular, accounts of Li - 'pattern' - became very sophisticated, and I think there is some overlap there with platonic forms. The other point of contact is that self-cultivation is absolutely central to the Confucian tradition, compared to classical Daoists ambivalence.
Zhu Xi is probably the key figure (and some of his interpretations of Zhuangzi remain influential): https://plato.stanford.edu/entries/zhu-xi/
I will check out Perl's book, tempting as it is to just head straight to the possible Northerner!
The Cloud of Unknowing is excellent. This apophatic tradition often got derailed in the West. By the Church for a long time. Luther very much distrusted Dionysius. Both being high recommendation to my mind. This derailment was to our loss.
Now that we are at the end of a certain tether, i.e., nominalism, Enlightenment Rationalism, Utopianism etc., I am inclined to think that a recovery of an explicit Neoplatonism is not only possible but would be beneficial. I tend to look Eastward (both Near and Far) to fill in the gaps and to clarify our own lost contemplative practice, psychology of practice, etc. Particularly in Hesychasm, Zen, Philosophical Daoism and Tibetan Dzogchen. But given time this can become home-grown.
As an aside from the aside, John C.H. Wu makes a case for Confucianism, particularly Mengzi, as a kind of Natural Law practice. But as I said, my understanding is basic. Wu also translated the prologue of the Gospel of John into Chinese as, "In the Beginning was the Tao..." For what that's worth.
P.S. I am glad to know you are a Platonist!
“the pain of the brute meaninglessness and absurdity of human” - this speaks to me today as I was feeling that much in my soul and though it is not a comfortable state, I appreciate the company of reading someone else feeling that way. Whatever meaning there is always seems to me to start from acknowledging the meaninglessness. The core paradox of the human condition? The mystery is the “meaning” that comes with accepting “meaninglessness”? Thanks to you both for the very provocative essay and response 🙏🏼
I read this lovely piece twice, so thanks for that.
Perhaps you are a little hard on the moorland observer, whose humility when truly *seeing* (including his place in the scene) I recognise from my own best moments of ‘shrinking’. If that makes sense.
Perhaps, but that battle is a continuous one!
Perhaps I can follow the thread. The path down the valley suggests the way. Recognition of the beautiful can be like a visitation, sometime episodic and not easy to repeat. Recognition though can insert the beautiful into time. Recognise another form as beautiful, and it can sit up and take notice of you, which is a strange experience with implications for responsibility. (Anecdotal evidence.) Human minds nevertheless can insert different conversations, an internal mirror into reality. I like your illustration of Narcissus. We find ourselves often enough in the Hall of Mirrors, the mirror of words. The experience of being recognised by the beautiful nevertheless has a persistence and if we have the facility I would follow Simone Weil.
I like this, it is a very Weilian comment in its emphasis on paying attention and the effect of that on the other. Thank you!
Thanks for your first making the trek to the high ground. 'Beauty is difficult', as Pound kept quoting.
I don’t know if beauty will save the world but it definitely makes it more livable. It seems in late capitalism the objective is to turn everybody into quantifiable units. Beauty has the potential to cut through transforming the the world into a more qualitative experience. 
'The beauty of things was born before eyes and sufficient to itself; the
heartbreaking beauty
Will remain when there is no heart to break for it.'
Robinson Jeffers, 'Credo'
https://poetrying.wordpress.com/2010/11/14/credo-robinson-jeffers/
Love comes to here in time
and numbers all the things
of Beauty in the house.
A single room is shown to be
- A unity, within and everywhere.
No point of view is stood apart.
No word is made to say,
This space is empty,
or, this place is full.
Only Light Itself Is Come
- a merest touch of Brightness
Neither mind nor body can deny.
It is the Heart's explanation of Reality.
It Is Reality, plain spoken to the Heart
and by the Heart alone.
It Is The Beautiful, Itself.
Truth is Beauty - Beauty Is Truth Keats
God is of course The Beautiful Itself - There is Only The Beautiful!
Agreed.
I take that as something more than pragmatism. I take it as indicating that goodness is real and that goodness calls out to goodness.
Can I prove it? Obviously not, but that's not the point really :)